Not really comprehending

I guess it's because Mike is still only 7. We're on winter break now and Mike is attending a kids' club (US = VBS) at a local church. They are using a pre-packaged deal and it involves Answers in Genesis material. Mike and I had the following conversation this afternoon after the morning's fun:

Mike: Mum, do we have a family tree?

Me: Of course we do.

Mike: What is it?

Me: Well, I'm your Mummy and Daddy is your Daddy and then...

Mike: No, I don't mean that. Do we have a family tree?

Thus followed more patient attempts to explain what a family tree is with no success. Sometime later:

Mike: Do we have a family tree?

Me (*exasperated*): We have a Jacaranda tree in our backyard. Is that what you are thinking of?

Mike: *Yes*

Me: I don't think that's what the kids' club means.

Mike (*sings*): There's no monkey in our family tree.

I wonder if we should remind him about the possum. I'm just wondering what the leaders would think tomorrow morning when Mike rolls up and tells them there's a possum in our family tree.

Rats

I guess it was inevitable. Apparently there is a rat plague in areas of Brisbane which were flood-affected in January. These rats are reported to be the size of possums and are fearless. Eek! I'm no fan of wild rats.

It reminds me of my laboratory days many years ago. At that time we worked in the semi-basement of a rather old building that was rather desperate for refurbishment. My supervisor, many years my senior, pointed out to me once the stain on the wall from when an experiment had exploded when he was an honours student back in the sixties.

As the building was not exactly state-of-the-art there were many places for wildlife to get in. There was certainly a lot around. I remember sitting on a low brick wall to eat lunch one day and noticing a possum in the garden behind me. Possums I can handle but wild rats .... a different story.

One night when I was slaving away in the lab I went into the next lab to use some equipment and there, on the lab bench, was the most enormous grey-black, wild rat I have ever seen. I was certainly possum-sized (a very large possum-sized). I told our lab manager and he didn't believe me until he brought in a large rat trap and caught not one, but two of these very large rats.

For a while there we seemed to be rat free until it seemed that some white lab rats had escaped and were breeding in the dark areas of the building. One of my fellow PhD students was working with soybeans and she had a stash in a bucket for experiments. She was off on holiday and didn't bother to put the lid on. I didn't see the rats but just saw their evidence one morning on my bench. The lid was put on!

In each lab we had a trolley with a large bucket of water on it. When we had finished with our glassware we put it in the water to soak until the lab ladies came to wash it up so that we could then sterilise or wash it in chromic acid ready for our experiments. One morning I came into the lab and in one of these buckets was a rat. I had no intention of touching the object so I called for our trusty lab manager. As he lifted the body out of the water he exclaimed, "You look like a drowned rat."

Thankfully, our rodent adventures since my lab days have been limited to mice.