Kit and I were having an argument.
“There is no such thing as a Rusty Spotted Forkbill!” I exclaimed.
“What’s this then?” Kit retorted, dragging a stinking semi-feathered monstrosity from the bowels of a shopping bag.
I peered closely, recoiling at the smell, “It appears to be a dead pigeon…and a fork! I can see the sticky tape on its beak!”
“Don’t be rude,” Kit squeaked indignantly, “He’s an amputee. I was helping him with a new beak.”
Good grief! That meerkat has an answer for everything. Maybe I should send him to law school.
“Well, it looks like being an amputee is the least of his problems,” I observed, “Hey! Isn’t that one of my good cake forks? That’s really unhygienic!” I objected.
“You can wash it,” he suggested.
“Who can wash it?” I asked.
“I will wash it for you, Mum,”
“Thank you,” I said, “But what brought this on?” I asked, “Why do you feel the need to prove to me what you saw?”
“Well, you make up bird species all the time,” he said accusingly, “Like great tits, goatsuckers, and blue-footed boobies; they don’t exist.”
“I’m sorry Kit, but they really do exist. For some reason, lots of bird species have quite preposterous names. I’ll show you some YouTube footage of them. But, what about this Rusty-Spotted Forkbill? You didn’t discover it; you invented it,” I said gently.
“You just don’t want to believe that I could discover anything!” he complained, petulantly stamping his hind paw.
“I would believe it if you told me you discovered a new strain of bacteria in the corner of your bedroom,” I said, trying and failing to lighten the mood.
“You never let me use my imagination anymore,” he complained.
“On the contrary, I would prefer that you did use your imagination,” I argued, “Perhaps you would like to imagine my expensive cutlery attached to the carcass of a pigeon.”
Kit looked so crestfallen that all my anger evaporated.
“Tell you what. How about I get out the coloured pencils and some paper, and you can draw what you saw,” I suggested, “That way you get to use your imagination, and I get to keep rotting corpses out of the house.
So we reached a deal. Kit will no longer bring home long-deceased animals, and I will keep his supply of pencils handy and sharpened (meerkats have trouble with this as they lack opposable thumbs).
Below is what Kit swears he saw on the Swan River, which he now refers to as the Forkbill River.
