Marble Dragon at the Zoo
One hot breezy day this past summer, I went with my friends on a picnic at the zoo. The fox greeted me. The skunk told me how pleasantly cool it was that day. The porcupine did his impersonations of humans. My friends stood beside me the whole time, but they did not see or hear any of this.
We stood still on the walkway. My friends searched the trees for signs of birds while I closed my eyes and listened to the trees sing a lament with the wind. I floated among the leaves as the breathy song tore through me. My friends grabbed at me, claiming they thought I was falling off the walkway into the poison ivy that lay below us.
Later, my friends wanted to sit and have a snack. They wanted to sit at the picnic table. I knew we couldn’t. We had to move at least twenty steps to the left to avoid the extreme heat that inevitably was coming down the path. However, they would not listen. So, while they pulled sandwiches from their bags, I took the twenty steps.
A strong, warm wind passed behind me. People in the area screamed. They ran wildly through the park. I turned in time to see my friends jump. Luckily, they managed to avoid the oncoming blaze.
The flames licked the sandwiches into crumbly black crisps that broke whenever someone dared look at them.
Having stopped a zookeeper on his run back to the front house, I asked why all the panic.
“A large, yellow and red lizard is shooting flames in the zoo.”
I asked the panicked zookeeper why that would be a problem. His eyes popped out of his head.
“Are you mad?” he screamed at me. “A strange, unknown lizard-type creature is running rampant through the zoo wreaking havoc!”
I was confused. How could a zookeeper, of all people, not realize that that large yellow and red lizard was a dragon? The beautiful Yellow and Red Marble Dragon of the North West, who loves to dine on peanut butter sandwiches, corn on the cob, and watermelon?
And what was all the hullabaloo about a dragon being in the zoo in the first place? Wasn’t this supposed to be a zoo of all creatures that usually live in the area? I hadn’t thought that this was a typical exotic zoo with creatures that lived abroad. Had it been, this dragon surely would have been out of place.
But this zoo held animals that lived here. Let’s face it; dragons are not that uncommon around here. I have seen them in parks, lakes, roadsides, playground—in short, I have seen them all over the place.
My friends, with their lightly scorched shorts, did not believe me when I tried to explain that it was a Yellow and Red Marble Dragon that destroyed their lunch and had lightly lit their bottoms.
It is such a shame that so many people in this world are blind and deaf to the animals of this planet, including the Yellow and Red Marbled Dragon.
Witness: Mable Dejeune