In Which Queen Fee Explains Her Hairy Afternoon

Cleo came off the bus today looking a bit like grim death. I, like any good mother with a grim death child, asked what was wrong. She pointed to her head and said "that!" I wondered right away how I could have missed it. It seemed that a small and messy bird had made a nest in the top of Cleo's hair, a little above the elastic of her ponytail. Seriously, something had to be living in this clumpy, lumpy snarl of hair and dried foliage. Upon closer examination, it proved not to be the bolthole of a tiny feral creature, but quite a clump of burrs. The following explanation was offered: "Well, you know today when we made the birdhouses, and we made them in the church hall next to the school? Ok, so we finished a little early, and the birdhouse teaching man and Mrs. Payne thought it might be a nice thing to pull some weeds from around the church. So we did, but then me and Clodagh and Elena kind of went into the burrs, and a whole lot got stuck in our hair, and Mrs. Payne couldn't get them out for us and then Elena cried." "Did you cry, Cleo?", I asked sternly. "Uh...NO..... But I was really mad at the burrs." Right.

We were to meet up with Mum at Safeway after school, and Cleo found her little Che Guevara cap in the truck and jammed it down on her head before she would consent to enter the store. My real problem was just how the hell to remove an animal-nest sized clump of burrs from my daughter's hair, but my wise Mum came to the rescue. (Good thing this didn't happen last week when said Mum was still out of the country and thus not available for such vital advice!) She suggested pouring a whole lot of hair conditioner on the clump and then gradually working out the awful snarl. So that is what transpired when we got home.

The scene is this: Cleo is standing in the bathroom, draped in a towel and looking none too pleased. (Grim Death has made his reappearance in this tale) Raine, of course, is crowding in to get a piece of the action. I depress the pump of the conditioner, and somehow manage to miss Cleo's head entirely, and hit Raine square in the chest, in her hitherto clean school uniform. I sigh, and mentally file away yet another mess to deal with at yet another time... I get the conditioner into the snarl, and began working it through with a pick-comb. Cleo is moaning and howling like she's being flayed, while Raine is exhorting me not to hurt Cleo as though she's pleading for her life in front of the Spanish Inquisition. I am pulling out huge chunks of burr and hair and dropping them in the toilet. Cleo begs to be allowed to flush the offending burr down the toilet when all is said and done, which is far from being the case at this point, let me add. Operation Burr continues in much the same manner as above for about 20 minutes. FINALLY, the wretched burr has been all extracted from Cleo's head, and I put her through the shower in record time.

This all was before I had finished unpacking the groceries or thinking of supper. What a production. But all's well that ends well. Burr is gone, Cleo's hair is shiny and smooth, AND she got the last laugh, giving the final flush to her prickly attacker. Raine helpfully added that now we know how to do it for next time. Next time, you say? I really have to go lie down.