Trying to enjoy the somewhat nice weather we had yesterday (the wind needs to go away), I broke out my grill and threw on some pork chops. I'm a big fan of pork chops. I guess I like anything on the grill. But that's not the point of this story. I just tend to get off track with food stories.

Moving on...After devouring the chops, my 3 year-old daughter Ellie and I spent some time  playing in the backyard. We were running around when we came upon something a bit alarming lying in the grass. It was a dead squirrel, right in my backyard. It was gross. Ellie saw it first, and said, "Ehh...Daddy...Ehh..." And I said, "What's wrong...Eeeewww...um...let's go play over here."

I didn't try to ignore it, mostly because she asked me a million questions. "Is that a squirrel? Did it die? Will it run after us?" I just told her that the squirrel died in our yard, and that he can't run anymore because he's dead. It's not very easy to explain death to a 3 year-old. We've had fish die over the past few months, and we've told her that they died. But we know she doesn't completely understand the concept.

Then when I kissed her goodnight in her bed she says, "Daddy, I'm going to put my sticky gloves on (don't know why they'd need to be sticky) and get that squirrel. And then I'm going to make it alive again and put it in a tree to be with its mother." After a little laugh, I told her that the squirrel can't come alive again. But she insisted that it would because it needed to be with its mother.

It showed me how sweet her heart is, that she would want every animal to be with its mother, and I just said, "Ok sweetie, you do that." And kissed her goodnight. I don't know if it was the right thing to do, but it's tough to tell a little girl that something's dead forever. Someday she'll learn I suppose, but it's tough to know what to say now.

Anyway, I just realized that I started out a dead squirrel story with talk of grilling. Just know that the one didn't make it on the other. Now that's gross.