Feral Children

I just watched the latest episode of Fringe (it's like the X-Files, but with that dude from Lord of the Rings), which featured a creepy bald kid psychic kid they found in a basement. "Inner Child" is the name of the episode, btw. In case you were wondering if that was meant to be a picture of my inner child, who actually looks like this.

In the "recap of the episode's influences" section (you know, the part where some smart type explains the historical precedent for the weirdness at hand) they mentioned several famous "feral children" of history, which reminded me of a book I had on the same subject that scared the crap out of me when I was younger.

In particular, there was a story about a girl from the pioneering days who was found in the woods and taken in by a young couple who had just lost their own child. Of course they tried to civilize her and make her wear dresses and what not. But when she heard wolves howling in the woods at night she would go crazy and try to get out of the house, so eventually they had to tie her up in the barn in order to get some sleep. And eventually, some people came to the house and found the young couple dead and chewed on and the girl nowhere to be found... but no one could say if the wolves had rescued her, or if she had escaped...

I was going to say I'd like to find that book again and see if it's really as frightening as I recall, but just typing that story creeped me out, so perhaps I'll let the book rest in whatever hole it crawled away to. Anyhoodle, the point is, I am easily disturbed by children behaving in creepy, non-childish ways (The Ring pretty much left me unable to sleep for my entire sophomore year of college). 

And speaking of feral children, we're going to have a house full of them tomorrow (twice as many as usual), and a schedule which includes two birthdays, egg dying, the music lady, and a special project with one of the parents.

So, if you happen to stop by later and find Linda and I half-eaten, the children did it.