Long ago and far away (about last Tuesday in an imaginary world in the middle of the living room), First Aid Kit lived at the edge of the Preposterous Forest with his pet Tyrant-osaurus Rex, Tiddles. While Kit lived in a large burrow, Tiddles preferred to accommodate his substantial bulk in a purpose-built barn. The problem was that the barn was built to accommodate Tiddles at his previous size. Tiddles was a teenaged T-Rex, and he was growing like a mushroom in manure.
One day a little bird told Kit about a disused aircraft hangar on the other side of the forest. It sounded like the perfect abode for Tiddles, so they decided to move house. One morning, they packed up their things, and set off into the forest. Tiddles wore his muzzle, as he always did in public. Although he was well-trained and perfectly harmless, in Kit’s experience the muzzle discouraged passers-by from calling the police, his Mum or their local member of parliament (but not the media or all of their friends).
As they trekked through the trees, they heard a cry for help. At the edge of a deep river, they saw a young woman struggling in the current. As she tried to swim ashore, a large crocodile was taking considerable interest in her presence. First Aid Kit grabbed the first heavy object he saw, and threw it at the crocodile. It was a saucepan from his luggage.
It is a well-known fact that crocodiles will try to eat anything that moves if they are hungry. So, when the crocodile tried to eat the saucepan, Kit and Tiddles threw the rest of their saucepans and cutlery into the river. The crocodile tried to eat it, but all the metal blunted its teeth, so it became completely harmless. The damsel-in-this-dress managed to swim to shore while the crocodile was busy annihilating its dentition.
Kit and Tiddles didn’t mourn the loss of their utensils, nor did the crocodile miss its teeth. Kit and Tiddles were tired of carrying everything; besides, it is never hard to find cutlery at a garage sale. After all, this is where all office cutlery ever purchased ends up eventually! And the crocodile was going to grow some new teeth pretty soon anyway; crocodiles average 50 full sets of teeth in their lifetimes. As they only need to eat every week or so, this crocodile was only going to miss a couple of meals before he had a full new set of pearly off-whites.
The damsel introduced herself as Bahati (which means ‘Lucky’ in Swahili). She explained that she had been hiking when she had become separated from her friends after going off track for a tinkle. Kit blushed. Bahati had been trying to find a safe place to cross the river, when she had slipped in the mud and fallen in. She was so grateful to Kit for saving her life that she got him to write down his new address, so she could send him some replacement saucepans.
Part 2
After consulting her map, GPS unit, and compass Bahati established that, if she was going to get back to her car at the end of the road, she needed to go in a different direction to Kit and Tiddles. So, after promising to track each other down on Facebook as soon as they were back in phone range, they went their separate ways.
It was late in the evening when Kit and Tiddles decided to make camp for the night. Kit found a big tree for Tiddles to shelter under, and then dug himself a shallow burrow into the fallen leaves. They had a broken night’s sleep punctuated by falling leaves screaming, “Wheeee!” and “Ow!”
At first light, Kit went and fought some breakfast. Once he had had his fill of fire ants, they went on their way. (Tiddles had already eaten several small trees he found growing nearby. He was a vegetarian T-Rex; this was possible in the Preposterous Forest due to a preponderance of meat trees, which grew in the area.)
A few hours later, they came to a swamp. As they gingerly waded through, they heard another cry for help. First Aid Kit went into immediate action and located the source of the distress call.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” he muttered (having become remarkably grown up for the purposes of the story). The victim was none other than Bahati, having wandered into a patch of quicksand and got stuck. Kit tied a vine to Tiddles ankle and threw the other end to Bahati, who was soon dragged out, missing only one boot and most of her pride.
“My GPS won’t work properly because all the clouds are obscuring the satellites. So I got lost,” she explained.
“Well you don’t need obscure stalactites with First Aid Kit around,” Kit said proudly, “Tiddles here is tall enough to see over most of the trees when he stands on his tippy toes (Tiddles obligingly stood on his tippy toes). “In fact he says your car is just over there,” Kit gestured on behalf of Tiddles, who couldn’t for obvious reasons. Kit insisted on accompanying Bahati to her car, just in case she planned on tripping over and drowning in a puddle.
After leaving Bahati safely in her car, it wasn’t long before Kit and Tiddles came across the aircraft hangar. It stood near a beautiful blue lake surrounded by meat trees. It was perfect. The prevailing winds even blew away from Kit’s burrow site, which is a good thing when you are surrounded by meat trees in the summer sun. They happily unpacked and settled in.
Several weeks later a courier pigeon arrived with a delivery slip from the Forest Post. At his third closest Post outlet, waiting for Kit was a brand new set of shiny saucepans.
I seldom read Kit fairy tales. He feels that they perpetuate unfair gender stereotypes. Although sometimes he wants to run around with a sword, slaying fire-breathing dragons (chasing chip-thieving seagulls with a large butter knife), other times he just wants to wear a pretty dress. So, I was a little surprised when he asked me, “Why is it, “Once upon a time?” And not, “Once underneath a time? And why do the ladies never get to sword fight?”
“Yes, quite!” I agreed, “Far too many damsels in distress.”
“Yes, I suppose a big fluffy dress would get in the way, and trip you up in a sword fight,” he said pensively.
Suddenly looking excited, he asked “Can I be in a fairy tale?”
Envisaging a living room full of dismantled furniture ‘castles’ and other trip hazards, I cunningly suggested, “How about you be Rip Van Winkle or Sleeping Beauty?”
“They never even got out of bed,” Kit objected, deftly exposing my true intentions. “I want to fight a dragon or something!”
“That’s what I was afraid of,” I said.
“Well, you might be afraid of dragons, but I’m not,” he said, proudly, fortunately misunderstanding me.
“There’s a Komodo Dragon at the zoo,” I told him, “He’s bigger than a dog, and poisonous. You’re not allowed to fight him, though.”
“What does he eat?” Kit asked tremulously.
“Oh, meerkats, I expect,” I replied nonchalantly.
At that point Kit, most unconvincingly, feigned disappointment that he was not allowed to fight the Komodo Dragon.
“If dragons are that fierce, I think it would be best to have one on my side. Maybe I could ride one,” he suggested, “How about a pet dragon? No, even better. How about a pet Tyrant-osaurus?” he offered, “We could fight the baddies.”
“I think you fancy yourself as a superhero, not a fairy tale hero,” I said, smiling.
“I do not fancy myself!” he objected, offended, “Anyway, it’s my fairy-tale. I can write it how I want. I don’t want it to be the same as anyone else’s.”
“I think we can assume that the chances of that are very slim,” I quipped, “So we have the characters, the hero, and his side-kick the Tryant-osauraus. What are your names going to be?”
“I wouldn’t go kicking a T-Rex in the side if I were you,” he said, “If we’re going around saving people, I should be called First Aid Kit, like you called me that time I was a tree doctor.”
“Perfect!”
“And if my T-Rex is a pet, I think a good name for him is Tiddles.”
“Do you?!”
“Yes.”
So that was that.
Tune in next time for The Adventures of First Aid Kit and Tiddles T-Rex.
Oil a 22 cm round cake tin. Accidentally spill 1 Tbsp oil onto the counter. Set aside spilled oil for Step 5.
Confidently attempt to lift a bag of sugar that weighs more than you do. Teeter under its weight. Lose your balance, topple over and spill 1 cup of sugar on the counter. Retain for Step 6.
Step in spilled oil. Skate around kitchen counter on oily paws shouting, “Wheeeee!” Crash into wall. Fall down.
Scrape 1 cup of sugar off counter. In a large bowl, beat the oil and sugar. Realise that you misunderstood the recipe, and climb out of the large bowl. Ask your Most Responsible Parent (hereafter MoRP) to help you hold the beater so you don’t fall in.
Spend ten minutes trying to determine how to peel a raw egg. Give up and enlist help of your MoRP. Lick remaining egg from shells. Beat eggs into oil and sugar until pale. Ask your MoRP how long it should take for you to become pale. Add the vanilla essence. Proudly measure and pour it in yourself, as it is just the right size for your tiny paws to manage. Remember that you forgot to preheat the oven, and turn it to its highest temperature to save time.
Sift the dry ingredients together. Eagerly lean over bowl to smell dry ingredients. Sneeze enthusiastically into dry ingredients. Pretend that you didn’t.
Get your MoRP to slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients. Supervise them and make helpful suggestions to improve their technique. They will never improve if you don’t tell them how they are doing it wrong! Distract them by pointing at a duck out the window (they love ducks). When you think they aren’t looking, lick the spoon before putting it back into the batter. Notice ants collecting around spilled sugar.
Add the milk, and mix in, then pour the batter into the cake tin. Liberally spill batter onto counter top. Step in batter by mistake. Slip over in batter, and leave paw prints all the way across the kitchen counter as your MoRP marches you to the sink to clean your hind paws.
Incinerate cake by placing it in the oven still on its highest temperature setting.
Go on Facebook for 30 minutes. Step 13 to be completed by your MoRP.
Smell burning. Open oven. Panic. Fetch fire extinguisher. Put out cake. (If you followed the instructions correctly, ideally, it should look like a large lump of damp charcoal.) Turn off oven. Turn off smoke alarm.
Allow cake to cool. Throw cake in compost. Eat the ants instead. Yum!
Immerse yourself in warm bath to wash the batter off your fur.
The other day, when I called Kit for dinner, he didn’t immediately come running like a cat hearing a can opener. I called again. Silence. Thoughts of various calamities came to mind, involuntarily. Had he wandered onto the carport, and been run over? Had he fallen into the bin and accidentally been put out with the rubbish? Or, had he been snatched from the balcony by a short-sighted pelican, mistaking him for a pilchard?
Eventually, a muffled squeaking could be heard from his bedroom. I arrived at his door as he burst through a pile of clothing.
“Phew! Made it,” he squeaked, clearly not referring to his bed.
“Dinner’s ready. Where were you?” I asked, “And why are you wearing your bicycle helmet?”
“I was all the way over there,” he explained, pointing to the other side of the room, barely three metres away. “I think that pile of toys is going to fall soon, so I had to go the long way, around the edge of the room, for occupational health and safety reasons. I had to climb a few obstetricians.”
“Obstacles,” I corrected.
“Yeah them.”
I took in the scene. The room appeared to have been decorated by a wild racoon suffering from claustrophobia.
“It’s time you cleaned up this mess before you get lost and starve to death in here,” I admonished him.
After dinner, we joyfully agreed that Kit would spend the next day cleaning his room. He was surprisingly amenable to my request, if not actually joyful (the aforementioned joy was all me).
The next morning Kit began his titanic task. I supervised and poked around.
“Do you really need to keep this?” I asked him. He examined my proffered artefact.
“No; that’s not mine. It’s just a dead beetle. I think it got lost in here,” he surmised.
“I can imagine,” I agreed.
Eventually, it became apparent Kit had a purpose for cleaning his room, the ultimate goal of which was not having a clean room.
As he disappeared behind a pile of toys, he could be heard muttering, “It’s got to be somewhere.”
“That seems likely,” I remarked, “What exactly are you looking for, the floor?”
“Very funny,” he said, “I left it under this cushion.”
“Left what?” I enquired.
“A jam sandwich,” he replied, “A couple of weeks ago,” he added for clarification.
“Kit!” I chided, “That is disgusting. We’ll get ants. ”
“I hope so,” he said, “Fresh snacks!”
When I told Kit the sandwich was going straight in the bin as soon as he found it, he couldn’t think of any reason to keep cleaning his room. So, I promised a trip to the park with a bowl of sugar as ant bait, if he finished the cleaning. He then zealously cleaned and tidied every last corner. The sandwich turned up under a different cushion. I will eventually get around to cleaning it (the cushion, not the jam sandwich.)
This week, Kit and I decided to read about fierce mammals, or rather, Kit decided, and delegated the reading to me. Our second mammal was the Tasmanian Devil. These small marsupial carnivores are good at running, swimming, climbing trees, fighting, and crushing bones with their teeth. Even birth is fraught with competition and death. Females deliver about 30 young, each the size of a grain of rice. Immediately after birth, they commence an epic struggle to the pouch, where four nipples are located. It doesn’t take a mathematician to deduce that only the strongest survive.
Presumably, if a litter is particularly feeble, none of them make it, as the mother renders no assistance, whatsoever, to any of them. But, perhaps it is not deliberate neglect. If you give birth to something the size of a grain of rice, you could be forgiven for failing to notice. I imagine a Tasmanian Devil, about two weeks after giving birth, suddenly exclaiming “Hey! There’s something wriggling in my pouch! Oh, wait. It appears I’ve had babies. Silly me! I thought it was a tarantula, or something.”
After we had read this, Kit said, “They sound like they might make nice neighbours.”
“Sorry. What?!” I hear you cry. Let me explain.
The first fierce mammal we read about strikes fear into the hearts of men, women, martial arts experts, and every species, native or alien that has ever heard of it (most of which are components of its diet). It can be summarized as a cross between an armoured tank, and The Devil Himself. It has the build of a silverback gorilla, the teeth of a shark, the claws of a sun bear, the stink of a skunk, and the temperament of a ravenous Tasmanian Devil with a dental abscess. We had been learning about…the honey badger!
Kit describes it as follows:
“By weight, a honey badger is 50 percent claws and 75 percent teeth attached to some fur (somebody else’s). It does whatever it feels like, and eats whatever it sees, even you!”
Included in the honey badger’s diet are meerkats! I said to Kit, “To them you’re not Meerkat Kit but a Mere Kitkat!” He glared at me coldly.
Fortunately, the honey badger is the only species in the family, Mellivorinae. Its closest relative is the weasel, which will never admit it. We learned that the males are called boars and the females are sows. The collective noun for a group of honey badgers is a colony. To paraphrase Kit, he hopes that word is seldom employed when referring to honey badgers. I told him that the babies are also called kits. He refuses to believe me. I can’t say I blame him.
Today I played my childhood music box to Kit. He was entranced by the rotating ballerina, and he started pirouetting in time to the music.
“What is she doing?” he asked. I explained that she was a ballerina, doing ballet dancing.
“This is fun! Can I be a ballerina?” he asked, as he twirled around and toppled over.
“If you want to,” I said, helping him up, “But, I don’t think the boys are called ballerinas.”
“Then, I want to make up a new name for boy and girl ballet dancers.” He sat quietly for a bit, deep in thought. “How about ‘ballarat’?” he suggested.
“I’m afraid that name is already taken,” I told him.
“It is not!” he said insistently. “I only just thought of it all by myself.”
“I’m sure you did,” I said, using up a weeks’ worth of calories to keep a straight face. “But it’s still already a word. Ballarat is a town in Victoria.”
“Victoria who?”
“Victoria is a state of Australia. Like Western Australia.”
“But shouldn’t we have Eastern Australia, and Northern Australia, and Southern Australia?” He asked, perplexed.
“That would make more sense,” I said, “But Australia is not a sensible place. Remember, it’s the land of trees that reproduce when you set them on fire, and marsupial animals that carry their babies around in their tummies after they’re born!”
Never having known anything else, he asked, “What’s so strange about that?” and went back to considering names.
After much deliberation, he settled on ‘ballarooney.’ “Because it sounds a bit like ‘balloon,’ and balloons are fun!”
He glanced at me, and quickly added, “As long as you don’t throw them away like litter, because they can hurt birds and animals, when they try to eat them. Remember that time when you tried to catch that balloon in the park to put it in the bin, and you fell in the lake?”
“Yes,” I said, “Indeed I do!” But Kit had lost interest and moved on again.
“If I’m going to be a ballarooney, I need a frilly thing around my waist,” he informed me.
“It’s called a tutu,” I explained.
“And what about a tiara?” His Dad suggested, but Kit misheard him.
“No way!” he said adamantly, “Terriers look at me like I’m a dog biscuit.”
“Usually, only the girls wear tutus.” I said.
“But why?” he asked. “It’s pretty. Can I please wear one? Please?”
“Why not?” I said, and made him a tutu…but it’s a bit tight, more like a one-one. Kit doesn’t care; it makes him feel pretty!
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 posing proudly with his healed tree the next day
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.
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.
