Fluffy the Dragon

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NEW PROMPT:
Write about what happens when your pet dragon escapes.
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Many, if not all, of my neighbors know I love animals. Cats, dogs, possums, raccoons, I enjoy having them and others in my home and yard. One day last month, though, my pet Fluffy ran away and terrified everyone on my country road.

Maybe at this point I should introduce my pet. Fluffy is a dragon, a Komodo dragon to be precise. A couple years ago when my boyfriend returned from a vacation in Indonesia, he brought me back a gift of this baby lizard. When I saw the infant, it was love at first sight. I mean, who doesn’t love a baby animal?

The wire cage Fluffy arrived in soon was too small, and thank goodness the local Petsmart found a larger one. A few months later and then a few months after that, new cages found their way into my spare bedroom to house a rapidly enlarging dragon. After a few hisses at the new intruder, such as they do to all new animals in our home, my cats left Fluffy alone.

My boyfriend decided to save my depleting budget and built a large, fenced in area for Fluffy in my back yard. All went well with this arrangement until one hot August afternoon.

I returned from work about five to see my phone answering machine blinking. On pressing the message button, I heard a panicking voice shrieking at me, “You gotta catch the beast before my little Squeaky gets eaten up.” I recognized the voice of an elderly woman from two houses down the road. She was a cranky, blue-haired lady who owned an annoying, ankle biter. I love most dogs, but her dachshund was a yappy thing that barked constantly for no reason at all.

A second message on my machine was pretty much the same, but this from the young woman who lived next door to me. I later learned this stay-at-home wife had called her husband at work screaming for him to come home and save her from the prehistoric creature wandering around their unfenced yard. Fluffy only wanted to check out new lands and have new adventures, but it seems my neighbors didn’t appreciate her sense of exploration.

On hearing this second message, I hurried next door to rescue my little pet. Okay, so Fluffy no longer was little by now. I didn’t understand, though, why these two women were so hysterical about seeing a Komodo dragon.

“Calm down, Lucy.” I tried to soothe my neighbor while opening up my cell phone. “I’m calling the local zoo, so stop threatening my Fluffy with that dust mop.” I won’t write here what Lucy said back to me, since I was raised to not use that sort of language. All I’ll say is that my parents were married despite what she called me. Also, I don’t think my body will contort into doing what she said I should do.

Before Lucy could get up a full head of steam, even though her face had turned bright red and her neck veins were throbbing, a friendly neighboring farmer arrived on his John Deere tractor.

Using a long handled hoe to prod my pet, he carefully maneuvered Fluffy into a large wooden box that, I swear, looked like a homemade coffin. The noise coming from the box startled me since Fluffy always was such a timid animal. Of course nobody, including animals, likes being trapped alive inside a coffin.

When the people from the zoo arrived an hour later, I had finally resigned myself to sharing my sweet dragon with others. Fluffy was given a large area to roam in, and she seemed happy when I went a week later to visit her. The last was hard to tell since, as you know, a Komodo dragon’s face isn’t very expressive.

I guess the escape of my pet dragon ended well even though I still miss her. My boyfriend just emailed me that he was returning from his trip to the Galapagos Islands and was bringing back a unique pet for me.

I wonder what it is!

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Microsoft Word count = 677

"The Writer's Cramp"  daily winning entry for 05/21/10
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