Busted

I am a fraud.  Yep, my kids are at an age where they're calling me on it.
Here's what happened ...

There I was, minding my own business, clipping the suckers from the trees, when suddenly, the tree was moving!
Knowing trees dont move (in that way at least) I leaned in to look closer.... and then jumped back a good few feet.  On the trunk, and crawling back up now, were close to 50 caterpillars!!!

 Hmmm, I liked the moving tree theory better.

Of course, I got all girlie and called Dustin over (who had been mowing on the tractor), hoping my Prince Charming would cut the few little branches that were right amidst all those creepy crawling things and I could just avoid it completely myself.
No such luck ... he literally quoted me, saying "big girl panties", which is what I've been saying lately when I've done things on my own (like use the tractor to fill the chicken's water ... using machinery is new and out of my comfort zone). 
To him, that meant 'suck it up and do it yourself', which it usually does to me too, but today it meant go beg someone else.

I dropped the pruning shears and went to the house, only to find that Brad was in the shower.
Crap!  I can always count on him to help with stuff like this!  He picks up dead birds and frogs for crying out loud!  What a bad time for a shower!  I mean really, he's not that dirty right?

I finally figured out why God gave me two boys.  He knew such a time as this would come. Thank you Lord for giving me TWO boys!!

"Ohhhhhh Zach-ary?"

And this is how I got busted.

"Seriously Mom?" he asks me with a look of disgust and disbelief.  "They're just caterpillars, you used to help us put them in jars".

Yep, that was when there was one, not an army of them! 
And I had a shovel.

He then clipped aways at the branches I asked him to (by pointing by about 10 feet away!) all the while reminding him of all the things I had once told a toddler version of him.
"They wont do anything, they're just caterpillars.  Just think how pretty the butterflies will be Mom. You like butterflies right?  See, this isn't so bad, they're not doing anything.  They're not even touching the shears". 

He had knocked most of the creepy-crawlies to the ground by then.
Calmed that my 9 year old hero was here to help me,  and they hadn't done anything to him, I edged closer to give him a hand with a rather thick branch

And then one fell out of the tree into my hair.
Oh. My. Word.
I lost it.
I completely and utterly lost it. 
Shrieking and dancing around, I ripped at my hair as though it were on fire. I should be bald, but amazingly I'm not.

Even after explaining that I did not, in fact, have a seizure,  but that it had fallen in my hair,  Zach said it. 
"Mom, you're not nearly as brave as I thought you were when I was little."

Yep.  
So busted!