My Adventure of Telling You a Story

Hello.

I had a Herping trip last weekend. Them pictures will be posted up once I get my grubby hands on them and you lot can ogle me all you want. Till then, you’ll have to contend with this particular story I would like to share.

There was once this stray mongrel, running around the neighborhood. How he came to be there at the neighborhood in the first place was a mystery. One day, as if by magic, he just popped up out of nowhere, and there he was scavenging the rubbish bins and on the occasion, howl at the moon when and if he feels like it. He didn’t come alone though. He came with about 6 other stray mongrels, who, like him, scavenged through the rubbish bins and howled at the moon, when and if they felt like it.

One day, this handsome chap with a charming personality found that his house was chosen to be the epicenter of the stray’s activities, much to his chagrin. But there was nothing he could do about it since his home did not have 6 foot walls with barbed wire circumventing its top perimeter, nor did his home have Spandau machine gun nests strategically placed around it. Or a minefield with Bouncing Betties. Yes, our poor chap’s home was almost accessible to anyone or anything as the external security measures sucked big time.

The strays had suddenly appeared about 3 months ago. They were puppies then. But being lower forms of life, these mammals have a faster growth rate and shorter life span than that of our lovable protagonist. They were now fully fledged adults who scavenged the rubbish bins and howl at the moon, when and if they feel like it.

At first, this handsome chap with the charming personality was annoyed with the strewn rubbish and the constant howling. Although they did help clear the surrounding neighborhood of those pesky stray kitties, it was still unnerving to come back at 1am and find oneself confronted by incessant howling.. and not forgetting the scavenged bins too.

But one day, when the sky opened up and it was raining cats and dogs (no pun intended), as it has been wont to do during the evenings, the handsome chap with the charming personality accidentally set his eyes upon one of the strays. He saw it taking shelter from the rain under his car, shivering. It was at that particular moment that our protagonist felt a twinge of pity for this particular stray mongrel.

Now being a Malay and Muslim, it wasn’t in his culture as well as being against his religion to keep a dog as a pet. Which is why he was quite aloof with the strays when they started to appear and had thought them to be utter nuisance. But this particular mongrel, our handsome protagonist with the charming personality had taken a liking to. For one, he had recognized it to be one of the more passive members of the pack. And he had further noticed that this particular mongrel did not howl as much at the moon when and if it felt like it, nor did it scavenge the rubbish bins as much, unlike the other members of his pack.

So, ignoring rhyme and reason, our handsome protagonist with the charming personality had decided to feed it, thinking it was the nice thing to do. Each night, when he came back from the office, without fail our protagonist would put dog food in a nice dog bowl.  He even bought one of those big bag dog food at his nearest hypermarket. Before long, he had even given it a name; ‘Tommy’, based on his childhood heroes; The Famous Five’s dog, ‘Timmy’…..

~ by 9 on April 24, 2008.