In the car for eleven plus hours on our way from Utah back to Washington, there were bound to be some interesting conversations. Oh, there was pinching, bickering and bugging too- but there was also plenty of chatter brought on by the forced confinement and perhaps aided by the RockStar energy drink I mistakenly consumed.
Somewhere in Montana, Bean chimes in from the backseat…
“Mom! I have to go potty! It’s a poo-squirrel!!”
Cue record-scratching noise in my head. “Huh??” Dare I ask? “Bean? Uh… what’s a ‘poo-squirrel’?”
“You know when you have to poo, and it hurts and feels like its gonna come out but if you hold it and don’t let it come out, it kind of goes away after a few minutes? That’s a poo-squirrel.” He’s looking out the window peacefully. Jeffrey is now snorking into his pillow in the front seat in an effort not to laugh, but he loses the battle in an enormous, red-faced mirth-filled guffaw.
“POO SQUIRREL!!!!” Bwahahahahahahaha HAHA HAHAHAH!!!!
Bean, kicking Jeffrey’s seat but laughing too “WHAT?! That’s what it feels like! You know! When you gotta hold it but it wants out?”
Twisting around in his seat, Jeffrey asks the obvious but unfortunate question “How many squirrels have you had in your butt, Bean?” Snort! BWAhahahaha!!!
Oh dear. I think this is where I actually need to be the mom- but if I open my mouth, I’m totally going to laugh too. “That’s enough…!” I try and choke out, but I’m laughing now too.
So we made up a song about the Poo Squirrel. The words are lost to the road-trip gods, but suffice it to say, it was highly inappropriate in every possible way, and we laughed to tears.
How does your family do on Road Trips? And more importantly, do you understand the poo-squirrel?
Dandelion Mama 
It stems from a line in a road trip movie…. prarie dogging. “You know when a prarie dog pokes his head out of the hole, then pops back in”
I learned in girls camp that that *ahem* situation is best described as “turtle-heading.” Think about it for a moment. That is all.
But Bean has never seen a movie like that, I’m certain! Perhaps he’s keyed in on a universal truth in likening an animal to sphincter control? Egad! The things children bring to us that we never could have imagined!
My niece has bowel issues, and after her colon was actually working right and she got diarrhea, she freaked out and said “Mom, my butt is vomiting!” So diarrhea is now butt vomit in our family.
*giggle* that’s funny.
This post and comment have me LOLing! I know it as prairie dogging too, from the same movie.
Tina Fey once suggested on Twitter that we all call this phenomenon “turdling”. I like poo-squirrel almost as much, though.
Oh, you had me laughing so hard I woke up my daughter, who, by the way, says “Excuse me” every time she has a “diaper burp.” She made up the term and in our family it has stuck.
Hilarious! Made me think of this video, from Phineas and Ferb:
On our road trip this summer my boys made up a game called “lick-lick” which involved (you guessed it!) licking each others arms. Ew. We also brainstormed ideas for a Napoleon Dynamite video game (running over Tupperware, throwing food to llamas, dangling action figures from school buses…)
Poo squirrel? Never thought of it that way… ;o)