Baked Bear - a cautionary tale

Christopher Robin has Winnie-the Pooh

Calvin has Hobbes

And the Small Boy has Bear. Also, the Taller Girl has Doggie, and the Smaller Girl has Sheepie. We're a big family of inventive namers round here.

Bear came into the Small Boy's life at his birth. Of a number of zeroth birthday presents, Bear was selected by the Taller Girl to be her brother's special companion. She used to put Bear in his cot every night when he was tiny. And soon enough, it took, and Bear became a constant nighttime companion.

As well as a tendency to obvious names, my children also share some other characteristics. One of them is a fascination with Putting Things In Things. Doggie, Sheepie and Bear have all gone through this phase. They're taken round the house to "play" and part of this play involves being put in a random drawer and left there. Or in the tree. Or behind the couch. Places that Bear has been found include:

The laundry basket
The grill
Caravan at Granny's house (top locker)
Inside the arm of an armchair
Inside the doona cover
Cardboard box on the front verandah

Basically, anywhere where there's at least 1000 cubic centimetres of space is a place that Bear might be found. That's about the size of a 1 litre milk bottle. That's not very big.

So it can be imagined that when it comes time for bed, we're pretty much over looking in every nook and cranny to find if this is the 10x10x10 space Bear has been shoved into this time. Fortunately, these days His Shortness has a number of other bedtime friends, so if Bear is not immediately visible it's not a tragedy to go a couple of days before retrieving him. Even better, the Small Boy has now developed to the stage where he can actually remember where he put things, and go and retrieve Bear by himself.

So when the girls were packing their friends to go to Granny's for a visit and the Small Boy decided that he too needed his Bear, I was happy when he said "I know where Bear is." And I followed him outside and...

Track back a day or two. All Small Folks happily playing outside, riding their bikes, climbing on things. And I noticed a Small Boy round the side of the house on top of the central heating unit.

"Down!" I said "Not for climbing. Feet down. Stay off." And he did.

What I strangely, inexplicably failed to mention was "And also, do not shove Bear in the outlet vent of the heating unit and LEAVE him there for two days"

!

!!

*headsmack*

So, first thing - I'm thankful that this story didn't end with the house burning down around our ears. Fortunately, the outlet vent is quite large, and Bear was only on the edge of it. He got off fairly lightly with a singed and crisped head, and one foot has become a hard fused lump. Basically, he's been turned into crispy Bear Toast, but only very lightly toasted. He has also been comprehensively rejected by his owner (though there are signs in the last day or so that this may be changing). We were accompanied down to Granny's by a stuffed black cat which was adopted as a substitute.

Secondly - we still have a Learning From Experience deficit in these parts. Because a couple of days ago he was looking at Bear meditatively. "I know a good place for Bear." And he picks up Bear, and trots outside, and round the corner, and...

The rule against Bears in places that Make Them Crispy has now been made extremely explicit.