Ever since her kitty Flower joined us, my daughter has been too absorbed in her to pay any heed to her snails. Her adoration for Flower is even bigger and deeper than that for the snails when they first came. I understand a kid’s highly volatile nature and took over the task of looking after the snails upon her request, “ as their granny”, as she put it.  

But the snails have their own way to gain her attention back---one morning last week, when I was cleaning the basin for the snails I found numerals round, white, rice-size eggs there. What were they? I was fascinated. After consulting some books on biology science, the three of us agreed they were the snails’ eggs. And according to the books, we should put some clean fine sand into the basin and cover it with a wet cloth for several days, and the eggs were supposed to hatch. This process of creating new  lives once again triggered my daughter’s interest in the snails. She and I went out on the hot noon and found some sand. We carried a small bag of it home and used a gauze to filter some fine sand out for the eggs. We used another smaller basin for them. I watched her working earnestly, not knowing when and how some dirt had worked its way onto her nose tip.

After that, it was a long and hard-to-bear period of waiting. One day, two days, three days passed, and there was no change, the white eggs were still lying there dully, my girl’s patience was worn thin. She did not look at the basin the fifth morning. I thought I would just keep them for one more day. Maybe it wouldn’t work anyway.  

Right after lunch that day, my husband found kitty Flower was looking at something in the eggs’ basin with deep interest. She even tried to use her paw but finally decided not to touch. So he went over for a check. Then I heard him crying out joyfully like a child, “Come on, daughter, see what we’ve got!”

“The baby snails!” my daughter and I put down the peaches in our hands and rushed over together.

Uh, how amazing, how exciting, dozens of tiny crystal snails were moving unnoticeably, some of them even have half of the egg shells on their bodies. Several more were breaking their eggs right at that moment. My girl ran to get her toy magnifying glass for a closer look at this intriguing process.  

“I have something really interesting to write in my diary today,” said she while still staring at her magnifying glass.

“Yeah, mommy will also write something about this, in English.” I encouraged her.

“And I will take some pictures for them.’’ My hubby laughed and went to get his digital camera.

Then, seemed like my daughter suddenly thought of something, she put down her magnifier and touched my arm: “Hey, mom, do you think someday my kitty Flower will also lay some eggs and hatch out dozens of kittens?”  

I saw her father grinning there, I couldn’t help laughing too.  

A wonderful opportunity to tell her some knowledge about mammals, uh? We left for her bookshelf, got out her encyclopedia and began to read it together while her father was busy taking pictures there.

[smile]