The bickering of ‘Thoons
Dad (spying a brown-speckled seagull standing on one leg): Oh look, it’s a monoped.
KJ (as seagull lowers raised leg): Now it’s a diped!
Dad : No wait, it’s a biped. She’s a biped.
KJ: That’s not a she, it’s a juvenile.
Dad: What?
Rosie: Hes and shes look the same for seagulls. That one’s a juvenile.
Dad: And are juveniles genderless?
Rosie: No.
KJ: They’re just not dimorphic, is all we’re saying.
Dad: A genuinely genderless juvenile…
Then Dad tells us about a beach in Mexico where the waves are so intense that they’ve carved the sand out so it forms a wall, and their crashing shakes the whole beach like an earthquake—“kilometers of water crashing into vertical sand!” Humpback whales come into this cove and roll over and over and over. “Somebody said it was because of the barnacles, but I don’t know.”
