CHAPTER 2
My name is Taterskin, by the way. I am what is called a Labrador Retriever, but I don’t know why. I have never retrieved a Labrador in my life. I don’t even know what a Labrador is. I do retrieve tennis balls, though—especially when they are thrown into the lake! There are few things better than fetching tennis balls thrown into a lake. I could do that all day long.
Albert got me when I was a puppy. He named me “Taterskin” because he thought my coat looked like the skin of a potato. It was a compliment, he told me, because an Idaho Gold potato is a thing of beauty (so he says, anyway). I think the main reason he likes the look of them is because he loves to eat them; he tells me that the skin is the best part of a potato. Unfortunately, potatoes don’t agree with me, especially the uncooked ones, so I leave them alone.
Anyway, friends, I already told you about Drako the Bearded Dragon. She’s a type of Lizard, in case you didn’t get that from what I was saying earlier. I should introduce you to some of the other Eco Defenders now. I will tell you about our closest friends (Albert and mine, that is) in chronological order from when I met them.
After Drako came Yookie. His legal name is Ulysses Calyptus, but everybody calls him Yookie. He is a Koala Bear. He’s not really a Bear, though. He’s more like a Wombat. If you don’t know what a Wombat is, it’s kind of like a Sloth. If you don’t know what a Sloth is, well, I don’t know what to tell you. You’ll just have to see him, and decide for yourself what he reminds you of.
Yookie climbs trees well, and can spend hours and hours, even a whole day, in a tree—if it’s the right kind of tree, that is. To Yookie, the “right kind of tree” is a Gum tree. By gum, I don’t mean those thin flat chewy rectangles that humans eat, which stick to the roof of your mouth—humans have the weirdest taste in food! The Gum tree that I’m talking about sprouts eucalyptus leaves, and this is the food that Yookie is simply wild about. He likes eating eucalyptus leaves as much as I like chasing tennis balls. Maybe more, even.
Yookie is a clumsy walker (to put it bluntly, he’s uncoordinated). That’s OK, though, because he spends most of his time at the top of the Gum trees, chewing and sleeping, chewing and sleeping.
But Yookie is no longer with us. By that I mean he doesn’t live with us here in Zenia. He had to go back to Australia, because—you guessed it! He missed his Gum trees too much! You could say he absolutely pined for his Gum trees. Too bad he didn’t pine for Pine trees, because we’ve got plenty of those here, along with Redwoods, Oaks, and Maples; but—alas!—there are no Gum trees here.
The other three of our best animal friends who were living here with us at the time this story begins were Stripes, Marmalade and Tubthumper.
Stripes is a Bengal Tiger from India. He’s a great guy, and just who you want to have around if you need to intimidate someone—he can roar like nobody’s business! He makes my angriest, loudest growl sound like a soft throat grumble. He’s somewhat of a loner, but he does enjoy having Marmalade hang out with him.
Marmalade, by the way, is an Orange Tabby—a kitten. She joined us when we were in Switzerland dropping off a lady named Marianne Trieste-Trench (now Trieste-Kollenborn, as you will find out later). I didn’t know Marianne that well at the time, but she was a Security Ex-pert, whatever that is. I guess, based on the word, a Security Ex-pert is someone who is secure in the knowledge that they used to be pert, but are no longer pert; I don’t know for sure, though.
Marmalade thinks that she looks like a smaller version of Stripes, so she calls him her big brother. It makes sense that they look somewhat alike, as they have a distant relative in common, or so they tell me.
Some people are surprised that I, a Dog, get along so well with Stripes and Marmalade, who are Cats, but that old superstition about Dogs and Cats not getting along is an old husband’s tale. Canines and Felines just have to accept the differences between each other, and then most of the misunderstandings are cleared up. Mainly, we need to keep in mind that we Dogs growl when we are angry and wag our tails when we are happy, whereas Cats are exactly the opposite—they wag their tails when they are angry and growl when they are happy.
Finally, there is Tubthumper, an Elephant who decided to join us when we came home to Zenia after we met her in her native Africa.
A man named Ward, who was Warble McGorkle’s “right-hand-man” and “Image Consultant” (whatever that is), stayed behind in Africa. I never liked Warble. Truth be told, you could say I hated him. We even got into some scrapes with each other. I guess you would characterize them as violent disagreements. Since Ward was Warble’s friend, or seemed to be, I wasn’t all that fond of him, either. But, he left me alone, for the most part, so I left him alone (for the most part).
But getting back to Tubthumper. She is a lot of fun to be around. She’s almost incomprehensibly smart! Once she learns something, she’s got it down pat. She’s friendly, too. She eats mostly grass and hay and stuff like that, which nobody minds, but when she gets into Albert’s (and other peoples) gardens and decimates their carrot crop, she becomes Pachyderm non grata!
The humans have learned to hide their carrots in green tents they put up, wherein they grow vegetables and herbs and flowers and stuff away from the main garden. The roofs of these green tents are too low for Tubthumper to squeeze into. She could easily just march right in and knock the tents down if she wanted to, but Tubthumper is basically a mellow and gentle soul and doesn’t want to cause trouble that way.
Tubthumper’s skin looks kind of like Drako’s: gray and scaly; more wrinkly, though. The main difference between them—besides the fact that Drako is a reptile and Tubthumper is a Mammal—is that Tubthumper is about a million times larger than Drako (when at her normal size, that is).
Even though she is normally docile, you wouldn’t want to get on Tubthumper’s bad side, that’s for sure! If you see her ears flare outward and hear a deafening trumpeting noise—which sounds as if the entire brass section of an orchestra is practicing scales and arpeggios with their amplifiers turned up to 11—watch out! She is about to go on the rampage! Wise persons (and animals) will get out of her way on those occasions. But that hardly ever happens with Tubthumper. She has a brother named Chumbawumba, back in Africa, though, who is a real Barnstormer!
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