Last weekend, My Partner and I took Kit to a party. When I arrived, fresh from the chiropractor, we met the entertainment: A Mechanical Bull. I suspect that mechanical bulls are a chiropractor’s wealth creation scheme. That no chiropractors attended, let alone rode The Bull, only reinforced my suspicion.
I was encouraged to have a go. After all it was surrounded by a crash pad, and could be stopped remotely at any time. I would have felt more at ease if it could have been stopped by me at any time! Nevertheless, I threw caution to the wind (along with any hope of being able to tie my own shoe laces in future), and clamoured on.
It felt slightly less stable than riding a surf board while sitting on a giant stick of butter.
My Partner immediately took out his phone… just in time to film my leisurely and dignified dismount. He and Kit persuaded me to try again so they would have a video for posterity to laugh at. [Kit says, “For everybody to laugh at, not just Posterity.”] I complied with this request by being videoed sliding off sideways.
Then My Partner had a go. He appeared to be mediating a violent disagreement between his limbs and his body about whether they wished to continue their association. Fortunately, they did.
Afterwards, Kit regaled His Father with the story of visiting my family in Wellington and riding a real sheep.
Only True Adventurers visit Wild Wellington, where the winds are so strong they blow the freckles off your face, and your ice-cream off the cone. Not that any sensible person would eat ice-cream in the climate produced by New Zealand’s capital city. Being neither sensible nor a person, Kit found out the hard way just how strong the wind was. I took him inside to eat his replacement ice-cream.
As he had heard that there are 20 sheep for every person in New Zealand, Kit was convinced that they would be gambolling down every street, and plodding through shopping centres, ejecting steaming piles of poo. He surveyed his surroundings in disbelief as he saw person after person, with neither a sheep nor a poo in sight.
At long last, we did meet a sheep, and he went for a ride. By Kit’s estimation his efforts were fit to rival someone juggling puppies whilst riding a unicycle along a tightrope over crocodile infested waters.
At the very least, he is certain that his skill riding a taxidermied rocking sheep was more impressive than mine on The Mechanical Bull. Sadly, he is probably right. At least I can still tie my own shoe laces.
“My favourite animal is the Sumatran Orang-utan. It is pronounced, ‘Orange-utan’. They are called that because they have orange hair. I think it is amazing that the word for orange in Indonesian is almost the same as it is in English.”
Last weekend, I took Kit to the zoo. He is so small that we usually only see part of it. Or rather, he sees part of it, and I see a lot of the back of him disappearing into places he isn’t supposed to go.
We find that all the misbehaving wears him out by lunchtime; it also makes him ravenous, so a picnic lunch is essential. Otherwise, he has an embarrassing tendency to start digging for snacks (grubs) in the lawn.
With emergency snacks (not grubs) on hand, we made our way to the tree kangaroos. One had a joey, and Kit was delighted. “You see?” he squeaked delightedly.
“I am supposed to go in the pouch!” he said, referring to the water bottle pocket in my backpack.
“But don’t you have one built in?” he asked, disappearing up my jumper.
After much pinching and squeezing of my muffin top, at length his muffled voice was heard.
“Apparently not,” he said, “But if you get a bit fatter, I’m sure we can work something out. Here, have a biscuit!”
Next, we visited the reptile house, where Kit said that ‘Common’, ‘Death’ and ‘Adder’ were words he was not altogether comfortable hearing in the same sentence, just exactly how common are they, and should he be checking under the bed?
I assured him there are no snakes in our third floor apartment because how would they get up there? Just before he noticed the conspicuously tree-dwelling Olive Pythons and their even more conspicuous climbing competency, I hurried him off to the African Savannah, where he found the baboons quite riveting.
“Why do they all have sore bums?” he asked, “Do the keepers spank them?”
“No! Their bums always look like that,” I explained.
“Well, if my bum looked like that, I can assure you, it would be sore!” Kit said suspiciously. Incredibly, we reached the end of the Savannah without incident (although Kit did give a Baboon Keeper a very Penetrating Stare). At the exit, he requested a visit to The Australian Wetlands.
Kit often says he is fond of birds. I’m not sure that terrorising a creature by running at it screaming like a banshee indicates a fondest for the animal, but there you are.
As most of the birds there reside in the trees or the water, Kit had little opportunity to chase them down the boardwalk. He was bitterly disappointed, so I put him atop the wooden fence for a better view of the pond.
It soon became apparent that his view was less than ideal from my perspective, for he suddenly let out a horrified squeak.
“Mum! That poor duck is dying. His guts are hanging out all over the place!”
[The author apologises to all the readers who are Docents at Perth Zoo, for whom this cliff-hanger is a dismal failure.]
Part 2
My heart sank; I knew exactly what was going on. But Kit didn’t. I would have to tell him something convincing because he is not silly.
“Oh bugger!” I thought, “I’m not a Thick Quinker.” That is what happens when I am obliged to think on my feet. All kinds of effluent leaks out!
What Kit was astutely observing has been regularly and wrongly attributed to injured ducks having their intestines hanging out.
Given that the males of most bird species do not have a penis, when duck species diverged, Eve O’Lution* must have been drunk. In an (extravagantly ludicrous) exception to this rule, the Blue Billed Duck has managed to attain proportionately the longest penis of any vertebrate! Kit’s 20cm duck had his 40cm penis hanging out after a successful mating!
The result of a successful Blue Billed Duck mating: a female duck and duckling, both with brown bills!
In my defense, it was not supposed to be mating season. But, what with climate change, and no one having told the ducks when mating season was, there were some very amorous male water fowl floating about. Or, in some cases, persistently pursuing keenly unenthusiastic female water fowl.
The problem was that we have never told Kit where meerkat kits come from. He is too young to ask.
So, I did what any good parent would do in the circumstances. I fabricated an enormous lie!
(Don’t judge me! When he is ready, I will be the first to tell him the truth. But, in this instance, all he was concerned about was the well-being of a duck, who frankly was very chuffed indeed, and was never likely to be any weller.)
So I said, “Oh, don’t worry about him, Kitten. That’s just his belly button. He has a humungous outie!” while desperately hoping he wouldn’t ask what a belly button actually was.
Kit was so anxious about the health status of the duck that he completely forgot to be cranky with me for calling him ‘Kitten,’ which was nice.
But I wasn’t finished with the subterfuge!
I added, “You see how he is nibbling his belly button? [they preen it before it retracts] It is so long that he uses it to collect algae to eat from the bottom of the pond. Then he just has to eat it off; it’s like a really long spoon!”
I am a simultaneously proud and ashamed that Kit bought the whole lie, got bored and changed the subject.
When he is ready for sex-ed, I will be sure to fill you in. He is growing up fast. Watch this space!
*A less commonly known name for Mother Nature, being less commonly known because I only just made it up.
One autumn weekend, several years ago, the forecast was for fine weather, so I optimistically washed virtually everything in the apartment and put it on the balcony to dry. Some of it objected vociferously and bit me; I told Kit it was a splendid opportunity for his fur to air dry.
Kit has invented and perfected the art of Sulking Loudly, which he promptly commenced. It involves ignoring everything you say, whilst talking contemptuously about you but never to you, whilst ensuring you are in earshot, like so:
“My Mum is trying to kill me! It’s autumn, and she dunks me in the water, and tries to drown me. When that doesn’t work, she puts me outside with wet fur!”
“So, now she’s trying to kill me with New-monia, which is way worse than Old-monia. You get it from having a bath in autumn, and sitting on the balcony with wet fur. If you get it you will definitely die, sometimes twice!”
“It might not be too late for me. If Mum really cares, there’s still time to revive me with the hair-dryer.” He attempted a pathetic cough (and accidentally farted).
A sucker for a marathon guilt trip, I sighed and touched his fur, ready to get out the hair-dryer.
I eyed him with a raised eyebrow. “Kit!” I said incredulously, “Your fur is completely dry.”
“I was testing you,” he said smugly, “But can you please blow dry me next time?”
I laughingly agreed and went inside, while Kit sunbathed on the balcony.
A short time later, I heard rain on the roof. As I rushed, cursing, to the balcony to bring in the washing, I passed Kit rushing inside, alarmed and dripping wet. He turned to me and squeaked, “I don’t know what you did to them, but the neighbours are hosing your washing!”
Although his first birthday was fast approaching, it seemed that the last time it had rained Kit was too young to remember, so we sat down and had a little talk, while the washing got another rinse.
Once I had explained what rain was, Kit asked me if this was caused by climate change.
“…because it never used to rain in Perth. It hasn’t rained in Perth in my whole life, which is a very long time now I’m almost one!”
He added that he didn’t really mind the rain now that he knew what it was, but could I please blow dry him, now, as he could feel a bout of typhoid coming on.
A woman of my word, I blow dried him till he was nice and fluffy, and free of all imagined diseases.
