Our New Pals (Kind Of)

yesterday we went to morning mass and then stream stomping with our homeschool group. it was a great day. the weather was perfect (thankfully before we get much of the outer weather, and especially rain from hanna as she heads up the east coast today). it's actually been pretty dry here lately so the stream was low enough to see well to the bottom. the kids had a great time collecting shells, wading and collecting all sorts of critters and other specimens. in fact we brought some friends home in a plastic cup...the fish which had called our little tank home for the past five years or so went belly up on thursday night. the kids were hounding me to stop at the pet store on the way home to get a new fish. that meant that i would also have to buy some bottled water (the chlorine from the tap kills the fish faster than you can blink) and clean the tank for our new friend. so, i did what any good mom would do, (no, i didn't stop at the pet shop) i had them bring home a crawfish and some clams in a plastic cup. (ok, this was actually motivated more by exhaustion and a dwindling bank account that super parenting technique, but they enjoyed bringing them home nonetheless)taking a picture down into a white plastic cup is obviously not a strong point of mine, or of my camera...yeah, let's blame it all on the camera. so the blurry mass at the bottom of the cup is a crawfish that is about two inches long and a mess of little clam shells, some of them empty and some of them still living (take note of this fact, it will be of importance in a few moments). well, after putting him in the still dirty tank (yeah for not needing to clean out the tank...because hey, crawfish thrive on ick right?) i had to go to church to plan music for a wedding i am singing at and we had a film class for the homeschool group at our house so i didn't give much thought to the new menagerie in the tank. i checked on the tank again about eleven last night and i discovered that one of our new boarders was eating another of them.
that's right. the crawfish had gotten into one of the clamshells and was having quite the extensive dinner. my husband promptly decreed that we had a little piece of nova going on right in our kitchen and he videotaped a bit of the meal. thankfully the kids weren't that attached to the clams.