Nature is lovely, as long as it's on my terms. Sometimes, it crosses the line, though. My mom always had a rule: no spiders allowed in the house. They were perfectly welcome to spin and thrive anywhere but inside. If they broke the rule, they had to die. I feel much the same.

Tonight, after Seminary, as we were leaving the Church, one of my students yelled, "skunk!" My first thought was, that's a little juvenile to tease people like that. Then I saw the skunk run past him and hide under my van. Luckily for all of us, the skunk only stayed there for a moment, and then continued on across the parking lot into the grass. Of course, when I went to pick my girls up from their Seminary babysitter, we had to tell the story, which prompted everyone else to tell a skunk story (everyone either has one of their own, or knows/is related to someone who does..try it, you'll see). My girls got a kick out of it. Later this evening, at bedtime, we were reading in Alma Ch. 45. I stopped to ask my girls if they knew what extinct meant (Alma uses it several times in the chapter, so I wanted to be sure they knew what was going on).
Gabba volunteered: "it means all dead, like the dinosaurs are extinct."
"That's right," I said.
"Yeah," Eliza piped up, "and skunks are really, really, really stinky."

Kids. Gotta love 'em!