I have a wildlife zoo

With their rain boots on, the lively children could hardly wait to get down to the fields!

Parents at the side quickly pulled them back, saying, "Hey, hang on a second, listen to the director about the key points of rice planting!"

Fang Ye smiled and said, "When you're planting rice, remember to do it backwards, and squat down a bit, this way you can save some energy. Pay attention to keeping the distance between the rice plants at about 20 cm."

He stretched out his own palm to check, "Roughly about as wide as my two palms!"

Qian Keke took the lead, her eyes twinkling with excitement, and "haha," she laughed and charged into the water!

"Today I'm going to plant ten rows!"

Once they were in the field, the kids naturally divided up their own areas.

The youngest little ones, who had just started elementary school, stood at the edge of the field ridges, letting their parents hold their hands to slowly explore without toppling headfirst into the mud.

"Hey, Keke, slow down, wait for me!"

Tang Xiaoxin rolled up her shorts a bit higher, grabbed a bundle of seedlings, and stepped into the field with great care on her bare, white feet.

Fearing that she might splash the water too forcefully and dirty her shorts.

Though she knew that after planting rice, her clothes were bound to get dirty, for the moment they were still clean.

Her feet immediately sank into the wet soil, surrounded by the slippery, sticky mud, with cool water swirling between her toes—a truly marvelous feeling surged in her heart!

She stepped in once, then stepped in again!

The water churred "whirrl, whirrl" as her feet stirred it and the mud squelched "squish, squish" under her feet.

This was much more fun than the school's PE class.

Barefoot in the field, even if it would dirty her clothes, this experience was definitely incomparable to wearing rain boots!

The drowsy laziness she initially felt was cleansed away by the cool mud, making her feel a closer connection to the earth and sky.

Father Tang and Mother Tang took a couple of photos of her from the outside—this moment definitely needed to be photographed and remembered.

She held a bundle of seedlings in her left hand, and with her right, she took one out and pressed its roots into the mud.

After planting it, she felt it looked a bit crooked!

She adjusted it slightly.

Although Fang Ye had explained some rice planting techniques to the kids, real proficiency still required practice.

It was the first time for the kids to plant rice, each stalk took them some time as they planted them all askew.

The previously mentioned distance control was soon forgotten after planting a few stalks.

From 20 cm, to 10 cm, 5 cm!

Seeing this, the parents at the side promptly reminded them, and the kids pulled out the seedlings to replant them.

Even Fang Ye, despite having learned a bit by watching videos, wasn't very skilled at it.

He could only say he was a tiny bit better than the kids.

What mattered was the participation! The process was the important part.

"Cuckoo~ Cuckoo~"

A dark grey common cuckoo hid in the woods, tirelessly singing its song.

As Fang Ye planted, he heard the cuckoo's call and said to the kids, "Do you all hear the 'cuckoo cuckoo' of the bird?"

The kids immediately listened intently!

"Hey, that's the sound of my alarm clock!"

"It's the common cuckoo! Hey, is the cuckoo urging us to plant rice?"

"Where is it?"

The common cuckoo is quite well-known in the bird world, thanks to its distinctive call!

However, most people only know its name and sound.

Fang Ye smiled and said, "The common cuckoo is a colloquial name for the cuckoo! It's a widely distributed bird species. It has a gray back, yellow iris eye rings, and yellow claws, and its upper beak is dark gray while the lower beak is yellow. Although its voice is quite loud, it's generally not seen."

He pointed to an animal statue by the rice paddy: "This is the common cuckoo!"

By the rice fields, there are a few statues of common animals one might see around, such as cuckoos, butterflies, earthworms, dragonflies, ladybugs, and so on.

Planting rice is a method, not the goal. Otherwise, why not use machines to plant it?

What's more important is to understand and get close to nature in this process, so I'll talk to the kids about these creatures in the fields and what environmentally friendly agriculture is all about.

The kids looked at the statue of the common cuckoo, and this time they finally knew what it looked like.

Tang Xiaoxin thought of something, "Hey, isn't it said that cuckoos lay their eggs in the nests of other birds?"

Fang Ye said, "Yes! Cuckoos don't have to build their nests or incubate their eggs themselves. Instead, they lay their eggs in the nests of other bird species, letting foster parents nourish their offspring.

Especially by the water and reeds, there is a type of bird called the reed warbler, which is the cuckoo's favorite host.

When reed warblers build their nests, the cuckoos focus on them, waiting for the perfect moment to scare off the warblers incubating their eggs. Then quickly, the cuckoo grabs one of the reed warbler's eggs, lays its own egg, and flies away—all in just a few seconds.

When the reed warbler couple returns, they continue incubating the eggs. The cuckoo's chick hatches first and then pushes the unhatched chicks out of the nest, monopolizing all the food provided by the warbler couple.

The baby cuckoos grow exceptionally fast, within about ten to twenty days they can become much bigger than their foster parents, almost outgrowing the entire nest.

Although cuckoos never see their parents from birth and lead solitary lives as adults, the grown-up female cuckoos all instinctively master this skill."

"Wow! That's so sneaky!"

"That's so mean!"

"It's so cruel!"

The innocent-minded kids were very angry, indignantly expressing their feelings.

Even some parents nearby, after hearing this, were more outraged!

Having children of their own, they found it unbearable to imagine their own kids being pushed out and then having to raise the offspring of the perpetrator. Enjoy new adventures from My Virtual Library Empire

The news occasionally reported events like mistakenly switched lives for twenty years, the real stories behind the film 'Lost and Love', searching for decades to finally find children who were abducted, only to discover that their bond could never be fully restored.

Fang Ye smiled and said, "For animals, our human moral judgments don't apply, and there are no good or bad animals.

This parasitic behavior is simply part of their evolution to better propagate their species, and each animal has its own way of surviving.

In fact, cuckoos are excellent at eating insects all their lives, eliminating pests like the dendrolimus caterpillar and hairy caterpillar larvae that other birds would not dare eat. They are an indispensable part of the ecological network and play a very important role in maintaining the ecological balance."

The children listened, deep in thought.

Their understanding and knowledge of nature deepened a little more!

Tang Xiaoxin curiously asked, "When the cuckoo's chicks grow so big so fast, can't the reed warbler parents recognize them?"

Fang Ye explained, "It's like when we humans see cute children or baby animals acting adorably, our hearts are touched, and we want to give them something to eat, to coddle them – it's an instinct. The begging calls of the chicks and their wide-open mouths are all stimuli to the parent bird's feeding instinct.

"Cuckoos have been improving the camouflage of their eggs which look very similar to those of the reed warblers, and reed warblers themselves are also constantly enhancing their ability to recognize. If the disguise isn't good enough, they might throw out the cuckoo's egg.

"In some areas, as soon as reed warblers spot cuckoos nearby, they will collectively go into alert mode, and if things are not going well, they may even abandon the nest. This is what's called 'co-evolution' in nature."