You thought it was a hippo

Last night my daughter came running up to me in the garden, urging me to come with her. (If she sees anything scary now, she fetches me and I have to come and look.)

"See that, Mommy - that brown thing, with eyes", she says, pointing to a small (~10cm high) clump of mud and leaves in the flowerbed. There was a bit of white gunk on it that could conceivably have been mistaken for eyes. I explained that it was a heap of leaves out of the pool pump, and kicked it apart a bit so she could see what it was.

"You thought it was a hippo!" she exclaimed.*



*She's improving with the first / second person pronoun mix-up, but it's not quite perfect yet.