Ruby was home sick from kindergarten yesterday with a cough and a sore throat. I took her in to the doctor to be sure that it wasn’t anything too serious or contagious, and they sent us home and said to basically wait it out and she would be fine. So that left us at home all day with not much to do. She had no energy, and I had a mountain of laundry to fold. I guess that’s why she decided to play the animal sounds game.
This is a deceptively simple game that starts out pretty easy, but then takes a sharp turn into very difficult territory. See for yourself.
Ruby: “Hey Dad, guess what kind of animal I am.”
Me: “Okay.”
Ruby: “Moooooooo.”
Me: “A cow.”
Ruby: “Yup, you got it. Meoowwwww.”
Me: “A cat.”
Ruby: “Yup. How about THIS one?! Squeak squeak.”
Me: “Ummmm, a mouse?”
Ruby: “DADDY! How come you keep knowing what they all are?!”
Me: “Oh, sorry. I just know a lot of animal sounds I guess.”
Ruby: “Okay, I’ll do a trickier one. Awooooooooo!”
Me: “A wolf.”
Ruby: “Nope!”
Me: “Ummmmm, a coyote?”
Ruby: “Yes. I tricked you on that one. It was a coyote. Now an even trickier one. Rat-a-tat-tat.”
Me: “What?”
Ruby: “Rat-a-tat-tat.”
Me: “A drum?’
Ruby: “No, daddy! It’s an animal!”
Me: “A bear playing a drum?”
Ruby: “No! There’s no drum! It’s an animal that is alive and moves around.”
Me: “Okay, I give up.”
Ruby: “It’s a person tap dancing!”
That’s when the game got really interesting. Ruby would make some strange noise, and then I would have to guess what it was. And I never got anymore right after that. I failed to correctly identify on the first try the sounds of Princess Merida shooting a bow and arrow, Iron Man firing a missile of some sort, and a Totoro. So it would seem that Ruby has already learned a very valuable life lesson. If you can’t win the game, change the rules.