Cats, Dogs and Other Creatures
Four-Ton is our dog. Rainy is our cat.
And they like each other, which is a good thing.
Raising kids is hard enough. So why have pets? Because they can act as examples to my kids in how to behave.
Well, not all the time.
There are other creatures, some rather beastly. And they think it’s just swell to hang out with us and eat our food and scare us with their snarls and massive jaws and glaring eyes – and even try to eat us. Yup, dinosaurs, monsters and things from the deep. We have them all.
Read on if you dare.
"You know what? If they just gave us canines a seat at the table we wouldn't have to scrounge for scraps!"
I have a Bernese Mountain Dog.
It is a rare breed anywhere, and more so in Argentina.
So when you come across another you generally stop and let them sniff each other and you exchange a few words with the other owner.
I did last night and the other owner asked how old mine is.
“Four,” I said.
“Yeah, mine’s three,” the man said. Then he asked, “How’s she behaving?” [click to continue reading…]
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"No monsters here, no monsters there. Just castles. Oh, but maybe there's a dragon!"
MY ELDEST DAUGHTER is eight and growing up. She has her own mobile phone (only for the games, so far) and an MP3 Player filled with her favorite songs, from “I Gotta Feeling” by The Black Eyed Peas to “Dancing Queen” by ABBA and the catchy DJ mix “Papa Americano.” She grooves to her songs in the car, at the dinner table and in her bed, looking the true teenager in this digital age, only not yet with the laptop and the capacity to race off 100 text messages in an hour.
Not yet.
She still has a wild imagination. She chases fairy dust and sees monsters, and asks for me to tell her stories from my imagination, all of them filled with adventures of three children fighting dinosaurs, giants and monsters. The three children – her and her younger brother and sister, ages five and two – are the hunters and the hunted in the tales that sometimes get me, the storyteller, kind of freaked out about what could happen, and racing to find a happy ending as the goblin puts the three children in a boiling cauldron. How can they escape?
The eldest loves these tales – and asks for more. [click to continue reading…]
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Can you see the dragon? Yeah, me either. But... my son can. He's just shot it.
MY SON WANTS a gun.
No, he corrects me, he needs a gun.
“Why?” I ask.
“To kill a dragon,” he says to me, matter of fact and followed by a look of ‘boy, are you stupid or what.’
“What dragon?” I ask.
“The dragon outside my window,” he says, with another look of ‘boy, are you an idiot or what.’
I look out the window of his bedroom while he sits up in bed. I look out into the courtyard and the green garden, with a large rosebush. There’s no dragon. I start to worry. Why can’t I see it? I stare harder. But nothing. Nothing at all. No dragon, no childhood visions of fire-breathing beasts. Nothing at all. I start to worry that my imagination is running low and my age is taking away my childhood visions of “The Lord of the Rings.” I don’t see a thing but a courtyard, three chairs, a table and plants. I look and look for the dragon, any sign at all, and time passes and nothing happens. [click to continue reading…]
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