down even more and made the Tussleturtles really, really wise because they were never in a hurry) to coat them so that they would be waterproof.
The Oster is now extinct. The other creatures of Reull are very, to-infinity sad about this. They know that with the extinction of the Oster, one more string of the web of life has been torn away forever.
Then I drew the web of life that was holding Reull in place in the universe. Lots of the web strings were in place but lots of them were broken. There can only be a few more destroyed before the whole planet falls into space.
Today we had to take Fiddledee to the vet. She has red in her poop, and Mom says that can’t be good. The vet’s name is Dr. Karnes. She is really big and has lots of sticking-up hair that looks a little like a lion’s mane and makes her face look bigger than it really is.
Dr. Karnes listened to Fiddledee’s heart, checked her body for lumps and weighed her on a scale like the one at the grocery store. Then she took her temperature. When my mother takes my temperature, she has an instrument that she sticks in my ear. Then she presses a button and the instrument beeps, and then she takes it out to read what it says.
Fiddledee wasn’t so lucky. Dr. Karnes had to put the thermometer in another place, and I can tell you it wasn’t her mouth. I held her while the vet did that because Fiddledee likes me best, and the vet said I would help reassure her that she would be all right.
I looked into Fiddledee’s eyes, and she looked just like the cats on those birthday cards with the bulging eyes that are supposed to show that they’re surprised by how old you are. I think I know now how the photographer gets their eyes to bulge like that.
Finally, it was all over and I let Fiddledee go. She climbed right back into her cat carrier, which was kind of funny because it took Mom and me a long time to get her in there in the first place.
Dr. Karnes said she doesn’t know for sure if there’s anything wrong with Fiddledee. She said we have to keep an eye on her and bring her back in another month to see if she’s lost any weight. We’re also supposed to watch her litter box for more red poop and to bring a fresh piece in for a test if it looks red. I hope there’s nothing wrong with Fiddledee.
When we left the animal clinic, we ran into a man my mother knows. He had a dog who got bitten by another dog and had to get stitches. My mother introduced me to the man, whose name is Brent. I said hi, but I decided I’d rather talk to his dog, so I did.
On the Green Channel, I learned that a human can check to see if he’s top dog by taking one of his dog’s toys or chewies and putting it in his own mouth and walking around with it proudly. I think it might be a better idea to only pretend it’s in your mouth. If the dog growls or chases the human, the human is not top dog. If the dog doesn’t do anything or just tries to play, the human is top dog.
Another test is to wet your dog’s food with your own spit and offer it to your dog. If the dog eats it, he’s submissive, but if he growls or won’t eat it, he’s dominant. To wet your dog’s food, you can just spit on it and not really put it in your mouth.
I patted Kooch on his head and his back and on the top of his muzzle and he looked happy. Submissive dogs look like they’re smiling. If you want a dominant dog to start being more submissive, you can hold his mouth into a smile once in a while, and that will start to make him feel more submissive.
That works for humans too. If a person holds his face in a smile, he doesn’t feel angry or dominant. I saw that on Discovery Channel.
Some biologists think a smile makes a human feel less dominant because the smile evolved thousands of years ago from the fear face. If you were afraid of your enemy, you would smile to show that you weren’t a threat. I think humans are sometimes big liars, though. Some of them smile to pretend not to be a threat and then have you for lunch. For instance, sometimes Lyle smiles at you as if he’s your friend – then next thing you know he’s got you in a headlock or he’s kicking you in the shins. The smile’s only to get you to let your guard down. My mom says that’s pretty much how it works at her office too.
Brent had on a light green shirt with a dark green and purple tie. He looked a lot like a leprechaun, partly because of all the green, but partly because he was really short – much shorter than my mother, who is really tall for a woman. My mother is a little bit taller than my father, but she’s a lot taller than the man named Brent.
I got the feeling Brent is one of those grown-ups who doesn’t really like kids but pretends to. I like people who don’t like kids and don’t even pretend to like them – like Mr. Byers, who owns the big apple tree that Bird and I play on. At least with Mr. Byers you know to stay away from him because he might grab you by the ear and march you over to the principal’s office like he did to Justin who fell out of the tree and into his backyard one day.
But with people like the man named Brent, their voices say, ‘I like you’ and ‘Aren’t you a cute little kid,’ but that’s not what their faces say. He reminded me of the alligator snapper turtle, which has a bright pink tongue that looks like a worm that lures fish right into his mouth. Or like one of those shiny cards that if you tilt it one way you see one thing but if you tilt it the other way, you see something different.
Afterwards, I asked my mother if she actually liked that man. She said she likes his company.
I said, ‘Is that man going to be your boyfriend?’
She paused for a moment – too long of a moment, if you ask me. Then she said, ‘Phin, I enjoy Brent’s company. We have a lot in common. Listen, Phin, if I ever were to have a boyfriend, it would never come as a surprise, okay?’
I said, ‘Good, because bad surprises upset my homeostatis.’ I learned that word in Discover magazine, but I had never had a chance to use it until then. When a person’s homeostatis is upset, he feels uncomfortable and is motivated to do something about it. For example, if you are cold, you will shiver and get a sweater. I didn’t want to think about what I would be motivated to do if Mom made that man her boyfirend.
Besides, my mother and he would make a funny-looking pair. They would be different than most mammals since the male is usually bigger than the female. There are some mammals where the female is bigger, but only a bit bigger. That would be like the spotted hyena. The female spotted hyena has to be bigger than the male in order to stop him from eating her pups.
Of the species where the female is a lot bigger than the male, many of them are spiders. For example, the average female golden orb spider is twenty centimetres long, but the male is only five to six millimetres long. Some of the golden female orbs are a thousand times bigger than the male. The male is so tiny that he can live on the female’s web and steal her food without her even noticing him. He mates with her usually while she’s eating and is distracted. But if she notices him, she will try to eat him too. I can always hope that happens to Brent.
My father looks better with my mother, but they got separated when I was eight. I live with my mom because my father travels a lot. He’s a foreign correspondent. Right now he’s in Helsinki. It is six hours later in Helsinki than it is here. That means my dad is living in the future.
Last night I drew land formations and natural disasters on Reull. Spikequakes are natural disasters where spikes come up out of the ground. Virex is a virus when everything you touch starts to get bigger and bigger and when it’s ten feet big, it explodes and your skin turns purple, then blue, then red, then green. Firex is when you get hotter and hotter but don’t catch on fire, you simply melt into a pool of fluids.
I showed them to my mother and she said, ‘Wow,
