My animals meet a viper

In my last ar­ti­cle, I wrote about what it’s like being old and my own ex­pe­ri­ence of it. Well, dear reader, I men­tioned that I was helped in this by hav­ing a dog and two cats. With­out these three an­i­mals, the bright­ness, the light­ness, the fun would have gone out of my life. In this ar­ti­cle, I’ll tell you a lit­tle about them and put them into a story for chil­dren; you’ll see what joy they and the writ­ing bring me.

First, their names: the dog is called Tof­fee, and the two cats, sis­ters, are called Gin­ger and Dice. Tof­fee is old and pretty som­no­lent. He is not fazed by the an­tics of the cats. He moves slowly and often lies across a space, just where you need to go! He is quite sat­is­fied, in fact, by his old age. Gin­ger and Dice are less than a year old. They are sleek and black but Gin­ger has a weeny patch of white fur on her chest. One of my daugh­ters brought them to live here to help scare off the rats we had at the time. They are a cu­ri­ous mix­ture of shy and so­cia­ble. They love com­ing for walks but are not sit­ting-on-your-lap cats. Gin­ger is the ad­ven­tur­ous one; Dice fol­lows glumly.

So here is one of the sto­ries I make up about them: it’s about the day they met a viper. You prob­a­bly re­mem­ber that I live in a very rural area: flow­ers and bright green plants around the house and a row of tall trees down a short drive with forests, hills and moun­tains be­yond.

*******************

It was a Wednes­day. As the chil­dren’s rhyme says “March brings breezes loud and shrill, stirs the danc­ing daf­fodil”. Gin­ger was bored. Ac­tion was im­me­di­ately called for. She dug Dice in the ribs and said,

“When bore­dom sets in, it’s time to move.”

Out­side the garage they saw Tof­fee, legs splayed out com­fort­ably, fast asleep.

“We’re off for an ad­ven­ture!” Gin­ger an­nounced loudly.

Tof­fee opened one eye, “ I’d just got off to sleep. What’s the hurry?”

“Spring will soon be here” said Gin­ger “and we mustn’t miss it! Haven’t you no­ticed the birds in the trees singing in the morn­ing?”

“Can’t say I have,” replied Tof­fee.

“Me nei­ther, added Dice, hope­fully.

“Come!” shouted Gin­ger “Round to the back of the house!”

This did wake Tof­fee up and he and Dice fol­lowed Gin­ger round to the back of the house. The whole house looked dif­fer­ent round the back. Bushes up against the walls, win­dows look­ing out from the kitchen and the com­puter room and the up­stairs bed­room win­dows. Be­yond the house was the horses’ field - a long flat field stretch­ing far, far away until it met spruce trees and then a for­est.

“I like the horses’ field,” said Gin­ger “short green grass and soft on my paddy-paws.” The other two agreed.

“But why go fur­ther?” ven­tured Dice.

“Nice and com­fort­able to lie on,” added Tof­fee.

Gin­ger was be­com­ing a bit ex­as­per­ated with her friends.

“Be­cause ad­ven­ture is al­ways wait­ing for you out­side your com­fort zone!”

“Do you mean the gar­den fence?” asked Dice. “Is that the edge of our com­fort zone?”

And Dice was right, dear reader, wild boars some­times come as far as the fence, but so far they haven’t come in­side it.

“Ex­actly!” agreed Gin­ger, “you’ve hit the nail on the head, sis­ter! Come on!”

So they flat­tened their tum­mies on the ground and squeezed under the fence.

“It’s bumpy on this side” said Dice grumpily. “The grass is stick­ing up be­tween my toes.”

“Where is your sense of ad­ven­ture?” asked Gin­ger, sniff­ing the fresh air and clos­ing her eyes in de­light. “It’s a brac­ing day, per­fect for ex­plor­ing!” And she marched steadily for­ward. Gin­ger had her sights on the far for­est and be­fore long the other two caught her en­thu­si­asm. Up and down they went and then down, down into a gully with a sil­very stream run­ning through it. Tof­fee splashed man­fully into the stream while Dice and Gin­ger skirted round and found a place where they could leap over it. Sud­denly, Gin­ger spot­ted some­thing in the tufts of grass.

“Come here!” she called ex­cit­edly to the other two, “what ever is this?”

It looked like a rope but Tof­fee, who had seen many things in his life, hastily took a few paces back­wards.

“It’s a kind of snake,” he said “I’ve seen green snakes in the gar­den but this one is quite dif­fer­ent. It’s short and brown and has a V on its head. Look you can see it’s lit­tle tongue shoot­ing in and out!”

The viper, for that is what is was, lunged at Gin­ger who did a back­wards leap into the air and shot off back to­wards the edge of the for­est. Tof­fee and Dice fol­lowed, hot on her heels, and all three of them leapt over the stream, ran up and down the hills and then squeezed back under the fence. Then they fell about laugh­ing and cry­ing all at once.

“So much for going be­yond your com­fort zone!” teased Dice and they trot­ted off back to­wards the do­mes­ti­cated front of the house - patio chairs and sun­shine and the pos­si­bil­ity of a snack was sud­denly so at­trac­tive!

RAN­DOM THOUGHTS