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Cat Litter and Other Culinary Delights
By Deborah Boehle
But when I found that dead bug in her poop, there had been no warning at all. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. To this day I can't imagine how a baby could catch a bug. One day when I opened her diaper to change it, there was a little "love bug" in the poop. We lived in Florida at the time, and love bugs are these very slow-flying bugs who come around seasonally. I have no idea what they do other than mate and disappear again. You know they're mating because they usually fly around together, hence the name, love bug.
It was after discovering that bug in my daughter's diaper that I began to suspect that perhaps I'd gone too far in attempting to keep her life so germ free. Maybe she wasn't as fragile as I'd thought. So I vowed that when my next child was born, I wouldn't be so picky. But what did that mean, really? I didn't run to save him when my little boy picked up a toy from the floor and put it in his mouth, but other than that, I think I was still pretty convinced that my children needed my constant protection from the vast majority of germs out there.
I will never forget the day when I was cleaning the cat's litter box. It had a lid on it, and it sat in the corner of the kitchen. The opening to the litter box was toward the wall, so my son left it alone because he had no idea what treasures were inside. Then when he was about 18 months old, I pulled the litter box away from the wall and removed the lid to clean it. Just then, the doorbell rang and I went to answer it, leaving the litter box completely expoed. When I returned, I saw my sweet, precious son sitting in the middle of the floor shoveling cat poop and litter into his mouth. I gasped and a string of expletives flew from my mouth as I ran towards him. His big smile turned into a look of shock, and his giggling turned into crying as I began trying to scoop the poop out of his mouth. The smell that emanated from his mouth is one I will never forget, no matter how much I'd like to forget it.