CHAPTER 8
Albert was again on the same wavelength as us. This manifested itself one day. After he had gotten a good start on the construction of the vehicle, he figured it was high time that we settle on a name for our new time & space travel conveyance.
Albert joined us animals down at the water hole the next morning, and put the question to us: What should the name of the ‘new Arodnap’ be? Had we had enough time to come up with any ideas along that line?
At first I was for calling it the Rovette, but then I realized how presumptuous and potentially embarrassing that might seem upon arrival in India—what if Rovette didn’t care much for me? Or what if she had already become the forever dogfriend of some other canine? As I thought of the first possibility, I laid down on my belly, whined a little, and lowered my head into my forepaws. As the second possibility struck me, I jerked my head up and—without knowing that I was doing it—growled lowly but menacingly.
Stripes glanced over at me and seemed to know what I was feeling. He padded softly over—he can be a surprisingly soft walker for how massive and muscular he is—and sat beside me, in a show of friendship and support.
“Don’t worry, Taterskin, everything will work out,” he whispered in what sounded equal parts purr and growl.
I was grateful for those words, although I didn’t know how he could be so sure about that. Marmalade, of course, had walked over with him, and she then crawled up on my back and soon started playing with my ears. That made me chuckle to myself a little, and I lolled out my tongue to let the silent laughter escape.
So, in this attitude I patiently waited for someone else to come up with an idea for a name.
“Let’s name it ‘Stripes’!” Marmalade exclaimed, right into my left ear. I shook my head, trying to dislodge the verbal explosion.
Everyone smiled indulgently at Marmalade’s contribution to the conversation, but then Stripes noted that since the vehicle had no stripes on it, it wouldn’t be a fitting name.
“Full disclosure: I was thinking about putting some pinstripes on it,” Albert said.
“Still, though—” Stripes began to object, before being interrupted by Drako.
“Calling the vehicle ‘Stripes’ would be like calling Tubthumper ‘hairy’ because of those little tufty patches she has.”
Drako was doing push-ups and bobbing her head up and down after saying this, apparently proud of herself for her little joke. Tubthumper, for her part, flared her ears outward as far as she could stretch them, in a display of ‘coming attractions’ should Drako persist with her irritating teasing.
“What about ‘Modeerf’,” Albert proposed.
The silence was deafening. Where he came up with such an ugly-sounding name, I’ll never know. Well, maybe not never. It got no votes, though; maybe one (Albert’s).
“How about ‘Kralyks’?” Drako said.
“Nah!” everyone else said, putting that proposal to rest.
“Emitecaps,” Albert proposed.
After some ruffled brows and a long pause, I finally said, coming to my best human friend’s defense as best as I could, “Well, that’s better than ‘Modeerf’ . . . a smidgen better, anyway.” Faint praise was all I could muster.
That, along with the averted glances and distinctly unimpressed looks on the faces of the others, was enough for Albert to drop that proposed name. He didn’t explain the reasoning behind the names he had proposed, because when you have to explain something you think is clever, it loses most of its luster.
Then there was another long pause. Nothing snappy was coming to our minds.
Finally, Albert spoke up again. “What about something about the craft being an eight-seater? Or something that would incorporate all of our names?”
We all sat down to think it over. There was no actual sound, nor was there any steam coming out of our ears, but it was somehow nevertheless plain that we were all hard at think. You could ‘feel it in the air,’ so to speak.
We couldn’t come up with any name for the vehicle that incorporated all of our own names, but several other possibilities were gradually proposed: The Octomobile, The OctoGoing-Going-Gone, then The Skylark, Freedom, Spacetime, and a couple of others.
We seemed to be suffering from Analysis Paralysis. A name chosen by a committee is almost bound to be a compromise. Which could mean that, while nobody hates it, nobody loves it, either.
The animals all finally agreed on one thing: Let Albert himself name it. After all, he was the designer, the constructor, the builder, and would be the pilot and maintainer of the vehicle, so he should be the one to give it a name—as long as it wasn’t one of the awkward and ugly-sounding names of his that we had already rejected.
“All right, then,” Albert said. “Let’s take a different tack. I’ll name it after this place, our home. It can either be The Spirit of Zenia or . . . No! I’ve got it: The Zenia Zephyr!”
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