Cactus Balls

Nathan took the three kids on a hike behind the house to retrieve the sundry of items that had fallen (eh hem... been thrown) over our wall. Namely, we needed to fetch Levi's precious Nalgene water cup that came from "across the ocean" and is irreplaceable here.

Eliana found what looked like a fun little ping-pong ball, but in reality was a cactus ball that appeared harmless, but upon further examination (or grasping), appeared to have hundreds of nearly invisible, hair-like thorns that embedded themselves into poor Eliana's hands and fingers. When she got home, I had the fun task of using tweezers and duct tape to extract the dozens of little pokers. Many of the thorns transferred themselves into my fingers, Nathan's arms and chest (from carrying her home).

Lesson learned... nature doesn't produce any safe ping-pong balls.