One day on the walk home from school my son's 7-year-old buddy said, "Miss Mary -- WHY do people call animals 'creatures'? I just think that's so rude. I think it's mean to animals to call them creatures." I wasn't quite sure where this thought had come from. Up until that point the boys had been chatting about antics on the playground and a fort they were building in the bushes behind our condo. But he was intense with his delivery and I had a sense that somehow this topic mattered.