Simsek Strikes

Full Circle

Last summer, our neighbor found and brought to us three fat, black swallowtail butterfly caterpillars that were enthusiastically eating the carrot greens in her garden.  While they ate everything we offered and shortly encased themselves in three, perfect cocoons, what followed was a gruesome and unlikely learning experience which left us hoping against hope that we might still hatch a butterfly in the spring.

Ignored in their windowsill home for the long winter months, once the days started to get warmer and the first flowers of spring started to bloom, the kids' attention returned to the remaining chrysalises. Would we have a butterfly soon?  Was there a chance there was a survivor?  We carefully opened the butterfly house and removed the branches to examine the well-camouflaged cocoons, and when we did, we discovered something encouraging:  only one of the three cocoons had been breached!  The nasty carnivorous flies had only invaded one of our caterpillars! We might still have two butterflies in stasis.  

We rushed back to the internet to see if we could determine when we might expect them to emerge, only to face more discouragement.  Apparently, wintering chrysalises in stasis was trickier than just letting them stay unmolested inside.  They might have been better off in the cold garage, or being misted occasionally inside the refridgerator.  In fact, the artificial light and heat in the dining room might have dehydrated them beyond repair.  And truthfully, they looked a little dry compared to the pictures we saw online of healthy cocoons.

Sad, but unwilling to give up, Spencer insisted that we keep them "just in case," and I couldn't say no. So we transferred the branches to a large, open-mouthed jar, loosely covered the top with a butterfly net, and left it in the window.  Of course, the net was removed several times by one or another curious kid and, rather convinced that there was no life within, I was less-than-conscientious about re-covering the jar.

This week, as the weather settled into the most perfect string of spring days - warm, sunny, dry and breezy - all three kids (and their mother) came down with a head cold that meant business.  Yellow snot began dripping, running, and spraying everywhere, and voices grew whiny, scratchy, and irritable. School came to a full halt for everyone, replaced with countless lessons in better nose-blowing techniques (use a tissue PLEASE, Ellie!) and appropriate tissue disposal (not in a pile on the couch, not scattered on the floor, not piled on the table beside you etc...)  The TV got a work-out as the older two sprawled in front of it's flickering face, covered in blankets, flanked by boxes of Puffs Plus and stuffed animals.  And Ellie, never content to be still even when sick, patrolled the different rooms lugging books, crayons, animals, her iPad, and anything else that caught her eye.

So it was that this afternoon found her camped out in the diningroom, drawing on the whiteboard and reading an assortment of transported books while Spencer and I watched Rango on Netflix. Suddenly, she stopped singing and called out "It's a BEAUTIFUL BUTTERFLY!  It's a BEAUTIFUL BUTTERFLY!"  Unsure whether she was reading "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" or looking out the window, I came in to investigate.  

"Where is the butterfly, Ellie?  Show Mommy."

"Right THERE!"  she said with glee, pointing at the front window.  

It only took a second to realize that she wasn't looking at a butterfly outside, but one right there on the inside of the glass.  While no one was looking, one gorgeous black swallowtail butterfly had emerged from its cocoon and was fluttering drying wings against the glass.  

The picture can't do justice to the deep, velvety color of his wings.

The empty cocoon

In moments everyone was crowded around the window as I tried to coax it away from the window and into something we could use to bring it safely outside.  Little fingers had to be reminded again and again not to touch the fragile legs and beautiful wings, all while ooohing and aahing over his velvety colors and perfectly curled proboscis.  There was much joy at the realization that Daddy was working from home, and with a little patience on their part, he could partake in the release.

Even his body was pretty, lined with bright, white spots
 

Soon we were bringing him to the back porch and bidding him a fond farewell.  In spite of the long, strange winter, the confusion of the window and the glass, he quickly fluttered his perfect wings and soared into the sky.  In moments he had reachd the roof of the house, the tops of the trees, and then open sky for the first time.  It was an amazing and beautiful thing. 

He was out of the bowl before I could even snap a picture.

 

That bird-like shape is actually our butterfly!

higher...

and away he goes! 

We actually got our own little miracle today.  And who knows?  Maybe we will have the pleasure of releasing a second butterfly soon...

 

Letting Go

In September our neighbor brought us three caterpillars.  They were beautiful, fat things, with bright stripes and hungry mouths.  With great excitement, the children and I pulled out the little butterfly house and made them a home.  We stocked their new home with carrot greens (their favorite) and collected sticks to climb and build cocoons on.  We learned that they were black swallowtails and what they would look like when they emerged in the spring. We thought we knew what to expect.

So we were not surprised when they climbed high and spun perfect, camouflaged cocoons on their branches. We checked this stage off our list.

But expectation can be a dangerous thing.  

A few weeks later, Lexi noticed two flies inside the butterfly house.  Sealed inside, it was clear that they had not snuck into the butterfly sanctuary overnight. We had some more reading to do.  Suddenly, instead of learning about the life of butterflies-to-be, we were learning about these parasitic flies and how they came to be. In fact, they had been there all the time, silently, invisibly incubating inside their caterpillar hosts.  After eating all but the heads of our caterpillar friends, they emerged, leaving behind hollow cocoons.  There were great, fat, disappointed tears on Lexi's cheeks as reality dawned.  Instead of lovely, delicate butterflies, we had raised two carnivorous flies.  Not the lesson we had expected.

Life is messy.  Maybe it is our need for order and predicability that allows us to pretend otherwise, again and again:  to pretend that we have some control over our corner of this vast, uncontrollable universe.  I am no different.  I want to make sense and order out of chaos.  Something I can wrap my head around and hold indefinitely. Against all evidence to the contrary, my mind still craves some illusion of control.

It is this desire I struggle with the most.  If peace comes in the absence of desire, it is this singluar desire that stands most formidably in my way.  Uncertainty was so much easier to bear, somehow, when I wasn't responsible for other little humans.  If life's curves hit me alone it was acceptable.  I knew I could withstand my own heartache, injury, fear, illness.  But the saying is true:  once you have children your heart stands up and walks outside your body. And suddenly the uncertainties are so much weightier.  

I want to enclose them in my arms and hands and keep them safe.  I want to defy the chaos for them. I want to build a barrier around each of them studded with hope and prayer and love that can somehow repel unexpected dangers and protect them from harm.  As though some how any of us can move through this life without hardship and obstacles. As if growth happens without adversity. And yet I still want this for them: to control the uncontrollable.

When the October snowstorm hit this year, I sent them to bed with misgivings.  Upstairs seemed so vulnerable when the trees around us were bowing low to the storm, bending, and breaking.  We moved them to the front of the house at first.  And then, at midnight when the big oak in the back yard let go, we moved them into the basement.  They slept peacefully, and woke with surprise to find themselves relocated and the world around them whitewashed with snow and rumbling with the sounds of the generator.  Paulo and I slept fitfully, him with an ear to the door, me with an ear to the dull thuds and reverberations of trees still being crippled in the snow.  I wrapped my arms around Ellie's warm little body, listened, and tried to let go.

This is all we can do, really.  Love and let go. The love part comes easy.  It ambushes me from the crook of a little arm, from the space between small teeth, from behind twinkling brown eyes, from the booming laugh of the man who carries this with me, taking my breath away.  But each day I have to remind myself to find ways to let go.  To do what I can to tame the chaos, and then to accept the rest. To see each moment as it is, instead of what I expect it to be.  To be in this present moment instead of straining so hard to see and shape the next.

The sun over the frost is beautiful this morning.  It's casting small, straight rainbows through the beveled glass onto the dining room wall for the children to catch.  We are warm and everyone is well. Our bellies are full and the house smells of fresh coffee and clean laundry. The kids are laughing together over Legos and later family will come to eat with us.

Maybe next week someone will come to remove the rest of the debris from the storm and the fear that knotted in my stomach that night will be just another story to tell.  And in the spring we might still see a black swallowtail butterfly. After all, one cocoon remains unscathed and inside we can hope, maybe even expect, a butterfly is forming.   

Rodent Revenge: Defiant Team Mice Members Under Investigation for Vandalism

In retaliation for last night's losses, one (or more) Mice Team player(s), yet-to be identified, has turned to vandalism to express their outrage.  Although the details are still under investigation, it appears that anger and frustration led one or more individuals to tear one of the offending traps appart from the outside with their bare teeth, an act that left one door off it's pivot and caused irreparable damage to the side of the Crazy Lady's equipment. Not content with simple destruction, the suspect or suspects then deficated all over the crime scene to express their displeasure (see exhibits 1 and 2).

Exhibit 1

Exhibit 2

When asked to comment on the incident, Coach Whiskers insisted he had not condoned the act, which he termed "damaging to our image as a team," and that he was unsure at this time who was to blame.  "I can't comment on whether or not the Crazy Lady had it coming to her, but I will say that most of our players are good, decent rodents, dedicated to beating the humans fairly and, you know, eating as much as possible.  This is a stain on our good name.  Not to mention the garage counter tops."

As for the impact on the Crazy Lady team?  Well, after laughing hysterically, crying for a moment, and doing a strange, shuffling little jig, the Crazy Lady spokeswoman responded to questioning with a crazy smile and shrugged. Our best guess is that this act can mean only one thing... 

 

The Score: Mice 2, Crazy Lady 0

As expected, we eagerly poked our little heads out to the garage to check the bucket this morning for trapped mice. Nothing.  Ah, it's just that they were still full, we reasoned, and maybe the lingering smell of bleach where I had cleaned out the bucket before hatching my dastardly plan had deterred them.  We would wait.

But every time we passed through the garage today, we had to check again.  

Finally, on my last trip through I decided to go closer to inspect the bucket.  Were those...could they be?? Were there sunflower seed shells on the cover?  Impossible!  But no, there they were, scattered about like little bits of victory confetti.  I peeked through the hole and sure enough, there were seed shells inside, too.  And just in case there was any doubt about who left them there, our little rodent friends left us a message that we couldn't possibly misunderstand:

Yes.  That's poop alright.

I have seen rats jump, and squirrels, too, and they are impressive.  But this blew my mind.  Somehow, the little buggers managed to jump back up from the bottom of the bucket and out the hole in the top. Repeatedly.  I honestly wish we had a motion-activated camera so that I could see how the hell they did this!

Seriously.  A mouse is LITTLE, and this bucket is pretty tall.  We might have magical flying  mice.

Yes, I know that they're laughing at me.  Crazy lady thought she could trap us in a plain ol' bucket! What a loon!  And although they could not break into the big red cooler to raid the rest of the seed, they made sure they let me know how they felt about that cooler, too:

Subtle.

See how it is?  They have gotten so bold, so brazen as to mock me in my own garage. You know what this mean, of course.  It is ON, mice.  You and your poop are moving out.  I may not be able to kill you (due to previous agreements pinky-promised to the small humans) but you will be moving far away to the wilds of the country where the cats and owls prowl free.  

Just as soon as I get the kids all well and make it to the hardware store for some real fancy mouse-catchin' traps and bait and set all the traps in key locations in the garage....  

Ok, you're right.  This might take a while.  No wild parties, though, and ABSOLUTELY NO breaking and entering.  Trespassers will be killed in whatever messy and nasty way works best, pinky-promise or not. You have been warned.

 

Building a Better Mouse Trap: Let them build it themselves!

Apparently, we have a rodent problem.  I know, that sounds bad, but it's not terrible.  Yet.  Terrible is when they break into your house and start rodent races through the walls all night and pee all through your insulation.  That is not the kind of problem we have, but I don't want to tempt fate.

You see, the children (and the adults) around here have fallen in love with feeding the birds.  Three years after setting up our awesome squirrel-proof bird feeder, we are entertained year-round by birds:  red-bellied woodpeckers, cardinals, orioles, gold and purple finches, eastern bluebirds, rose-breasted grosbeaks, nuthatches and chickadees and dark-eyed juncos, just to name a few.  And feeding these ravenous hoards requires keeping a stash of thistle seeds, black oil sunflower seeds, and suet.  

Until this year, our system has worked flawlessly.  20lbs bags of seed get stored in our big picnic cooler while a smaller, covered tupperware container holds a portable amount of seed and a scoop.  All of this has a home in our garage as we are pressed for space inside and didn't want to take a chance with the kids getting into it and spreading seeds all over the house.  Anyway, it worked.  While chipmunks scurried through the garage from front yard to back yard every year, the seed went unmolested.

But something was about to change all that:  mice.  Last weekend I decided to try to start up our mosquito magnet.  When I opened the Mosquito Magnet Supply Drawer in the garage (those things work but they are more high-maintenance than a tempermental high school girlfriend) I discovered that something had chewed holes in the bags and left tiny little rodent droppings in the drawer.  Lovely. Made a mental note to wash my hands twice and clean out the turds. 

Then, two nights ago I opened the back door to close the garage before bed, just in time to see a tiny white (white??) rodent scurry across the top of the door track and disappear into the overhead shelves.  A field mouse.  Having encountered plenty of them while living in Kentucky there was no doubt in m mind. The garage had mice.

This afternoon as I headed out to take the Subaru for an oil change I discovered the worst evidence yet:  tiny blue plastic shavings littered the walkway near the seed shelves.  Blue plastic shavings that were an exact match for the cover of the portable seed container's cover.  Sure enough, the little stinkers had chewed off the handle on the top and then, once they could get their teeth in it, they had methodically chewed a mouse-sized hole in the top and climbed in to gorge themselves.  Nice.

Annoyed, I transferred all the seed to new containers and put ALL the containers inside the big cooler.  I vacuumed up the mess and threw out the chewed top.  Threw it out, that was, until I got a fiendish thought.  The mice had been able to get in and out easily when the container was full of seed, but what if it was almost empty?  It's tall, and smooth-sided...they could get in, but could they get back out?

There's only one way to find out.  Feeling slightly evil, I spread the bottom with their favorite selection of seeds, and replaced the cover.  I put the container in what I hope is and easy-to-reach spot not far from the drawer full of mice turds.  And now we wait.  Of course, with three animal-loving tykes in the house there's no way we're going to kill any mice we catch, but they will get relocated far away from here to some cozy wooded area to live out the rest of their days with the owls.  

I don't know.  They're clever, and tomorrow and the next day we'll probably wake disappointed to find an empty bucket with a sprinkling of seeds.  Or, we may find evidence of a super mouse:  one who somehow managed to defy gravity to steal seeds without getting caught.  But I can't help but hope that maybe, just maybe, they'll climb in and get stuck.  How sweet it would be to evict them all, one at a time, each caught in a trap they built with their own teeth.

Autism Awareness, Part Four: Dr. Martha Herbert on Autism, Genetics, and Environmental Toxicity

The following is the concluding segment from a lecture Dr. Herbert gave at a conference in Maine.  Her lecture, entitled "Genes and Environment, Developmental and Chronic:  An Inclusive Approach to Autism Science" was eye-opening to say the least, and is well-worth watching for anyone interested in the inter-connectivity of autism, genetics, and environmental toxicity.  Her closing should be a call to awareness and action for all of us:

 

Will Women Lead the Environmental Health Movement?

How can we imagine that ordinary people might be able successfully to challenge the overwhelming internal logic of the global economic system because of concern over environmental health?

 There is an Ethiopian proverb that when spider webs unite they can tie up a lion.  The lion of the globally destructive patterns of production and consumption may one day be ensnared and ultimately domesticated by the gossamer webs of human consciousness and community action.  What will happen when ordinary people, whose lives are often mortally wounded by the destruction of the biosphere, come to understand that their wounds are so often intimately related to the wounds of the earth?

 What will happen when a working woman comes to the realization that her own breast cancer, her husband's lymphoma, her brother's melanoma, her son's learning disability, his best friend's attention deficit disorder, her daughter's endometriosis, her niece's cleft palate, her cousin's chronic anxiety and panic disorder, her best friend's severe chemical sensitivity, her best friend's daughter's asthma, her uncle's infertility, her neighbor's son's testicular cancer, and her sister's daughter's childhood leukemia may form a pattern?

What will happen when this working woman begins to understand that these new human pandemics that effect her community and her family directly may be profoundly connected to what is happening to the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and the animals of the earth?  I believe this working woman will understand that the cancers and infertilities of the fish, the disappearance of the frogs, the cleft palates of the mice, the shifts in gender orientations of the birds, the susceptibility to viruses and infections of the seals, the disappearance of the song birds--that all of this and much, much more may be telling us a story that is also our story.  

 The story that the birds and the fish and the mice are telling us is the story of inter-being;  the story that all life and earth is truly, breath-takingly, concretely connected right now, and that what we do to the mice of the field, and the birds of the sky, and the creatures of the forrest is also, ultimately, what we do to ourselves and to our families right now.  

 I do not believe that we can hide from this story much longer.  It is one of the great stories of our time.  The very human protest against the massive, entrenched, and toxic system of global production and consumption may seem unrealistic economically and politically, but is it any less realistic than the Quaker protests in Europe and the United States that played such a key role in ending the 350 year-old slave trade?  I do not invoke the parallel to ending the slave trade lightly, for we are as enchained by toxic chemicals, and by ozone depletion, by climate change and the destruction of nature as we once were enchained by slavery.  I believe that environmental health may be one of the greatest human rights issues of the new millennium, and thus our biggest challenge.

 

(Please forgive any slight discrepancies in my transcription - I did my best but I'm no professional!)

Overheard: Evolving Music

Another random gem from Lexi:

"Mommy? We're going to pretend that we're tiny microbes and we're going to evolve into giant monsters.  Do you have any music that would be good for that?"

 

Why, yes. Yes, I do.

Griping in a Winter Wonderland

I love New England, truly I do.  I love the crusty, feisty, independent people.  I love the history (ok, except the whole Puritan thing....and the witch trials...and the treatment of Native Americans...need I go on?) I love the architecture: Colonials and Victorians and old rambling farms with wrap-around porches, and Queen Anns, and coastal mansions topped with widow's walks.  I love the rocky, cankerous coastline, the bustling rivers and the lush and looming mountains, and the clear, cold lakes.  I love the moose and the deer and the flocks of wild turkeys that wander through the neighborhood. I love the wet defiance of spring and the blinding brilliance of fall.  I even love the way that the muggy summer days can melt into deliciously cool, fragrant nights, and the way the bats play around our house at twilight.  I do. I love New England.

But I hate winter.  Really.  First, there's the cold. I hate being cold.  Every morning I climb out from under my pile of blankets and shiver a little.  The house isn't any colder than other seasons, exactly, but the floor is.  My feet are.  I have learned to love my scratchy homemade woolen socks.  I pull them on and drag myself downstairs for hot coffee, counting down the time until I do battle with my morning shower.

Because it is a battle.  

When they built this house they did a lot of things right.  It's sturdy and comfortable and bright, for example.  It's warm, and the water is heated directly from the furnace so that the tap can be scaldingly hot at times.  Unfortunately, the furnace can't seem to manage to keep the shower water hot. No, not even close.  I have resorted to all sorts of tactics to try to ensure 10 minutes of hot water each morning.  I have tried to time my showers carefully 5 to 10 minutes after Paulo's so that the furnace would have a chance to get really fired up first.  I have tried turning up the upstairs heat 10 minutes before showertime to heat the pipes.  I have tried leaving the heat up while showering.  I have tried turning off all the heat in the house so that the furnace only heated the shower water.

No dice.

No matter what I try, it seems that I cannot influence the temperature of my shower.  Some days, I win. On those blissful mornings my water is piping hot and I can wake up in its sweet embrace, emerging toasty and warm and ready to tackle the day. Like a superstitious baseball player I try to figure out what I did right (red pajamas? coffee first? heat up then down? how long since last shower? what time to the minute?)  But other mornings I am tortured instead.  It starts hot and then fizzles two minutes in. Maybe it drops down to tepid, and I have to curse quietly and simply rush.  Other days it falls to downright cold and I have no choice but to take what my father calls "Military Showers".  Turn the water on.  Get wet.  Turn it off.  Wash entire body.  Turn it on and rinse.  Turn off.  Shampoo. Turn it on.  Rinse hair.   Skip shaving and conditioner because I am too-freaking-cold-to-stand-it.  Get out and shiver in towel to warm up.  Try to drown the grumpies in a second (or third) cup of hot coffee.  

Then there's the other wonder of winter: the joy of snow.  I don't like snow, in general.  I don't ski or snowboard or skate, so it's pretty much wasted on me. This year there's been the weekly blizzard which moves in every Tuesday, dumps roughly a foot of snow, cancels school for Wednesday and buries the whole place. I'm not sure what I hate most about the snow:  the way it messes up the roads, the way it messes up the schedule, or the way it keeps us locked inside like cranky prison inmates.  Oh, wait, I know:  it's the snow clothes I hate the most.  No, not just the fact that it takes about 30minutes to get three little kids into all the gear they need to wear to play outside for 10 minutes.  You know all about that already.  

It's actually the way that Ellie's decided to be allergic to, freak out at the sight of, boycott mittens.  

At first I thought it was just that she couldn't keep them on, so I pinned them to her sleeves.  She was still mad about them.  I figured that snow could still get in around the cuffs, so I sewed big, long water-proof sleeves to the ends of her mittens and pulled those suckers up to her shoulders.  I thought I was pretty smart with that one!  I got her suited up with the fancy up-graded mittens and took her out into the snow.  Two minutes into it she was crying again and waving her arms around like one of those inflatable wind-sock men you see at the used car dealership, and the more she waved, the longer her arms got as the mittens-with-sleeves slipped further and further out of her snowsuit.  Great.  But I was determined to teach the kids how to make a snow fort, or at least a snow man, so I persisted.

Aaarggggg!!! 

The next snow day, I tried pinning the mitten-sleeves up.  Still mad.  Maybe it was the no-thumbs thing? Today I tried getting her thumbs in the thumb holes and pinning the mittens to the jacket cuffs. Nothing doing.  

Now she screams at the idea of mittens.  She will pull her whole arm out of the sleeve and snake it out of her coat at the neckline to avoid mittens.  I'm pretty sure that this is a sensory thing for her, but this is New England in February.  There's about 10 feet of snow on the ground and it's 5 degrees in the sun.  You can't NOT wear mittens.  It's just not an option.  So we're stuck going back inside. And undressing kids for another 20 minutes, not including the time it takes to clean up the snow they tracked in and dry the soaking wet snow clothes.  Good times.

Really, Mom, I hate these things. 

Honestly, the only thing I think I like about winter is snowblowing.  Yes, I said snowblowing.  I love that. It gets me out of the house, and it's so peaceful.  Sure, the engine is deafening and the snow can be blinding.  My nose might be freezing and running at the same time, and my hands could be cramping. The snowblower weighs half a ton and sometimes the self-propelling part is a joke.  But no one yells my name every two minutes and I can see my progress.  It's satisfying to watch that plume of flying snow, see the clear, clean lines left behind, and to watch the wall of snow left by the plow slowly disappear, one pass at a time.  Did I mention that it gets me out of the house?  It might be the best thing about winter.  Well, that and a good glass of port on a cold night.

The children might not agree.

 

Some snow.

We like it, Mom!  Why don't you come out?

Ok, this is starting to get a little ridiculous.  There are chairs under there.

 

Here's hoping we don't have to open that door until the spring.

I don't know where we're going to put the rest of the snow.  Seriously.  This bank is significantly taller than I am now.  Please, Mr. Plowdriver, have mercy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Maybe we should consider trading in one of the cars for a good, strong draft horse and a large sleigh.  Or a dog team.

Overheard: The Pats Game

Yesterday, Paulo went to see our beloved Patriots play their arch-rivals, the Jets, at home in Foxborough. He was beyond excited.  He left right after breakfast, even though the game wasn't until 4:30, just so that he'd have plenty of time to look around, explore Patriot Place, meet our brother-in-law, and have lunch.

Long story short, the game did no go well for us.  As I watched from home, cringing, the Patriots lost, a play-at-a-time.  There were interceptions, fumbles. and too many sacks to believe.  And the Jets (those trash-talking SOBs) played a really good game.  Especially their defense. We texted back and forth throughout.  Towards the end, he told me, grown men were leaving the stadium in tears.  

But this morning, the kids awoke to Patriots presents and all was right with their world.  Paulo brought me a vintage-style Pats shirt, a pink Brady jersey for Ellie, a pink Pats monkey for Lexi, and a finger football game for Spencer.

Lexi:  This is the best morning!  I love my monkey!!

Spencer: Yeah!  But the Patriots losed, Mommy.

Me:  They "lost" Spencer, I know.  I watched on TV, remember?

Lexi:  But it's okay because I got a MONKEY!!

Spencer:  And I got a game!  And Mommy got a shirt!

Lexi:  And Ellie got a shirt!

Spencer:  And Daddy got a shirt!

Paulo:  No, I didn't get a shirt.

Spencer:  Did you get pants?

Paulo:  No, I didn't get pants.

Lexi:  Daddy got to watch the Patriots LOSE!

 

Lucky Daddy.

Filed Under Random Cures: Duct Tape vs. Plantar Wart

Last summer I discovered that both girls had plantar warts.  Lexi's was on the ball of her foot, and Ellie's on the heel.  At the time, the pediatrician suggested that I keep them covered with duct tape.  I'm pretty sure the look of disbelief was unmistakable, because she laughed and reassured me that it was just as effective as OTC remedies and cheaper. Skeptical, but happy to try a cheap fix for once, we went for it.

But it was summer and their feet sweat constantly. They went swimming and ran around barefoot and played in the sprinkler.  They went to the park in their sandals and covered their feet with sand and, and, and...I couldn't keep tape on. So we tried the OTC liquid that dries on and forms a crusty film.  For Lexi, this was enough.  She understood how to hold still for application and to wait for it to dry, and we could keep up daily.

But Ellie was tougher.  I had to apply it while she slept and it often got smeared.  Worse yet, it only seemed to make the area swell and get more uncomfortable and irritated until she didn't want me to touch it anymore.  She began calling it her "boo-boo" and avoiding it.

So this fall, I tried the duct tape again.  Once she realized that the tape didn't hurt, she happily let me put it on, and inside her socks and shoes or pajama feet it stayed on. I changed it twice a day and slowly but surely, it started to work.  The swelling went away first, and then the wart began to shrink.  Little bits came off with the tape and it flattened out.  She stopped avoiding it and began ignoring it, which was wonderful in itself.  She even remembered to ask for tape when dressing.  

And finally, this morning, after approximately four months of the duct tape cure, Ellie's wart fell off. Seriously, it just came off neatly with the tape. I couldn't believe it, but there it was!  I started to throw it away and put her sock on without the tape, but she protested.  Clearly, she'll have to get used to the idea that she doesn't need it anymore, but I couldn't be happier.  If only we'd known about this when I was I kid I might have avoided having holes burned in the bottoms of my feet!