Craft Creature

I was eating breakfast recently when N sat down next to me at the counter. He was intently working on his latest craft project. This one involved creating a creature from a cardboard tube with some paper he'd cut out and taped to it. The conversation went something like:

Me: What do you have there?
N: I'm not sure. It kind of has a duck's beak. I think it's going to be a duck.

N begins cutting some paper. I resume reading the paper.

N: It just needs a tail.

Snip. Snip. Tape. Tape.

N: Oh man, this doesn't look like a duck tail at all!

Usually, at this point things get ugly fast. I expected much lamenting about how difficult it is to craft a decent duck tail. I expected this to be followed by the abrupt removal of the inferior tail along with proclamations about how impossible a task he had undertaken.

Instead, it was eerily quiet. I looked over and N was just staring at the tube.

Me: Is everything okay?
N: Dad, look. I think I made a platypus!

I never realized how much I loved the platypus until that moment.