Meerkat Kit

Australia is currently in the grip of a record-breaking heat wave. It’s all over the news, like sunburn on an English tourist at Bondi.

Kit asked, “Why do people always complain about the heat?”

 “The weather’s heating up due to climate change, and we’re not used to it,” I replied.

“Well, neither is any other species! But you don’t hear us carping on about it,” Kit objected.

“Yes, well, in our defense,” I began, with absolutely no defense in mind, but thinking at the speed that bad news travels (which is Very Fast Indeed), “You carp on the other nine months of the year about how freezing cold it is when it drops below 25°C.”

“Well, so do you!” Kit huffed, making the kind of noise that an ear, nose and throat specialist would hear on a regular basis.

“True, but normal people feel the heat more than meerkats; I’m not often accused of being normal.”

“Why?” he asked.

Kit is pretty much grown up, now that he knows where meerkat kits come from, so I gave him the scientific explanation:

“Humans are a lot larger than meerkats, and the larger the animal, the more heat we retain. It’s all about thermoregulation. In fact, I wrote about this in my Master’s Thesis,” I explained, going on excitedly, “Bergmann’s Rule, states that similar animals in hotter areas tend to be smaller. This is because the surface area to mass ratio is inversely proportional to the size of the object. This means that when the weather heats up, larger animals stay hotter for longer. ”

In my element, I explained the finer points of the theory, and drew a diagram for Kit. I was most excited to have someone, who was genuinely interested, to share this with. Maybe Kit would grow up to be a scientist. He could discover something incredible, like the gene for correct grammar, and nobody would ever need to go without proper punctuation and syntax ever again! I broke from my reverie to talk Kit through my (if I may say so) incredibly informative and engaging diagram.

He was nowhere to be seen.

“Kit!” I called, “Don’t ask a question and then walk away.”

 “Oh, sorry,” he called from the next room, where I found him cramming beetles into some sort of sack, “I actually meant, why aren’t you often accused of being normal? But, now that I think about it, the answer’s obvious.”

Kit neglected to elaborate on my obvious abnormalities, and continued, “You were enjoying yourself so much that I didn’t like to interrupt. I stopped listening after, ‘Similar species of animals in hotter areas tend to be smaller.’ That’s wrong, by the way. All the bugs are bigger where it’s hotter.* So, I snuck out to see how many bugs I could fit in my pillow case. Twenty-seven, in case you’re interested. Although, it’s possible I could fit a few more; I ran out of bugs. Can we please go and catch some?”

“Sure,” I agreed, grudgingly, “Why not?”

Kit may not be interested in thermoregulation, but he did collect enough bugs to test his theory that he could fit at least 30 beetles and a praying mantis into his pillow case. I suspect you will be more pleased than I was to know that he succeeded!

*The author would like it noted that Bergmann’s Rule is typically applied only to endothermic (‘warm blooded’) animals. Not ‘bugs.’ In addition, the author would like it noted that she couldn’t be bothered explaining this to Kit. Best to let him have his little wins.

The last time I got my hair cut, Kit complimented me like only Kit can. He said, “I like your hair. It looks like a big, fluffy haystack.”

The sad thing is that, for once in his life, he wasn’t being deliberately rude. Apparently, to his fuzzy little mind, a haystack is an appropriate article with which to adorn one’s head.

“It’s actually a kind of bob cut,” I explained.

Kit looked pensive. “Why do people always try to get their hair cut so that they look like a different animal?” he asked.

“What makes you say that?” I asked, bemused.

“You just said you got your hair cut like a bobcat,” he replied.

“No, I said it’s a bob cut,” I explained.

“I know! You just said that; you got a bobcat haircut.”

“No, I said bob cut. Cut, like a knife,”

“Oh, right. It’s not my fault you sound like a farmhand from the backwaters of New Zealand,” he declared.

“But anyway, there’s still lots of other animal names for haircuts,” he went on, “There’s mullets and beehives, and rat tails. And Donald Trump looks like he has an albino bandicoot glued to his forehead. You can’t tell me that’s an accident! Are you all embarrassed about how you look, naturally? Is that why you wear clothes, too? I’ve seen all those animal onesie pyjamas.”

“Now, hold on a minute,” I said sternly, “We wear clothes to keep warm. We happen to think we look pretty good.”

“Oh,” he said.

“Are you sure?” he added.

“Quite sure.”

“But what about the names?”

“That’s just a coincidence. There are lots of others, like crew cut, short back and sides, undercut…If I wanted to look like a different animal, I wouldn’t be doing it with a haircut. Most people don’t want to look like another animal for very long; maybe just for one night, like a Halloween Party. And we usually wear a wig or something. If we got our hair cut, we would be stuck looking like that animal until it grew out. Not many people want to look like that all the time.”

According to Kit that point of view is entirely species-ist and wildly offensive. Why wouldn’t we want to look like a better, more attractive animal, like say, a meerkat? It would be an improvement on our ugly bald skin and hair like a hay stack!

Apparently, I had misinterpreted his opening remark. It turns out he was being deliberately rude after all.

During the Christmas break, Kit and I went for regular walks along the Swan River near our apartment. Or, more accurately, I walked, and Kit came along for the ride in my bag like a pampered tiny dog. Except that my bag is not designer. I don’t think it even was designed. It is a backpack of a certain age that has more or less evolved. And Kit doesn’t have a diamante studded collar. And he certainly doesn’t have one of those preposterous toy poodle hair-dos that look like The Revenge of the Topiary-loving Gardener. But, I can assure you, that if he wanted a topiary hair-do or any of those other things, he would probably get them, so he is definitely pampered.

One day we were approached by a woman watching cockatoos. She excitedly pointed out a bird that didn’t look quite like the rest of its flock. She was certain it was a hybrid between a galah and a corella. I squinted myopically over a fence, from a number of metres away (quite a large number of metres). It certainly looked like it might be a hybrid. But then again, from that distance, if she had suggested that it was a ferret dancing the highland fling, I would have been inclined to believe her.

When we walked on Kit asked, “What’s a hybrid? Is it a kind of bird that flies really high? And are there lowbrids, like those ones that just wander around in the swamp, and never get off the ground?”

“A hybrid is a cross between one animal and another- two different species,” I explained.

“How does that work?” he asked, “Did someone chop them up like Frankenstein’s monster?”

“No!” I laughed, “You know that talk we had about the birds and the bees? Well, it’s like if a bird did it with a bee, and they ended up having a baby that was half bird and half bee.”

“But that’s bestiality,” Kit gasped, appalled.

I said nothing, wondering how on earth to address that declaration.

“That’s immoral,” he asserted.

“Well, it’s not quite like that,” I went on, “Actually a bird and a bee couldn’t have a baby; they are too different. It only works with very similar species.”

“But you just said….”

“I know, and I’m regretting it already. I was generalizing.”

“Oh,” he said.

“It would be good if you didn’t,” he added.

“Sorry. I’ll do my best.”

“That would be good.”

“Anyway, that means Eric the Half a Bee in the Monty Python sketch couldn’t actually be half bird?” he queried.

“I’m afraid not,” I confirmed.

“Well, it sounded a lot more interesting in the beginning when you said he could be, so I’m going to do a drawing of Eric the Half a Bee Half a Bird,” Kit decided. Below is his offering.

Several months ago while I was elbow deep in dishwater, Kit experienced a fit of inspiration. You might prefer not to compare having an idea to suffering a seizure. Just remember, I didn’t say it was a good idea. He asked why we don’t just buy take aways every night, and throw the dishes away. Then I would have more time to play with him.

So we had a talk about throwing away rubbish. “Where do you think ‘away’ is, Kit?” I asked.

“At the rubbish dump, like you told me,” he answered.

“And what about when we run out of room at the rubbish dump?” I probed.

“Wait! I know this one…it’s a story from The Bible,” he mused.

“I’m pretty sure it isn’t,” I muttered.

“When there was no room at the dump, the baby Jesus had to get born in a barn!” he squeaked triumphantly.

“Anyway, he didn’t want to get born in a dump like a piece of rubbish…but now that I think about it, there might have been ‘no room at the hotel.’ That would be right. Hotels are always booked out at Christmas time.” I left the logic of that alone.

“I just meant that we are running out of room for new rubbish dumps,” I explained, “Away from us is always going to be near someone else. The population keeps getting bigger, we make more and more rubbish, and it is getting everywhere. We need to reduce, reuse and recycle more.”

Kit made his excuses and went to play. I though he hadn’t been paying attention. Until a few months later when I took him to an op shop for the first time.

Kit thought it was brilliant how they were selling used things so cheaply. “It’s much better than wasting stuff,” he squeaked. “It is good for the envirolment. Otherwise people put things in their rubbish bins, and then the people in orange shirts come and put it all in a smelly truck. And then they drive, and dump it at the dump. If they keep doing that, the dumps will get bigger and bigger, until they all join up, and the whole world is a dump, like Mandurah!”

“Kit!” I said, “You’ve never even been to Mandurah.”

“I know but I hear things,” he said mysteriously.

“I’ve been thinking about Christmas,” he added, “We made a whole lot of rubbish last year. So I thought maybe we could reuse our rubbish by making Christmas decorations out of it. You know, for the tree.”

Envisaging angels made out of toilet rolls and baubles fashioned from foil and ribbon, I agreed. I left him to it, saying what a great idea it was. I now regret that last bit.

A few weeks ago, I asked Kit if he would like to go to King’s Park.

“No way!” he answered adamantly.

“Kit!” I chided, “Don’t be rude.”

“No way, thank you,” he amended.

“Why don’t you want to go?” I probed.

“Bees,” he said.

A few years ago, Kit, my friend Emily and I went for a walk in King’s Park. As far as Kit is concerned, his abusive mother took him there for the Sole Purpose of getting stung by a bee, and Emily was an accessory to a Bee Stinging. We all wanted to go for a walk and to see the wild flowers. So off we went, Kit travelling in the meerkat pouch in my backpack.

There are some really amazing species in WA. According to MS Word, we saw a lot of boobs, which are actually boabs, or baobabs. They are those trees that look like I do by the end of the Christmas season (somewhat overstuffed). We also saw a lot of kangaroo paws, flowers which I had never seen before. For Kit’s benefit, I pretended they were called meerkat paws. He was chuffed, even if he didn’t quite believe me.

It was a very hot day and we ended up walking much further than we meant to along a special magic path; it went uphill all the way there and uphill all the way back! When Kit asked to stop and play in the flowers, I gladly put him down at the edge of a flower bed and he went nuts climbing plants and digging little holes. Little did I know, he was also playing with bees, who apparently didn’t want to be buried alive.

The bee that stung Kit was having so much fun that it decided disembowelling itself would be preferable. Like a zom-bee, it dug itself out of its grave, and plunged its stinger into the paw of its captor. Kit screeched like a banshee and insisted that he had been bitten by a snake, despite the fact that there were no snakes to be seen. We realised what had happened, scraped out the stinger, and rushed him back to the car.

By the time we got there my shoes contained more sand than feet, and it felt as though Kit had gained about five kilograms. He was very brave, and spent the trip home propped up with his paw in the cold water in my water bottle.

Later, when he was feeling better, we had a chat about bees. He already knew that they are very important for pollinating our food supply. But it seems I had neglected to mention that they can sting you.

“You mean you took me to the park in Bee Season, and you knew that bees can sting you, and you didn’t even tell me?!” he squeaked, and stomped off to sulk.

I guess that explains his snakebite claim.

At the crack of dawn on Tuesday, Kit woke me up squeaking with excitement, singing, “Happy birthday to me! Hehehe! Whadidyaget me?!” It was his fourth birthday. So we had a special breakfast (by ‘special’ I mean two hours earlier than usual), and he unwrapped his presents. Then things got interesting.

Kit asked, “So what are birthdays, anyway? Why does everyone have a different one?”

I explained that it’s the day you were born, and different people and animals were born on different days.

Then he wanted to know, if he was born on a Wednesday, why he can’t have a birthday with presents every Wednesday instead of only one a year. (I pacified him by reminding him that we have dessert once a week, and that is like a special celebration.)

Then he asked if plants have birthdays too, and I said I didn’t think so because they weren’t exactly born like animals.

“What’s ‘born’ mean, anyway?” he asked.

“It’s when you came to be on earth,” I said vaguely.

“But where was I before? Was I like an alien?” He sounded excited.

“Um, no. But you didn’t quite exist.” His face fell.

“But where did I come from?”

“Weeeelllll…you started off planted like a seed in your mummy’s tummy”.

“But that would make me a plant, and I am not a plant! I am an animal”. He was a bit indignant.

“Well, it’s more like an egg than a seed, I suppose,” I clarified.

“But that would make me a chicken! And I am a meerkat! Meerkats don’t lay eggs. We eat eggs!”

“Well, they don’t lay eggs, no. The egg stays inside your mummy until it grows into you.”

“But how did I get in there? Did she eat eggs, and then one turned into me?” he was genuinely baffled, “And if I grew in there, then how did I get out? Did she barf me out?”

“Kit,” I said gently, “You’d better sit down.”

So I explained, as he sat wide-eyed and fascinated.

When I finished, he was quiet for a bit.

Finally he spoke.

“Bloody hell!” he said.