Elefun with a 4-year-old

So if you got that title, you either have kids or play with them regularly. As many of us are aware, small children are very literal people. When I asked my daughter what she wanted to get Toby (our Corgi) for Christmas, she immediately answered, as if she had been considering this for months and months and was only waiting for someone to ask her, "Reindeer antlers and a sweater."

My immediate response, upon imagining the poor animal in a sweater (I am against dressing up non-stuffed animals. Period), was to tell her, "We can't put Toby in a sweater."

"Oh, that's ok. We can get him a vest."

So, while I'm impressed at her knowledge of fashion (I mean, who wears vests these days?), I realize that she is taking me literally, and that I am still left to explain that we are not putting any clothes on the dog. Reindeer antlers being the exception. Also, he is allowed to eat them afterwards, should he so choose.

So, using this to my advantage, I have convinced my daughter that there are elephants living upstairs. As you may have guessed, the people up there are a little noisy. She, being nosy, is always wanting to know what every single noise is. So, one night I just told her that they had let their elephants out to exercise. And then she wanted to know how many they had, and what they were doing, etc.

So this is what we have speculated:
1) They have somewhere between 2 and 16 elephants.
2) Their kitchen is located over our bathroom.
3) Elephants need a lot of exercise.
4) Elephants eat grass. Maybe.

Yesterday morning, as we were eating breakfast, she asked me if maybe, possibly, there actually were not elephants up there. I asked why she thought that. And she said that we hadn't heard any "rooing" sounds coming from their trunks. (Pretty good logic for a 4-year-old). So, I applauded her reasoning skills. Then I also gave her some more information, since I happen to know a little about this.

Elephants can make noises so low that people can't actually hear them. We didn't know they were making these noises until we recorded them, sped up the recordings, and then listened to them.

Elephants also communicate with their feet. This is usually used for long-distance communication. They 'stamp' and those receiving the signals have special mechanoreceptors (Pacinian corpuscles) in their feet which allow them to receive the signals. This has been especially studied in the Asian elephants (Elephas maximus).

She actually seemed to absorb most of what I was saying about the elephant communication. And now we're back to figuring out how many elephants there are upstairs. I just hope she doesn't decide to try to invite them over some night to visit.