I don’t know if you knew this or not, but the Fairy Folk have designed some very clever devices for spying on humans.  For example, you may have been taught that this is a wildflower called “Jack-in-the-Pulpit”.  It isn’t really.  It’s actually a tiny microphone concealed under a leaf so that the Fairy Folk can listen to our conversations.

And you know those big flat rocks in the creek that tip ever so slightly when you stand on them?  Those are actually scales… You see, the Fairy Folk are gathering all kinds of information about the humans that pass through their territories, including their weight.

Oh!  And spider webs:  The Fairy Folk contract with spiders to use the webs.  After the spider is done using the web to collect food, the Fairies take over and rig the web to send detailed information back to their computers about any human that walks into it.  Oh, do they get upset if a deer walks through the web first and ruins the equipment.

These are the kinds of imaginative games my daughters, Emily and Maddie, and I would play when they were little and we went on “adventures” in the woods.  Now Emily’s a senior in high school.  When we walked the other day, we found some of the white trillium with green in the petals – supposedly caused by an infection.  Emily wondered, “Is it a symbiotic relationships, or does the organism kill the flower?”  What a grown-up question…  I guess my baby isn’t a baby anymore.

Later – down the trail – when we were in the creek, she stood for a while on a teetering flat rock.  “What are you doing?” I asked.  She said, “I must weigh a lot more now than the last time the fairies weighed me.”

Hooray!  My baby will always be my baby.