If you give a skunk a candy bar

Oct22

My son wants to be a skunk for Halloween. He’s been fascinated with skunks for the past several months. Skunks are cool because they can spray animals and people who attack them, scold them for being naughty, or tell them it is time for bed. Getting sprayed by a skunk is nasty business; the animals that attack skunks, and the people who send them to bed, should learn to cease such provocative behaviors.

Nobody dares try to make this bad boy go to bed when he’s not even tired. That alone makes him the coolest animal in the world. (Image: C.J. Henry/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)

The only creature that could possibly be cooler than a skunk would an animal that carries a BB gun, or maybe one that holds down its adversaries and farts on them. It’s hard to get the better of a skunk. To a four-year-old, constrained by household rules and vulnerable to attack from monsters and other predators, the feisty little polecat is naturally an admirable animal. Skunks take guff from nobody.

The boy has made it clear that he wants his skunk costume to have spraying capabilities. He has discussed this with his mother already. She has provided numerous suggestions about how this effect could be engineered. The only thing she couldn’t tell me was how the skunk costume itself was to be produced. She thought she might leave that one, inconsequential detail to me.

Further to the logistics of a successful trick-or-treat, the boy wants to know who is going to say “Trick-or-Treat” when the neighbors answer their doors on Halloween, because it will not be him. “I’ll ring the doorbell,” he conceded, “but I’m not saying Trick-or-Treat.”

Last year, he went trick-or-treating with his friend. His friend was eager to say “Trick-or-Treat” at every house. This relieved my son of the burden of having to do it, while teaching him a dubious lesson. Now he knows that the kid next to the kid who says “Trick-or-Treat” gets just as much candy without doing any of the work. This is unless you count ringing the bell as work, which it isn’t, because they argued at every house over who got the ring the bell.

Last year it was Batman who wouldn’t say “Trick or Treat.” People gave him candy anyway, probably out of gratitude for his commitment to keeping the citizens safe from crime. That skunk had better start building up the good will pretty quickly.

This Halloween, if you open your door to find a mute, 44-inch-tall skunk standing next to the kid who says “Trick-or-Treat,” there are some things you might consider. First, stand back. We’re not yet sure of the direction in which the costume will spray. Nor can we tell precisely what it will spray. Secondly, don’t insist that this child say “Trick-or-Treat.” He’s a strong-willed skunk with a hair-trigger sprayer. It’s probably best if you don’t even make eye contact.

If you want to teach that little skunk a lesson about being a trick-or-treat freeloader, locate the bespectacled, balding man who is waiting for the children at the curb. Toss the skunk’s candy to him, because he likes candy too. Then, leap back into your home and slam the door shut, before anybody has time to line you up in their spray sights. That will teach that little skunk.

Zoo update: Bald Eagle hoax continues

Oct16

Last spring I used this space to document some of the noteworthy discoveries we made at our local zoo. A few days ago, we paid the zoo another visit. This is an updated report about the goings-on there. Click here to see the original report.

Bald Eagle Hoax Flourishes

The Bald Eagle is still not bald. If anything, his hair is fuller and wavier than ever. This debunks a theory I had that maybe his name was just a little off and he was merely a Balding Eagle. In this theory, time would eventually catch up with him and we would find him straining to catch hopeful glimpses of the crown of his head in a mirror.

He’s retired now, but the guy on the right used to make good money singing “If you want my body, and you think I’m sexy . . .”

This theory is now destroyed. His coiffure is more lush than ever. He seems to take pride in letting it flow freely in the breeze. Good for him. After his brilliant victory over endangerment, he deserves to flaunt his endowments.

Right down to the bridge of his nose – how’s that for a non-receding hairline?

Tortoise Can’t Wait for Hares Any Longer

The tortoise is suspiciously absent from his pen. I wouldn’t be surprised if he has made a break for freedom and is most of the way to Mexico by now. When you are as deceptively quick as that tortoise, you will eventually get your opportunity to fly to your dreams. Vaya con Dios, Speedy!

After a long summer’s nap, the hares have roused themselves into a state of semi-consciousness. A combination of cold weather and general itchiness has caused them to rage against their natural lethargy long enough to change positions in anticipation of their long winter’s nap. When they receive the tortoise’s postcard from Acapulco, explaining that he couldn’t take them along because they stood no chance of keeping up with him, they may regret their laziness, but I doubt it.

“Must . . . drag . . . self . . . to . . . new . . . sleeping . . . position.”

If hares sang the blues, it would sound like this: “Woke up this mornin’, scratched my ear, and I lay back down.”

Train is Still Most Popular Zoo Animal

Four-year-old boys are just as fascinated by trains as three-year-old boys were. Though zoo animals will always be mildly interesting, they will never be trains. When a train passed on the tracks beside the zoo, we overlooked the Yak and watched the main attraction. The Yak shouldn’t take it personally. Last time it was the meerkats who got overshadowed by the train; next time it could be the lions.

“Go watch a train or something, kid. I’m trying to get some rest.”

Here’s the boy, making sure we all look at the train passing behind the farm area. That black blob in the center distance is a Yak, which might as well be invisible when there is a train passing.

If you can stand the chilly weather, a brisk autumn day is a great time to visit the zoo. There aren’t many people out, so you can get around very quickly, and the kids don’t have to squeeze in front of taller spectators. Our four-year-old enjoys visiting the zoo when it’s not crowded. He loves going to the zoo to see the trains.

Riding giraffes is so three-year-old. Four-year-olds wrestle turtles.

A four-year-old does what a four-year-old has to do

Oct11

There’s a law somewhere that states that if you hold an event for families, you have to do some sort of arts and crafts activity for children. We attend lots of family events, so my preschool son has created quite a lot of crafts.

The thing to know about crafts is that they don’t make good toys. No matter how fun they were to make, they will soon be forgotten. Consequently, most of the crafts my son creates don’t even make it from the car to the house when we get home.

Last night, after a long day of preschool and play, my son discovered a craft he’d made months ago. The back seat, like a receding glacier, coughed up an ancient paper mask from its store of long-lost artifacts. I remembered helping the boy glue plastic baubles to the paper mask. I’d imagined, as I’m sure the boy did, that this creation had been destroyed ages ago by the natural attrition that eats paper crafts.

The mask when it was fresh and new. Who would have guessed it would reappear months later to cause such anguish?

The child immediately began re-examining the already beat-up mask in the rough, destructive way of four-year-old boys. Soon, both eyeholes were torn to the edges of the mask. “I’m gonna throw this away,” he told me, his tone indicating that he expected me to protest.

“If you’re done with it, go ahead and throw it away,” I replied.

The boy was instantly offended, as if I’d demanded that he destroy a precious relic. “I don’t want to throw it out!”

“Okay. Keep it.”

“Daddy, I didn’t want it to be ripped.” This was said in a whiny voice. He was very tired. “I really don’t want to throw it away.”

“You don’t have to, but you really should have been more careful if you didn’t want it to get ripped.”

I had to turn away to tend to the baby. When I turned back to the four-year-old, the mask was gone. I asked him where it was.

“I threw it in the garbage,” he said in the resigned voice of a boy who, in his own mind, has taken a long step toward manhood by doing an unpleasant thing because he knew it had to be done.

“Okay,” I said.

Then he turned on the water works, leaving me wondering how this long-unwanted paper craft had suddenly been transformed into Old Yeller. He cried inconsolably, as if he had just returned from putting down his lifelong companion. Several unsuccessful attempts to calm him told me that he was beyond the point of reason. The only solution was bedtime.

This doesn’t turn out well either, but at least the crying makes sense. (Walt Disney Studios)

Today, there has been no mention of the mask. The boy shows no sign that he is haunted by his decision to put it out of its misery. I suspect the mask has slipped into the same memory hole that has vacuumed away all of his other over-tired histrionics. I am the only one scarred by the memory of the night when a boy grit his teeth and did what man has to do.

Name that tune – the home edition

Oct9

One of the toys that has been passed down from the first son to the second is a baby activity exersaucer. You lower the baby down into the cockpit in the middle of this toy. He can then turn himself around and play with any of the myriad interesting toys on the circular, outer ledge.

Multitasking: picking out some music to enjoy with Mr. Sunshine.

I like this toy. It can buy a busy parent up to 15 minutes of baby-free, two-handed productivity. In 15 minutes, the baby will realize that the outer ring of toys is not really that interesting after all. The baby will begin to wail his head off for someone to come extract him from a device he now considers little more than a psychological prison.

But that 15 minutes is golden.

Lunging to give Mr. Sunshine a kiss – or bite him. With that new tooth running the show, you never know what that little mouth is going to do.

One of the toys on the outer ring of our saucer is a group of large buttons with an image of an animal on each. Every time one of these buttons is pushed, the device says a word, or makes a noise, associated with the pictured animal. If the baby is successful in pushing one of the buttons four times in succession, he is rewarded with a snippet of classical music. The one exception to this is the cow button, which plays Old MacDonald, as if the designers could not find a fifth piece of classical music in the public domain.

That blur in the middle is the baby’s arm beating on the music player in a fit of classical music dance fever.

The baby, like is brother before him, really enjoys hearing the music. He smiles and swings his arms. The selections are quite lively and melodic, excepting, of course, the insipid Old MacDonald. In fact, the whole family enjoys these bits of music, especially Big Brother, to whom, it seems, they bring back the pleasant memories of his own distant youth.

One day, the baby was pounding away on the cat button when we were all rewarded with the inspired notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Big Brother’s eyes lit up. “I know that music!” he shouted with glee.

It warmed a father’s heart to know that this timeless melody had stayed with him through the years. Maybe he would develop an aptitude for music. Maybe he would become a great musician himself – our own little prodigy.

“That’s the Judge Judy song!” he declared.

And so it is.

Snoozing on the Sofa

Fatherhood's Finest Hour

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If you give a skunk a candy bar