hide and go eeek!

If you're reading this, chances are you already know where I stand on this issue. You are probably well aware of Punk's feeling on the subject as well. But until now, I wasn't so sure about Kooka. I mean, she talks a good game - all bravado when her big brother's around. And there was that one time when she was two and she just grabbed a wild one in her bare hands . . . of course I'm talking about snakes.

So today, we're at St. Olaf playing a spirited game of hide and seek. Kooka is the master - she is competitive, stubborn as heck and can sit perfectly still for 30 miutes if it means she will win. She had the perfect hiding spot - a shrub barely out of range. Mr. ADD would never bother checking farther than his immediate line of vision. (Go figure - the kid can spot a gray trout at the bottom of a muddy river, but a four foot human wearing neon pink in a green bush is all but invisible to him.) Kooka was completely concealed, yet she could still see him through the foliage.

So - ten minutes later, after Punk has passed right by her twice, and is on his third round - we see two blonde pigtails bouncing behind the bush. The bouncing is followed by an "aaaa . . . .aaaa . . . . .aaaaaaahhhhhh!" - and suddenly Kooka is barreling out from behind the bush - high stepping like Scooby Doo and Shaggy.

"There was a snake in there!" she tells us. "It was just there, in the bush, looking at me." And you'd think that standing in a shrub with a cold-blooded reptile waiting for Mr. Observative to get a clue, would garner just a tiny bit of sympathy, but noooooo. There is no,"Are you OK?" - no "Sorry about that." Instead Punk looks right at her and says, "What?! And you let it go?!"

For about five seconds Kooka has a look on her face that I have never seen before. She is staring at Punk with eyes that seem to say, "Up until this very moment I truly believed that you were more intelligent than me." She walks away without a word.

While Kooka and I camp out on a hill to watch the leaves fall, Punk spends 15 minutes hunting for the elusive reptile with no luck. Here is Kooka's rendering of it. "The snake looked just like this - except longer, and pointier, and scarier, and without purple eyes."