Warning: Dangerous Socks

Grandma Badger was giving the Lumpy his daily dunking in the bucket the other day, while I was downstairs strapped to the milking machine (moo! I wonder where that cow obsession comes from...). Suddenly, I was startled from my milky, nipple-sucking reverie by a panicked cry from above.

"Mrs Badger!" cried Grandma Badger (for she is a very formal soul, and always insists on using titles. "Come here now!"

"What?" I said, for the milking machine is loud and I am somewhat deaf.

"I just wiped him, and there was blood," came the rather distressing reply.

I tore myself asunder from the sucking beast, and galloped upstairs. Wiped? Blood? My mind was instantly filled with the prognosis for an anally bleeding child, and how many days he would be likely to live.

I barrelled into the bathroom, where the quaking grandmother held forth the Sponge of Doom, thus:

Lumpy had had a bit of a cold, and there had been a small amount of blood in some of the snot I had sucked most recently. But this... if this monstrosity had come out of his nose, then surely his brain was soon to follow. But the thought of it coming out of his nose was preferably from the bleeding bum theory, so I decided to run with it.

"Where did it come from?" I questioned the Grandmother. "His nose? Where? Where?!" Screech, howl, etc.

"I don't know," she quaked. "I just wiped his body with the sponge, and when I pulled it out that was on there."

Okay, I thought. This will require further investigation. I reached forwards, figuring that if I felt the blood, I'd be able to guess what part of my child was haemorrhaging. If it was slimy and mucousy, it was probably a nose product. Otherwise... elsewhere.

I grabbed the blood, and...

it was fluffy.

It was a great big bit of red fluff, which the Lump had smuggled into his bath between his toes, shed by the snazzy, manly pirate socks Mr Badger had bought him for Christmas (because he was opposed to the 'girly' tights I have a penchant for dressing him in).

So that bout of hysteria was his fault, basically.