Disappointed Cheese

The other morning while driving Cheese to school. I saw something over in the field. I laughed and said, "I don't know what it was, but in this light, it looked light a chihuahua on stilts with a long white mane.".

Cheese took great interest in this. Asking me all sorts of questions. I said "you know, I know that wasn't what it was, I don't think it was anything, it seemed to have twigs for legs. I am just saying that is how it looked to me.". When I picked him up from school he presented me with this drawing.

He asked me more questions. Said we had to drive by it. He was beginning to spin a mythology around this unknown, this new, creature. Like we were on the verge of discovering a real pokemon, or something like big foot or loc ness. This made me nervous, as I knew driving past it and looking at it closely would shatter such thoughts. When we drove by, it took awhile for Cheese to find it and see what I had seen. As we turned the corner, in that light of day, He saw it, and said it looked like a big upside down clear jug perched on top of some twigs and laughed at me merrily, for being so silly. And indeed that is exactly how it looked. He still liked his drawing, and was working on a name for the creature. We talked on about it that day mused perhaps it had magical powers, and could disguise itself as trash to avoid detection. Cheese thought perhaps it had come to look after the large pond, saying once it was driven away by pollution but now had returned.

In the morning as we drove by, Cheese saw it, just as I had the first day. He beamed at me eagerly. He insisted I bring the camera later so we could get a photo of it on the way home from school. I agreed but was concerned that seeing the features close up turning into trash before our eyes would be disappointing. We got our photos. We came home and hooked the camera up to the computer, and as we clicked on enlarge. We were amazed "oh my God!" it really did look like an animal. How could trash and twigs catch the light just so?

Cheese could not wait to show his dad the photographs when he got home. His thoughts were busy planning an expedition on Saturday to go check out this creature. Bob got home. Cheese had me cue up the computer and show him. Bob's response low and monotone "Wow, that looks neat. You said it is nearby? It must be one of those coyote decoys." Coyote decoys? Cheese and I stared at each other. We had never heard of such a thing. Bob went upstairs. Cheese came over to me, whispering under his breath "Dad has ruined the whole thing. Ugh. Right away taking all the fun out of it.". I shrugged. I thought about the water feature, and said maybe it is meant to keep things away from the pond. I decided to google coyote decoys. The first ones that came up looked nothing like it, and Cheese and I felt a little better.





But then we saw this

a perfect match. This photo explains why it seemed like his shoulders were so much higher than his hind quaters. And why that back right leg that I thought was a twig, looked so odd. Cheese was very disappointed. I felt very silly. I never thought it was a real animal, but I never thought it was a decoy either (I didn't know they made such things. They are good for keeping geese away from ponds et. cetera.) . I had thought it would be rather amusing to go on the expedition and see how twigs and trash, taken with light, could deceive us so. Thinking this as I washed the dishes, I said "You know I think I would have preferred if it had been trash.". Cheese muttered and mumbled unhappily for a bit, then declared "You know, what I think. I think I would have preferred it being trash to this.". I shook my head yes "like it was some sort of magical trash". (having him say what I had just said back to me as if I had never said it, amused me. His father does that to me all the time. Only I think Cheese knew he was doing an echo. Whereas Bob never actually realizes it, as he doesn't fully listen, and my words seem to gather and reform in is subconscious and strike him there as if his own idea.).

I tied to talk Bob up to Cheese, " It is good that your Dad told us, now we know, otherwise we would have gone to see it without having a clue what it really was." Cheese said "Yeah but then, we would have gotten to go on our expedition, and we would have become excited and nervous as we got closer, and it looked like some real animal, and then when we got close enough to realize it was a plastic decoy we would have burst out laughing. We would have felt dumb but we would have had fun. Now it is just all disappointing and bummed." I shook my head yeah.

Cheese's first words this morning were about the coyote "Oh, I still can't believe it. We were so close to something exciting happening, and now, nothing at all.".

He had me put the binoculars in the car. He wants to look at it today on the way home. He wants to look at it, and really see it for what it is.

There is one thing we still haven't solved, it did turn and look at us the one day. True it was a windy day. This made perfect sense when we had it as trash, part of it blowing in the wind. But this is supposed to be a 2-D model. But as I have told Cheese, it could be the latest version with a bobbing head or something.