Hippo Sunday

Over the weekend Son and Daughter nearly amputated the foot of Daughter’s baby hippo while playing tug-of-war. Daughter screamed bloody murder and brought it out to me, turned to Son, and sneered at him.

“Daddy, [son] needs to go to timeout!” She demanded. Her finger accusingly directed to the indifferent 11 year old standing at the door. “He broke my Hippo.”

I examined the animal, noted that it was a rather easy repair, and figured I’d work on my suturing. So, while Daughter watched, teetering between pure horror and abject giddiness, I sutured the animal’s dangling appendage back into place. There was minimal blood loss and a local anesthetic was all that was needed for pain control - smirk.

Afterwards you could hardly tell that there’d been any damage and Daughter, quite happy with the result, gave me a kiss on the cheek and said: “Thanks, Doctor!”

She then skipped merrily back into her room where she showed the animal’s newly fixed leg to Son who promptly took the animal from her and threw it on her bed. Sigh.

***I wish I had a picture of the before and after, but I didn’t think about getting out the camera before I’d completed the task. It was fun, even if it was on a stuffed animal.***