Earth Day 2010

I received an e-mail from Heifer International yesterday with the subject line: "Save the Earth and everyone on it." We support Heifer and all, but I thought that was a little overly ambitious for one Earth Day. Annie had talked about it at school, plus we had coincidentally watched a Yo Gabba Gabba episode called "Green," so Annie and I spent part of yesterday walking around with a Target bag and picking up trash.

Where was Jemma during all this do-goodery? AT HER FIRST PLAY DATE. It was just an hour or so, right down the street with her little friend Phoebe, but still. Annie and I enjoyed our "Mommy-Annie time," picking up litter in the sunshine and working on a school project we had been procrastinating.

On Wednesday, the day before Earth Day, we were playing out in the front yard (well, the girls were playing and I was reading The Pioneer Woman Cooks in a chair) when they came running over to me, all "Look what we found" and "Mom! Mom!" In Annie's little cupped hand was a bright blue robin's egg, still intact, that they'd found on the ground. I didn't have the heart to tell them that it was probably not going to hatch into a bird, so I let them run around the yard, gathering sticks and leaves for a nest. We assembled the little nest, stuck the egg in it, and nestled it behind our bushes.

Then they put Jemma's Mama Duck on it. To keep it warm. Obviously. Before bedtime we covered it with a garbage bag, so it wouldn't get wet in case it rained, and this is where it spent the night.

Yesterday morning, Annie woke up filled with the conviction that the egg must come inside. She filled a wooden heart-shaped box with straw and grass and leaves, then rescued the egg from its outdoor nest. It now sits, adorned with a robin sticker and occasionally covered with an orange sock, on top of the antique metal cabinet in our living room. Jemma drew pictures of robin eggs on her Magnadoodle (to keep it company), and Annie had a long conversation on the way home from school with Lucy about what we'll do with the bird eventually hatches.

"It might wake you up early in the morning," warned Lucy.

"Yeah," said Annie. "We might have to keep it in a cage."

"You don't want it just flying around your house," said Lucy.

"Yeah, because then it might just poop on your head!" said Annie.

Lucy nodded seriously. "You should probably put newspaper in the cage. For the poop."

So despite my gentle warnings that this egg probably fell from a great height, and then was touched by little girls, and is likely not warm enough to grow well, Annie persists in hoping that we, like Mother Bear of the Little Bear books, will one day have a baby robin crack out of its bright blue egg and become our pet.

Between picking up trash and caring for nature's creatures, I think we're right on track with the spirit of Earth Day, even if we didn't manage to "save the Earth and everyone on it."