Caffeine

"Uh-oh." I had just drawn out my mug, the brown one with the stylized cats stretching around it, and peered into it. Mya did the dishes last night. We get pests in the house sometimes and I'm usually the one to do the dishes, so I'm careful to put cups and glasses away upside-down, but Mya isn't usually doing the dishes and forgets.

"Mmm?"

I show her the cup. Carefully, because I don't want to wake it. "Look."

Mya peers into the cup, squints a bit. "Oh, dear."

"Yeah. We're going to have to spray."

"Again?"

"The stuff I put down wasn't for that. It works on spiders."

"What will it do to them?"

I give her A Look. "Mya, c'mon. What do you think it'll do?" She stayed at her mom's house for three days after I sprayed for spiders, and still she jumps a foot in the air at barely glimpsed dust bunnies, misidentified hair ties peeking half out from under the sofa and faint breezes that ruffle the fine hair on the back of her neck. Mya doesn't do fabulously well in East Tennessee where the climate is perfect for virtually every bug and beast known to humanity, everything short of moose and penguins. So she stays indoors, and I spray, but she hates it.   

"He's kinda cute though..."

"Sweetie." I reach for the cup.

"No..." She cuddles the cup with the curled up brown dragon in the bottom, itself almost exactly the color of the coffee I want to pour in there. It's facing her, not me, but I can hear a squeak come from the cup. "Oh!"

I wait for the scream, the throw, the jump, the whatever. If it's smaller than a softball Mya is almost pathologically afraid of it, whatever kind of animal life it might be. She finds elephants adorable, thinks a Great Dane the size of a small pony is the perfect pet and believes mice wait in seething millions to torture damned sinners in hell - where both the sinners and, more importantly, the mice belong.

The dragon in the cup is a lot smaller than a softball. It's bigger than a mouse, but not by a large margin. And it squeaks.

It zips out of the cup and halfway up her arm, and squeaks again. 

     A perfect moment of stillness follows as the little creature unfurls and flaps its wings once, twice, and folds them again. It makes little kneading motions with its front legs, like a cat padding at a spot its about to sleep on. Mya gasps, her breath coming in little hiccups.

"Oh. Oh. Oh."

I move to cup my hands around it, and she shies back. She pulls the arm closer to her and puts her own hand over it. Now it's sheltered in a dark cavern of hand and arm and breast. It pokes its little head out between her protective fingers, tiny claws clinging to her engagement ring.

"Oh my goodness he's so cute."

"Where is this coming from? Aren't you usually hopping up and down and yelling at little critters like this?"

The tiny dragon looks up at her and squeaks again. It isn't a mousy high-pitched squeak either, it's a surprisingly mellow sound for such a little animal.

"Don't hurt him."

"I was just going to toss him outside." Usually that's what I do with spiders when she yells for me to come step on one, or to smash it with a hammer or shoot it with a flamethrower. I just pick up the spiders and carry them outside. Not cockroaches - they get vaporized by size-twelves applied with malice. But spiders and moths and even centipedes? Yeah, they get carried out. I sprayed because she asked me to, but I don't really want the bugs to die. They have their place in the natural order, same as us, even the cockroaches.

I just want Mya not to be frightened.  I love her and her peace of mind is everything to me.  If it makes her feel safe and comfortable, whatever it is, I'll give it a try. It's worth it.

"Don't. Not yet."

"Can I have my cup, then?"

American house dragons - scincidae draco - are considered pests by most people, but there are some folks out there that are fans and raise them. That's the case with everything, really, there are nutjobs out there raising cockroaches too.

I think about what I know about house dragons while my coffee is oozing out of the maker. Mya is toying with the animal and it's walking back and forth on her arm, chasing her fingers as she waggles them at him. Her hair bounces and his attention immediately goes to, then dismisses it. Her earring gets a beady once-over, the dark body scurrying up her arm and leaving a trail of goosebumps as he goes so he can inspect the darkly glistening tigereye stone more carefully.

Coffee cup's full, so I pull the sugar jar out of its usual mooring to drop in the usual half-teaspoon along with the usual half-cup of cream. I like a little coffee in my cream.

A cockroach comes rocketing out from where the sugar jar had stood. Mya's mouth opens to scream, except,

"Get it!" she points at the jittering bug, and the dragon flashes off her shoulder. I swear it moved faster than I believed possible. The roach jinks, zigs and jumps like a skilled quarterback but the little dragon changes direction just as fast, flipping wings and tail to pop side to side and herd the bug away from the shadows until...

crunch.               

"Good boy!" Mya is uncharacteristically delighted. "Well done, you got him!" The little brown dragon munches down the cockroach in a few gulps, passing a black tongue over his lips and then, startlingly, his eyeballs. Mya laughs, charmed, and picks the dragon back up and places him on her shoulder where he goes back to examining her earring which I now realize could be mistaken, from a distance, for a cockroach. She tickles him with a fingertip and giggles when he bats tiny claws at it.

Well. I guess he's not such a pest after all.

"Can I let him stay? If he eats bugs, that means we won't have so many bugs, right?"

It's worth it.  I'll give it a try. "Right." My coffee is perfect. Light, slightly sweet. "What do you want to call him?"

"He's so quick and jittery and he was in your coffee cup, I was thinking..."

-end-