A New Level of Potty-Talk

Once upon a time there was a boy named Luke.

One day this boy decided it would be funny to address another child in his primary class as "poop-head." Luke's mother promptly set about remedying this unfortunate choice of words by having the "potty-words talk." Luckily for Luke's mother (and the aforementioned "poop-head" child), Luke listened very closely to this lecture. However, when an unknowing person (or, gasp, even Luke's own mother) should happen to say something as innocuous as, "Please sit on your bottom," they will get a stern rebuke from Luke about their supposed potty-mouth. In fact, every possible potty-word Mommy happened to mention in that lecture is now seared into Luke's brain. He is the resident potty-talk police.

But, that was before he knew about the Dung Beetle.

The Dung Beetle exhibit just opened at the San Diego Zoo. Never mind that it is just a small part of the Elephant Odyssey, which contains huge replicas of pre-historic animals as well as many live elephants. In Luke's mind a dung beetle is like a free pass to use as much potty-talk as you want. I mean, how can mommy object when you're simply telling the facts? Apparently it's the funniest thing in the world to ask people if they know what the word DUNG means? And even funnier when you inform them that there is a beetle that rolls other animal's dung into little balls and EATS it!

To make matters worse, our ZooNews Magazine arrived with an entire article devoted to these lovely little creatures.
I really should have seen this coming, since Halloween is a year-round topic in our house, but after I patiently read Luke the entire article he smiled sweetly and asked, "Mama, will you find me a Dung Beetle costume this year for Halloween? Oh, and I'll need a ball of poop--I mean DUNG--for rolling."

Yeah, I'll be getting right on that.