Trapped!

Fishing season is pretty much over and Joshua has found a new interest to obsess over occupy his time. (Though he does make an occasional trip to the pond with his poles. *grin*)

Now he's into trapping.

He dug a hole in the back corner of our yard and put our cooler in it. He rigged up weights on the lid - which is propped open with a stick, and put a peanut butter sandwich inside. Thought he could catch himself a raccoon with this little trap!
When I found out what he was doing I was reluctant to let it go on. What was he going to do with the raccoon if/when he caught it? Why was he using the cooler? Surely a raccoon would shred the insides with it's claws! What's the point, anyway?
But then I observed him thinking and theorizing about the trap, and I was quite impressed.
*The weights fell off the lid, so he came up with another way to attach them.
*When he checked the trap one morning the sandwich was gone but the lid was still up. So he tried to come up with ways to make sure the lid could be held up, which was also sensitive enough to make sure it was able to be knocked down.
*He was thinking and asking questions and trying new ideas.
And suddenly I realized I didn't really care if the inside of the cooler got scratched up. We hardly ever use it, anyway.

I don't really expect him to trap a raccoon. But I think it is wonderful to see Joshua caught up in thinking, creating, evaluating, and re-working his theories. Ahhhh. Seems he has trapped himself into learning. And he likes it!