Men were born to hunt. You just have to watch us shopping to know it’s in our genes.

At the grocery store, we have a list. If it’s not on the list, it ain’t coming home. (We also have a hidden, mental list for things like beer, chips, salsa and cereal. So don’t go crying gotcha if you spot a guy snagging one of these items not on the written list.) But our hunting grounds extend far beyond the grocery store. There is also the hardware store, where the prey can be more elusive. Like… well, it’s a kind of a bolt — I don’t know what you call it — but it has a roundish head and seems to be not quite 32 threads per inch so I don’t know maybe it’s metric?

Some men even hunt for venison, but face it, that’s just an outdoorsy version of grocery shopping.

However, if a man wants a real hunt, a good old fashioned hunt, a savage, spoors-in-the-woods, pulse-pounding-with-feral-terror animal hunt, then he should test his mettle with the Captain Dad Bedtime Safari.

It can make the bravest heart wish he were the one wearing the diaper. Because failure is worse than death. And if you succeed, there is no trophy to stuff, because the beasts you seek are already stuffed.

In our house, there are two such beasts.

The very words, “Where’s Lamby?” or “Where’s Walrus?” are enough to sump the blood out of my head. I’d sooner stalk a wounded rhino, armed with no more than a day-old corn muffin and a ballpoint pen.

Stuffed animals are wily. They blend into the herds of other toys. They have an instinct for the unlikeliest places to be found. Unexpected rooms, improbably high shelves, the inside of bags or boxes or backpacks you didn’t think anyone ever played with.

But their most PTSD-inducing habit is the hour at which they choose to go afield. Bedtime. The hour when everyone is weary. Bedtime. When a meltdown can be triggered by the subtlest tic at the quantum level. Bedtime. When everyone’s attentions should be directed toward… hmm, I don’t know — how about going to bed?

And when I say at bedtime, I mean at bedtime. Not, say, 20 minutes before bedtime, when you’re not yet stressed to the bejesus at the prospect of another bloody delay. If you’re any kind of parent, you know to budget an extra 20 minutes for stalling on the stairs or playing with the water while brushing teeth until you have to count to five in that threatening tone. An extra 20 minutes for another glass of water, another song, another book, another kiss that you couldn’t give away with the bribe of candy to go with it any other time of the day. 20 for the uncontrollable need to change jammies twice, the imperative to tell a secret (coded in gibberish), and for all the other predictable filibusters against bedtime. You budget for that. And there are nights when you reasonably think that it has been a successful ploy and you have everything under control, that tonight — tonight! — is the night when bedtime will actually be AT bedtime!

Until… “Lamby!” “Walrus!” Or whatever the names of their counterparts in your house may be.

Better parents than me have become unraveled by bedtime delays, particularly ones that have no discernible timeline. Like the hunt for rogue stuffed animals.

My sphincter clenches tight enough to stretch smooth the bags beneath my eyes. Desperation fairly squirts from my pores. My patience may have been shot to pieces hours ago, my last nerve frayed and waving above my skin like the tattered banner in some Revolutionary War propaganda sketch. While fate sneers. I can do naught but accept it grimly or there will be no rest in this house. Ever.

So back I go, down, down, down. Down to the heart of darkness. To hunt for Lamby or Walrus. Wishing it were a wooly mammoth. Or a saber tooth tiger. Or that wounded rhinoceros — a real one. Any large, ferocious, living beast would be soooo much easier to find in the wilds of our family room.