Category: Kit’s Photos

It was a dark and stormy night about last Wednesday when Kit came to me with concern etched into his tiny face.

“Mum,” he squeaked, “I’m worried about the trees.”

“What trees?” I asked.

“All those green things outside the window!” he exclaimed, “Surely you’ve noticed them out in the storm! Animals can go in a burrow or a den. And birds just go on summer holidays to Bali. But the trees are stuck in the mud. In a storm. In the nude! And there are bits of broken branches everywhere. That’s like tree arms and legs.”

So, I patiently explained about evolution, how trees have evolved to deal with storms, and how they can grow new branches. “That’s like you or me growing new arms and legs!”

When he said, “Wow! But it must still hurt,” I said that trees don’t feel pain.

And he said, “But how do you know?”

And I said, “I don’t know,”

And he said, “Then why did you say that?”

So I said, “It is widely accepted.”

Then he said, “Where does it say that on Google?”

And it was about then that ‘we’ decided to help the trees.

I had to prove I was serious, “And not just waiting, and hoping I’ll forget about it,” said Kit.

So, I sighed inwardly, wrapped us up in most of our clothing and a bit of somebody else’s, and we embarked on a Perilous Expedition. As we set off into the driving rain, Kit immediately directed me to the local play area, where he was certain he had seen a tree in need. By the time he had persuaded me to bandage a branch onto a grass tree (they don’t have branches, by the way), I was certain that his true motive was not to minister to trees but to be allowed to play on the swings after dark. He vindicated my suspicion by asking to play on the swings.

Kit was to later refer to our ‘Perilous Exhibition,’ and after bandaging bits of a tree to another tree in a storm, in front of several dedicated, sideways-glancing dog-walkers, I actually prefer his terminology.

While I was pushing him on a swing, Kit asked, “Do you think the trees might be cold? Should we put some blankets on them?”

Not wishing to look like an idiot twice in one evening, I told him that trees are cold-blooded; a gamble that possibly didn’t pay off. When Kit grows up, I’m going to have a lot of explaining to do, but at least I managed to talk him out of the blankets.

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.

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.

My Partner and I recently took Kit to his first music concert. It was held at Edith Cowan University, and Kit went around boasting to any person who would listen (and even a few who wouldn’t), that His Dad got tickets from the Illuminati Association. Or was that the Aluminium Association? Anyway, it was a very long and impressive word, and Kit was very proud indeed that he had almost learned it!

The concert consisted of a number of different bands playing covers. Kit chatted excitedly, giving a Very Amusing Commentary, much like I don’t during movies (according to My Partner).

When they played Blame it on the Boogie, Kit sang along enthusiastically. Except that he didn’t sing, “Blame it on the boogie.” In Kit’s universe, the song consisted of screeching, “Blame it on the booger,” while thrusting one claw up his nostril. Once we cleared that up, he stopped picking his nose and had a good old boogie.

Personally, I have other issues with this particular song. I have always thought that Michael Jackson singing, “I just can’t control my feet,” was a bit disingenuous. Frankly, if the man who invented the moonwalk felt he had lost control of his extremities, where did that leave the rest of us on the dance floor? Kit thinks that when I dance, people are less likely to call me a good dancer than they are to call me an ambulance!

Later, a brass band came on stage. Suddenly, Kit’s muffled voice came from halfway up my trouser-leg (out the bottom of which his rear end was still poking), “Why don’t they keep that Yellephant in an enclosure?!”

After some intensive probing (of the questioning, not abducted-by-aliens style),  it became apparent that, when I had read him the story, “Horton the Elephant,” he thought I was saying, “Horton Th’ Yellephant.” Moreover, we once took him to the zoo, where he saw Putramas, the elephant, trumpeting loudly. He thought that they were called ‘yellephants’ because of all their loud vocalising!

As a result, when Kit looked at the stage, he saw not a saxophonist playing a solo, but a  Yellephant with a trunk, thrashing around on stage, menacingly stomping its feet (albeit in time to the music), and bellowing like a train at a signal crossing. He was terribly concerned that we were about to be caught in a Brass Band Stampede.

I assured Kit of the safety of his person, and pointed out the emergency evacuation route (just in case I was wrong).  He then settled back happily to enjoy the rest of the concert, secure in the knowledge that the beast on stage was not a Fierce Yellephant, but in fact a human with a gigantic brass nose adornment.