My Daughter, Amphibian Annihilator

~By Elle Davis

When my daughter met her first salamander friend, she immediately launched into her Flashdance move. Whenever anything excites her, her little legs begin running furiously in place. All she’s missing are some leg warmers, a leotard, and a rockin’ ’80s soundtrack. We’ll take a pass on the ’80s hair, though. I have enough pictures of myself from junior high school in the late ’80s to scare me.

My husband had taken our little girl, also known as our little hummingbird, out to the backyard to play, and nothing seemed amiss when they came back inside. It wasn’t until later that night that I could tell my hubby wanted to tell me something but was hesitant to do so.

He knows how much I love animals, everything except spiders, snakes, and eels. Eels scare the pee out of me. Whenever we go to the aquarium, my hubby likes to torture me and point them out. I fall for it every time and look at those creepy things with their mouths open like they’re trying to say, “One day we will come for you and eat your face off.”

Ahem, anyway …

I kept at him to tell me what was wrong and he finally said, mostly kidding, that we have a killer on our hands. I asked, mostly kidding, “Oh no, who have you killed?” and he replied, “It’s not me. It’s the hummingbird.”

Before he said more, I had visions of coming home 12 years later and seeing my daughter all Dexter-ish, complete with a room covered in plastic.

My husband told me that when they were in the backyard together our daughter had picked up a splash block from our downspout to check on her little salamander and, after she did her Flashdance move, slammed the splash block back onto poor Mr. Salamander and SPLAT! When our little hummingbird ran to get one of her toys, my husband went to check on poor Mr. Salamander but saw that his days of doing salamander things were over.

After going back and forth about whether our little girl will become a serial killer, I remembered something my husband had told me about the pet gerbil he had when he was about 9 years old. My husband had brought his pet into the living room. When his gerbil would run in one direction, he would karate chop the floor so it would run the other way. This went on for a few minutes, and it was just meant to be harmless fun. The gerbil ran to the right — karate chop!  He ran to the left — another karate chop.

Then my husband karate chopped a little too fast and his poor pet didn’t make it. He was terrified of what his parents would do if they found out. He ended up putting his gerbil back in his cage and only “discovered” him later on. To this day, his parents still don’t know the truth.

So that’s where the little hummingbird gets her killer instincts, I realized. At least that’s one thing she can’t blame me for later on in life. Yay!

Elle Davis is the mastermind behind the This Is Mommyhood blog.

The pic comes from Discovery Kids.