I Hope It's Forks

My son’s thinking of an animal. So far I’ve managed to establish it has less than four legs.

‘Two?’

‘No.’

OK, maybe he’s thinking of a snail. ‘Just one leg?’

‘No.’

‘It has three legs?’

‘Yes.’

‘No animal has three legs.’

‘This one does.’

We go back on forth on this for a while, but he’s insisting all the time that he's right. Finally, like he’s getting really frustrated with how dim I am, he’s shouting -

‘It has three legs! Three on each side!’

‘OK, we’re getting somewhere. So is it very small, like an ant?’

‘No, it’s very big.’

‘A very big animal with six legs?’

Turns out, eventually, it’s a scorpion. Which has eight legs. My son’s not too bothered about whether it’s an insect, an arachnid or indeed a mammal. He has a thoughtful look in his eyes now.

‘Which d’you think there’s more of in the world,’ he says. ‘Scorpions, or forks?’