You will note that this post is not under “nature;” rather food.  I have written before our family does not seem to do well containing themselves around sweets.  My little one is gluten intolerant and when I discovered these peanut butter cups were gluten-free I thought I would get a bag but keep it high in the pantry.  As you can see from the picture, it is a “party bag,” which I had (delusional) visions of lasting for months.  According to the back of the bag, it contains 130 pieces.  In less than three days’ time essentially the entire bag was emptied.  My first worry was that the wolves ate them but they were locked in the pantry.  My five year old could not have possibly gotten to them a) due to the height at which they were placed and b) because of the fact that the pantry was (childproof) locked.  As I stood in the kitchen wondering if perhaps they had spilled, I looked over to find my husband shirtless with my little one rubbing his belly chanting “Buddha Buddha Buddha!”  A very chagrined, slightly red-faced Burk had come downstairs to the laundry looking for a shirt when our little one caught him.  SO many questions swirled through my mind at that point.  First:  how on earth would my American, Christian child know about rubbing Buddha’s round belly?  According to folktales, if a person rubs Buddha’s belly it brings good luck, wealth, and prosperity.  As I stood there goggle-eyed, the nearly empty sack dangling from my hand, my husband asks, “Baby Doll, do I have a paunch?”  Again, so many things swirled around in my head.  The first was that I still have not lost all the weight I gained during pregnancy and our child is now five.  He has never failed to tell me I look great even though I know I do not.  As our progeny continued her circular rubbing and chanting over his smooth, rounded stomach I immediately said, “NO!”  I did not wish to be unkind; nor did I wish to be untruthful.  So I added, “Do you know what happened to all the peanut butter cups?” and I could see him considering denial.  After a hesitant pause he defensively replied, “Well I left four.”  Good Lord the man took down an entire humongous bag of peanut butter cups in just days; ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-SIX of them!  That may be a record even for him.  The Irish novelist Elizabeth Bowen said, “No object is mysterious.  The mystery is your eye.”  The bag was not unexplainably empty; my husband’s stomach was the receptacle.  And thus, my friends, solves the mystery of our Buddha and butter cups.