fable

Once upon a time, there lived a very curious little girl with brown hair and blue-gray eyes. She often found herself tiptoeing toward places she might not should go. When she was eight, her parents moved (with her and her small brother, of course) into a big red brick house on a tree-lined street, in the middle of town. This was a magic house.

The magic house seemed to go on forever, and the little girl found herself wandering around the house and the yard with big eyes, and open ears, imagining that the next little half-door in the wall would take her to Narnia or Middle Earth or someplace she’d never heard of. She was fascinated. Her grandfather, the kind of older man who seemed to have special magic or medicine (or maybe both) with small children, helped out a lot with the move. He also managed to keep the little girl and her little brother out of trouble…most of the time…with very inventive stories.

The previous owner of the magic red brick house, an older man (much like the little girl’s grandfather…he had magic and medicine, too), had dug out an old cellar, to the right of the back door, next to the fence line. Years and years had gone by since anyone had used the cellar, and the ground had shifted and water had filled the hidey-hole. The little girl and her even littler brother were mesmerized by the cellar. You can imagine that had the little girl or her little brother ever actually made it to the cellar, this story would be very different. You may also be asking yourself how two intrepid adventurers ever managed to find the self-control to avoid such a place. In a word…the answer is the mystical, mythical, magical bullagator. Of course, the bullagator in the cellar was repatriated when the little girl’s grandfather knocked the cellar in with his forklift and beaucoup fill dirt later that summer. Little was heard from or about the bullagator until the little girl with brown hair and blue-gray eyes became a big girl with brown hair (and some grey creeping in) and blue-gray eyes and a job at summer camp.

The Good Lord knows that nothing says fun quite like like a tetanus shot or a near drowning….hence, in God’s great wisdom (and the wonderful mind of Poppy’s with good medicine and magic), the bullagator was born. Bullagators are half bulldog, half alligator. And if a child should find herself someplace she ought not to be, a bullagator might magically appear to bite her little nose off. Bullagators are fearsome creatures. Not much was known about the bullagator until 2006, other than their magical business as the guardians of flooded cellars. It seems that bullagators are not only the guardians of flooded cellars, but also stretches of the Guadalupe River and partially collapsed barns that seem to scream “HEY KIDS!! COME PLAY OVER HERE!”

Extensive research has been done on bullagators in the last three years, and that research has borne much fruit. For instance, we now know that in addition to biting off the faces of naughty children who stray into restricted areas, they can lob acidified spit wads at least four feet. The spit wads can cause nasty flash burns, as well as causing rocks (lobbed by naughty children, to check to see if bullagators REALLY are REAL, no doubt) to burst into flame. Bullagators are about the size of Labrador Retrievers. They can be tamed, but only if you can whistle “A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes” backwards, with no mistakes. They also really like black jelly beans and Hank Williams on vinyl.

And in case you were wondering, the little girl is still living happily ever after. At least, that's the way I heard it.

mil besos,
rmg