Yesterday, Charlie came home from school in a whirl of excitement, clutching a cardboard box. Now, this had been an exciting day which started with an emergency trip to the orthodontist. The night before, Charlie lost a baby tooth. The problem: it was still attached to the bracket and wire of his braces. Unable to render assistance, (and feeling perfectly awful about it) we advised him to maneuver his tooth back in place until we could have it taken care of by professionals.

So that was taken care of in the morning. He took his tooth to school with him, bracket still attached, to share with his friends. Shortly after arriving at school, Charlie was called over to a group of kids who surrounded a flightless butterfly with ripped wings. No one knew what happened to the poor thing, but Charlie, who has a reputation for being an animal saver, was sought out for his expertise. Charlie ran to the cafeteria, where the kind lunch ladies emptied out a box full of taco sauce packets (as I mentioned, they're very kind). Charlie ran back and put the little guy in the box. His somewhat jaded teacher admonished him that he was depriving birds of their food, but Charlie was resolutely determined to nurse his new friend back to health.

So we now have a flightless butterfly living in Charlie's large butterfly keeper (his wing is intact on one side but he only has a remnant on the other). It's netted and gives Fido a huge amount of room. Charlie has learned that Fido loves Marguerite daisies and fresh dandelions, of which we have an almost limitless supply.