Part 1 (scroll down for Part 2)
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!
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.