Iris has taken a sudden interest in the natural world.

During dinner, which was chicken enchiladas, she asked, “How does the chicken make chicken?” That is one way of putting it.

Later, we were outside talking about mammals. Iris was asking for an exhaustive list of every type of mammal. Luckily, we were distracted by a young couple coming out of a nearby apartment building. Iris pointed and shouted, “Those guys! Those guys are mammals!”

Finally, during bath, Iris asked where the water goes after it goes down the drain. I said it probably went to a sewage treatment plant and then into Puget Sound. Then I couldn’t help myself from mentioning that they used to dump raw sewage into Lake Washington, and this made the lake sick. “Where did they take it when it got sick?” Iris asked.