Мужчина в Норфолке спас детей от шока, разыграв мертвого белку в образе злобного гоблина

There are times to give your child the “Lion King” speech about when things pass away. There is also a time to do the toddler version of “Weekend at Bernie’s” with a deceased squirrel, an invisible hobgoblin and a potato sack. I think we all know which one this will be about. I have a hang-up about the speech by Mufasa to his son wherein he explains death, which comes from my eldest son, Zoltan, now 35. We sat in a movie theater as Mufasa (James Earl Jones) intoned, “Yes, Simba, but let me explain. When we die, our bodies become the grass, and the antelope eat the grass. And so we are all connected in the great circle of life.” At that moment, Zoltan, age 4, wailed, “I don’t want to be the grass!” Since then, I am less worried about them never learning about the finite nature of nature and more focused on the trauma they may latch onto. Flash forward to our unfortunately clumsy squirrel of 2026 here at the Fairy Tree in Norfolk. In a nutshell, I started a project during the pandemic (six years and more than 7,000 letters ago) by creating a huge fairy garden in front of my home where children and adults write to magical creatures for fun and comfort. That means there is a constant stream of sensitive young children out front who hold in their little bodies a lot of very big feelings about animals. Pro Tip: The rainbow bridge leads to heaven with an optional stop in fairyland where children can get closure by corresponding with their lost animal friends. When a very large squirrel missed a step in its high-wire sprint above their heads and hit the center of the road, smack in the path of an inbound family on bikes, I made the command decision to conjure Dagus, the famously grumpy hobgoblin door keeper of the Fairy Tree. A boy and his mother were already past the sight, but an inbound group caught me red-handed as I was placing the body into a potato grow sack. “I see blood,” a boy shouted in a voice that raised an escalating octave and hit every mother’s spine like ice water. Everything slowed down inside my head as the first two of five children, ages 3 to around 7, made the connection from what they were seeing to the sharp realization of mortality. Very much like the 1989 comedy “Weekend at Bernie’s,” in which two insurance employees discover their corrupt boss is dead and pretend he is still alive to avoid suspicion and enjoy a weekend on the town, I began a conversation with a dead squirrel as if it were a wacky local hobgoblin who is known to play all manner of inappropriate pranks here. “Dagus, that was not funny at all,” I cried in mock drama to cue the parents. I shook the sack. (I know, eeeew.) Then I said in a clear, commanding tone, “How many times have I told you not to do your fake fall and pour fake blood all over the place?” I would like to thank the parents for understanding the assignment, because one mom immediately said, “Oh! Not Dagus again!” “Yes! Dagus, you stinker, that was not funny,” I said, holding the bag of ick aloft. Now the children thought it was hilarious. To the bag I said, “I am taking you to Jinx the Protection Pixie.” While ventriloquism is not my best trick, I can do a convincing hobgoblin in a sack complaining out of the side of my mouth as the sack cried, “No! Not dat! Noooooooooooo!” The children were giggling. The parents were relieved. The squirrel is resting in peace in my backyard under the fig tree. Dagus lives on in infamy, and all is right with the world we have woven together as neighbors to hold our emotional security together. Sometimes it takes a little bit of crazy to remain sane. Lisa Suhay is a writer and a resident of Norfolk.