Scrawlers

"Bingo!"

"All right, folks, hold your cards. Janey, pass your card up to your mother," I said, keeping my eyes on the road. "Does it check out, honey?"

"B, a rest area exit sign. I, a horse. N, a homemade graduation party sign with balloons. G, an 'Adopt a Highway' sign. O, a dead turtle." My wife smiled and said, "We've got a bingo!"

The other kids cheered and cleared their cards.

"Congratulations, Janey," I said, "What's your prize?"

"That we never play this stupid game again."

My wife said it first. "Get out of the car, Janey."

I stood on one foot, holding a lobster in one hand and a cake pan in the other. Sweat soaked my hairline and I looked around me, taking in the scene.

Our son, covered in flour and runny eggs, held the oven door open. His mouth was open just as wide.

Our daughter, sitting cross-legged in a puddle of cake batter and Yoo-Hoo, held up a platter of uncooked Pizza Rolls. She wore the biggest smile on her face you ever did see.

"Happy Mother's Day," I told you.

You blinked.

Blinked again.

Then we laughed.

Then we ate.

She is a problem-solving platypus.

She uses electroreception to detect nearby humans and lets out a low growl. Her call summons a male platypus who strikes the human with a venomous spur on the rear of his webbed foot. After the human is poisoned, it falls into the shallows, vulnerable and afraid. The female platypus slaps the human's face with her tail again and again until it's unconscious. Then, her little baby platypi brood feed on the poisoned, beaten, unconscious human as it breathes its last, gnawing its flesh with their cute little duck bills.

She is a problem-solving platypus.

Janet's throat felt like it had been on a table saw all night, her eyelids were halfway glued shut from lumps of brittle brown cake. She clutched her screaming baby to her breast and shuffled to the kitchen.

The young mother opened the fridge and hunkered down. Her right hand fumbled for the single prepared baby bottle. Her son's screams became screeches, a tiny red face shaking. Janet's fingers nudged the bottle and it tipped.

The cap snapped and the bottle puked its white milk insides across the kitchen floor. The baby clutched his miniature hands into fists. Janet wept.