Authors: Eric Walters
“I still wouldn’t want it to bite me,” Nick said.
“You don’t have to worry about that. It wouldn’t bite you. It would wrap itself around you. Then it squeezes and squeezes, tighter and tighter until you can’t breathe. Then it eats you, whole, swallows you down in one gulp.”
“Gross,” my brother said.
“When it swallows you you’re not even dead yet. In South America there was a lady swallowed by a snake.
They found the snake quickly and cut her out of its belly and she lived. Or so they say.”
“Wow. Talk about lucky!” I exclaimed.
“I don’t know. I don’t think it’s ever so lucky to get swallowed alive,” he responded.
“But at least she lived. At least it all ended happily,” I emphasized.
“Maybe for the lady … but not for the snake. I just can’t help but think about Brent, cut open from one end to the other.”
“Brent?” I asked.
“That’s my snake.”
“What kind of snake is Brent?” Nick asked.
“He’s a Burmese python.”
“What does he eat?” I asked.
“Snake Chow,” my brother answered.
Mr. McCurdy chuckled. “I don’t recall seeing that on the shelf at the grocery store. What he eats mostly is rats and mice. He keeps them under control in the barn.”
“Most people keep a couple of cats to do that,” my brother said.
“Yep. Sometimes there’ll be the odd cat’round the barn. City folks just drop them off, thinking they can live alone in the country.”
“I guess the cats catch mice too,” I suggested.
“Imagine so. They don’t stay around very long though,” he answered.
“How come?” I asked, and then the answer came to me.
“Snake chow, you might say, although I really can’t say for sure,” Mr. McCurdy replied. “I don’t see much of Brent these days. He spends all his time in the barn, chasing down mice or bedding down under the straw. He used to stay mostly here in the house. He’d snuggle down at the foot of my bed, under the covers.”
I made a face like I was going to gag.
Mr. McCurdy looked at me and shook his head. “Let me guess. You probably think that snakes are all slimy?”
“Well … not really. I just …”
“Probably never held one. Have you, Nicholas?”
“Yes. But never one that big,” Nick answered hesitantly.
“Well, remind me to introduce you to Brent, maybe even pick him up. He’s as soft and warm as a pair of old leather shoes. Gentle as a kitten too.”
“How about if I just pick up a kitten?” I asked.
“She isn’t a kitten anymore but if you want gentle you can’t beat that old girl in the corner there,” he said, pointing.
Both Nick and I followed his finger to the couch, where a large animal was lying down.
“It’s another tiger!” Nick yelled, backing away.
“No, it’s a cheetah,” I corrected him, but backed away
as well.
“How do you know about cheetahs?” Mr. McCurdy asked.
“I read about them. You know, from
National Geographic
and books. They’re really fast —”
“The fastest animal on this planet. They take off and before you can count to five they’re travelling faster than any car along the highway.”
“That’s amazing,” Nick said.
“And do you know why they can run that fast?” Mr. McCurdy asked.
“The secret’s in the spine. Its whole back, from the top of the head to the tip of the tail, is like one big spring,” I answered.
Mr. McCurdy and my brother exchanged looks.
“You get used to her knowing everything after a while,” Nick said.
“Laura, wake up!” Mr. McCurdy barked.
The cat turned its head to one side and its eye opened up.
“Laura, come on over here,” he ordered.
The cat closed its eye and turned its head away.
“Laura, you come here this minute!” he hollered, louder.
Once again the cat turned to face us and its eyes opened. Lazily it rolled off the couch and landed on the floor. It stretched, its back dipping downward, almost touching its belly to the ground. Then it shuffled
across the floor and plopped down, right on top of Mr. McCurdy’s feet, and continued its nap.
“Boy, that was fast,” Nick said sarcastically.
“She’s an old girl. If she was a human she’d be even older than me and I don’t run races anymore. Still, once she stretches out the old muscles she could run faster than any other animal, young or old, except for maybe a gazelle or a deer. Come here, I want you to feel something.”
We both hesitated, exchanging looks.
“Don’t be afraid. This is a cheetah, not a tiger. Cheetahs aren’t like other big cats. Tigers, lions, cougars, leopards and jaguars, you can’t really trust one hundred percent. Even if you raised them from a kit, even if you’re their friend, even if you never ever saw them act aggressively, you still can’t trust them completely. You turn your back and WHACK,” he smacked his hand on the table and both Nick and I jumped.
“They smack you on the neck. Maybe they only mean it as a little love tap, but you’re dead just the same. But Laura is different,” he said, motioning to the cat asleep on the floor, covering his feet. She hadn’t even raised an eyebrow in response to the noise.
“Cheetahs are more like dogs. They like people, want to make them happy. See these claws,” he said, lifting up one of her front feet. “Other cats, even little house cats, have sheaths where they keep their claws when they’re
not using them. Cheetahs don’t have those. Their claws are always out, like studs in snow tires, to give better traction. Everything about them is designed for speed.
“They aren’t big like the other big cats. Can’t be big
and
fast, and speed is everything with them. You need to be fast, not sneaky or strong, to outrun your lunch. A cheetah, sometimes a pair of them, gets close to a herd, usually gazelles, and then just bursts after them, running at top speed. For a little while, maybe one or two hundred metres, it’s the fastest. If it doesn’t make a catch by then it just stops and waits for another chance. It can’t run that fast for long.
“The way they catch their food, chasing it down like that, is more like canines — you know, wolves or dogs or jackals — than it is like the other cats. The ancient Egyptians used them as hunting dogs. I read somewhere about a Pharaoh who had fifty pairs of hunting cheetahs.”
“What’s that sound?” Nick asked.
“Sound? Oh, that’s Laura. She’s purring.”
“Purring?”
“Yep. Let’s you know that she’s happy. Probably having a good dream.”
“Maybe thinking about running free in Africa,” I suggested.
“That would be some dream. She was born here, in the back of a circus truck.”
“Really? You’re kidding,” Nick said.
“Of course, ‘really.’ I got too many stories I’ve lived to need to make up anything. Half of what I’ve seen I can’t ever tell anybody because they wouldn’t believe me.”
“I didn’t mean I thought you were lying,” my brother apologized.
“That’s okay, it’s just I’m a little touchy about this. You see, cheetahs are shy, and they don’t like to breed except in the wild. Big zoos run by people with all kinds of fancy degrees spend all sorts of money to try to get that to happen. It used to drive them crazy that some guy who didn’t finish grade ten could do it, in a travelling circus. Over the years I’ve helped Laura — and her mother and her aunt before her — give birth to, and raise, twenty-seven cheetahs.”
“Twenty-seven! What happened to them? What happened to the babies?”
“Sold them to zoos around the world.”
“Too bad they couldn’t be let go into the wild,” Nick said. Judging by the look in my brother’s eyes, he realized he’d probably said something wrong again.
“You’re probably right. There are more cheetahs in zoos now than in the wild, but you can’t take a cheetah raised in captivity and turn it loose. It just wouldn’t know what to do.”
“You stupid idiot!” came a voice from the other room.
I jumped again and all three of us swivelled our heads
to face the doorway leading out of the kitchen.
“Be quiet, you old feather brain!” hollered Mr. McCurdy.
“Stupid old man!” came the reply through the doorway.
Mr. McCurdy shook his head. “If you want to insult me, at least come and face me!”
“Ugly old man!”
“Don’t get me mad,” Mr. McCurdy threatened.
“Drop dead!”
“That’s it,” said Mr. McCurdy. He rose from his seat, walked across the kitchen and opened a cupboard. He reached up and pulled out a box.
“Want some crackers?” he called out, and opened up the box.
A flash of blue and yellow came hurtling through the doorway as a large bird flew into the room. It flapped around, skimming over our heads and finally landed on Mr. McCurdy’s shoulder.
“Give me grub!” the bird ordered.
“No way!” Mr. McCurdy replied. “Be polite and say hello to our guests.”
The bird turned its head so that one large eye was facing directly toward us sitting at the table. Making contact, it spun its head around and stared at us with the other eye.
“Greet our guests,” Mr. McCurdy ordered.
“Hello … ugly children!” it squawked.
Mr. McCurdy burst into laughter as both Nick and I gasped in shock.
“Stupid bird,” Nick said.
“Stupid boy,” replied the bird.
“No point in trying to get into an argument with him. The bird always gets in the last word, unless of course I do this.” Mr. McCurdy handed it a large cracker, which it took with a foot and quickly placed into its mouth.
“That’ll keep him quiet for a minute.”
“Why did you train your parrot to insult people?” Nick asked.
“First, it’s a military macaw, and second, it was saying these words long before I came along.”
“But …” I started to say and then stopped myself.
“But how could anything, other than a dinosaur, have been on this earth before me?”
“I didn’t …” I stammered.
“Sure, sure, sure. People don’t know some birds live to be really old. Macaws and other parrots can live to be one hundred and twenty-five years old. This fellow has to be at least a hundred years old.”
“Wow, he doesn’t look that old,” I blurted out.
“And just how would you expect an old bird to look? Grey feathers? Wrinkled forehead? Balding? Hobbling around?”
“Shut up, stupid!” the bird called out.
“All right, I’ll shut up. Here, have another cracker,” he offered the bird.
“Maybe you should only feed it when it says nice things,” suggested Nick.
“If I only fed him when he was polite there’d only be a bag of feather-covered bones on my shoulder here. Macaws aren’t just smart, but stubborn as well.”
“If he’s so smart, couldn’t you teach him some good things to say?” Nick questioned.
“I have. I trained him to say lots of things. He probably has more than ninety words he can say … when he wants to. Usually all he says are insults. The older he gets the crankier he gets. Then again, so do I.”
As we watched, the bird walked down Mr. McCurdy’s arm and stuck its head inside the box of crackers. Its head reappeared with a cracker sticking out of the corner of its beak.
“What’s your parrot, I mean your macaw’s, name?” Nick asked.
“Polly,” Mr. McCurdy answered.
“Polly?”
“Yep. It wasn’t my idea. Some foolish sailor, who’s probably been dead for fifty years, hung that name on him.”
“Why don’t you change it?” I questioned.
“It’s not for me to do. That’s the bird’s name and I can’t change that any more than I could change your
name if I didn’t like it.”
“Dirty, smelly ape,” Polly said.
“Hey!” my brother said.
“I can see how you’d think that he was smart.” I grinned. “That’s what I think of Nicholas, too.”
“He wasn’t talking to your brother,” Mr. McCurdy said.
Nick started to laugh. “Must be you,” my brother said, pointing at me.
“Wrong again,” Mr. McCurdy said. “I think he’s referring to that dirty smelly ape standing behind you in the doorway.”
We spun around to see a chimpanzee squatting in the doorway, looking squarely at us, a big toothy smile on his face. As we watched in wide-eyed shock, it stood up, knuckles still dragging on the ground, and walked into the kitchen. It moved across the floor and opened the door to the fridge, the open door mostly hiding it from view.
“PFFFFT,” came a sound from behind the door. The chimp took a step back and I could see that it was holding a can of Coke. It tipped the can to its mouth and drank thirstily.
“Calvin! What are you doing?” Mr. McCurdy yelled.
The chimp, I guess his name was Calvin, lowered the can. He stared at Mr. McCurdy with a look that I could only describe as thoughtful.
“Where are your manners? Shouldn’t you offer our company a drink?” he asked.
Calvin extended his arm, the one holding the Coke, in our direction.
“No, Calvin, they don’t want to share your drink. They want their own.”
Calvin drew his arm back in. He put his can on the floor and took two steps backwards to the fridge, the door again shielding him from our view. “PFFFFFT!PPPPFFFFFT!”
Calvin reappeared, a can of Coke in each of his hands. His face was distorted into a huge grin. Large, yellowing teeth showed between his oversized lips.
“Close the door,” Mr. McCurdy ordered.
Calvin had both hands full so he reached back with one foot and pushed the door closed. With a can in each hand, he wasn’t able to use his arms to move and he walked awkwardly, swinging one leg and then the other. He lumbered across the kitchen floor until he stood right in front of us. He looked me squarely in the eyes. The teeth disappeared as his smile was replaced by a serious look. He tilted his head to one side and then the other.
“What’s he doing?” I asked nervously.
“I don’t know,” Mr. McCurdy answered. “Maybe just checking you out a bit.”
“Probably thinks he sees a family resemblance.” Nick
laughed.
I jumped in my seat as Calvin threw back his head and joined Nick in a loud laugh.
“He thinks I’m funny!” Nick said proudly.
Calvin thrust his arms out and offered me a Coke. Carefully I reached forward to take it. I felt a little unnerved when my hand and his met around the can. I tried to pull the can free but he didn’t loosen his grip.