The One Where He Is Testing the Fences (or How Little Boys Are Just Like Velociraptors)

This is my grandson Jif. (Yes of course it is an alias... I mean, who names their firstborn after peanut butter?) What I like the best about Jif, is he is smart. I know what you’re thinking… you’re wondering, how could I possibly know he is smart? He doesn’t even talk. Remember, though… I’ve had little boys once or twice before. And I am telling you that even though he can’t talk yet, my little grandbaby is smart. Smart enough to test the fences.



My boys were smart, too, and as I have mentioned before, my first three I had in three years. My first five, in eight years. So naturally they were a pack… united against their common enemy… me. They were like those velocipraptors in Jurassic Park… smart and fast. Do you know the ones I mean? Early on, Dr. Grant quizzes Muldoon, the Aussie dino wrangler, and the conversation goes something like this:

MULDOON: They're lethal at eight months, and I do mean lethal. I've hunted most things that can hunt you, but the way these things move...
GRANT: Fast for a biped?
MULDOON: Cheetah speed. Fifty, sixty miles an hour if they ever got out into the open, and they're astonishing jumpers...

I felt that way at times as well. They moved at cheetah speed. And my sweet baby Casey was not only an astonishing jumper, but quite the climber. I pulled him out of my grand piano once. Oh... and creative beyond belief. Josh once made pancake batter on my wood floor with a 10-pound sack of whole wheat flour, a dozen eggs, and… well, I won’t even say how he was watering it down.

But after all is said and done, it is the intelligence that will get you…

GRANT: Do they show intelligence?
MULDOON: They show extraordinary intelligence, even problem-solving. Especially the big one. We bred eight originally, but when she came in she took over the pride and killed all but two of the others. That one... when she looks at you, you can tell she's working things out. She had them all attacking the fences when the feeders came.
ELLIE: The fences are electrified, right?
MULDOON: That’s right. But they never attack the same place twice. They were testing the fences for weaknesses. Systematically. They remembered.

Eerie, isn’t it? I have seen my sweet little angels do just the same thing. I thought I was smart until I had my boy pack. This problem-solving ability referenced by Muldoon, while not always evident in their schoolwork, was definitely utilized torturing babysitters, making messes, or, as he so aptly put it, “testing the fences.”

Eventually poor Muldoon ended up with Dr. Ellie Sattler when the fences went down.
ELLIE: We can make it if we run.
MULDOON: No…….. we can’t.
SATTLER: Why not?
MULDOON: Because… we are being hunted.

Muldoon was shortly proven correct, as the velociraptors acted in a concerted pack effort to hunt and kill him. As the cunning female closed on him with her razor-sharp talons, he uttered the classic line: “Clever girl…” (you have to imagine that in his Aussie drawl.)

And then Muldoon was Dino Nuggets.

I’m not saying this sweet little baby is a bloodthirsty dinosaur with lethal weapons for hands (Although I have heard him, on occasion, make raptor-like sounds). And obviously Jif has it all over the lizard in pure cuteness.

All I’m saying is, his mommy and daddy need to watch out. Because every once in awhile he looks right at you… and you can tell he is “working things out.”