Bet you did not know...

that I am an expert in chinchillas. Well, not so much an expert, but knowledgeable about them in a "present this information to 6 year olds" sort of way.

I had the pleasure of sharing my new found "love" of chinchillas to 4 different 1st grade classes at Jonathan's school on Friday. And truly, it was a pleasure.

To prepare for this adventure, I attended a 3 hour training session given by the district's science center. I did it back in October or something like that and since I have slept a time or two since then, I didn't really remember anything that I had learned. To top it off, I could not recall where I had placed the handout with all of the information either.

Ever the procrastinator, I decided between episodes of Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice on Thursday night that I should look for the handout and study up on chinchillas before making a fool of myself in front of Jonathan, his classmates, and his teachers. As usual, I had put the handout in a very safe place, but just not a very logical one. Nevertheless, I found it and proceeded to brush up on my chinchilla knowledge during commercial breaks (which were pretty short considering that I was fast forwarding through the commercials.)

The info came back to me so on Friday morning, we had a bit of role reversal as I had Caleb quiz me over the handout. He took a little too much pleasure in pointing out my mistakes, I think. Finally with all that cramming, I was ready to wow those 6 year olds with my knowledge!! (With all my cramming, I am having flashbacks to my college days! )

After drop off at school, I went to pick up the chinchilla, Willow. I told my friend as I was driving back that I have 3 BIG FEARS when I do these Live Animal Demos:

1. I fear that I will come down with an unforeseeable, instantaneous case of Turret's syndrome and curse words will spew out of my mouth uncontrollably while I am teaching and those kids will learn a little bit more than they bargained for.
2. I fear that I will accidentally let the animal escape and have to run through the school chasing the scurrying creature yelling, "Stop that chinchilla!" with my hair flying and sweat dripping from my brow.
   

And this is the big one, folks:

3. I live in real fear that the poor defenseless animal will go to that big chinchilla farm in the sky while I am on duty and I will have to take its lifeless body back and explain what happened on my watch.

Anyhoo, this is not a post about facing fears, but I just wanted to let y'all know that I did face some Friday in the form of Willow the Chinchilla.

Willow was a real cutie pie and we made a great pair. He did all the right things at the right time and none of the wrong ones at the right time. (No pooping on me, no escaping, and Thank You, Jesus, no dying on my watch! )

The kids had a great time and so did I! They were such good listeners and it really fed the teacher side of me to do this. I think that I did a great job of imparting chinchilla facts in an engaging manner. The pictures look like I did the whole presentation with my eyes closed, but I promise, I was awake and entertaining!

Just look at the passion on my face as I explain the bathing habits of the chinchilla:

We had only one small glitch: Right in the middle of my presentation, the school had a FIRE DRILL. Let me tell you, my training as a teacher certainly kicked in then. I hopped up and we all marched out of that building as fast as we could (in a safe and orderly manner, mind you!) It was a good thing for Willow that this was only a drill since I totally left his chinchilla self in the library in his cage. Had this been a real fire, #3 on the Fear List would have taken place and it would not have been pretty.

Thankfully, it was only a drill, so Willow lives to take dirt baths another day. Yep, that's what chinchillas do, they take dirt baths. (remember, I know a lot about these guys?)

After school, I was driving the boys to swim team and I overheard Jonathan say something to Caleb about the little doggy thing that I brought to school today to show his classmates.

I could not believe my ears! DOGGY Thing? Oh Jonathan, where did I go wrong???

Oh well, Maybe somebody else's kid learned something.

Here's one of me, Jonathan and "the doggy thingy"