Robin McKinley: Dragonhaven

Most of the f.l. crap lands on Dad now — a few of 'em talk to the Rangers, but most of 'em want someone they can call "Doctor" — and Dad tries to keep me out of the way because since I'm a kid I have to be even more polite to them. When Mom was around it was different — at our best we'd had Dad, Mom, and three graduate students, two of whom already had their first PhDs and therefore also answered to "Doctor" — but that was a long time ago. Dad's the only real scientist we've got now and he shouldn't have to waste his time.

The ones who think that the peculiarities of dragon biology and natural history can be explained by the fact that dragons are an alien species dropped off by a passing spaceship a few million years ago are so far out there themselves that sometimes they're kind of interesting. I've had good conversations with some of them. I've had a lot of good conversations with ordinary tourists, people who just think dragons are really cool and get a bit gabbly when they're actually here at Smokehill and want to talk to somebody, which I perfectly understand. The f.l.s that are a pain are the ones who want to drone on about all the Dracos that AREN'T DRAGONS. You could say it's our own fault because of the "Integrated" in our name, but that's nothing to do with us. The director before Dad and Mom almost went under, taking Smokehill with him, and the only way he'd managed to dig himself out was by agreeing to have a sort of zoo of all the other Dracos, and call the institute Integrated: But there is only one real dragon; there's nothing to integrate, not really.

The Institute is near the front gate of Smokehill, of course, the front gate having been put there at the spot nearest to a road and a town, although the road is only two lanes and the town is only Wilsonville. Since Mom and Dad came and the zoo was built we've got popular enough that there are eight motels, two of them like shopping malls all by themselves, and four gas stations between us and Wilsonville, and the track in from the main road is paved and wide enough for buses and trucks. Having them breathing down our necks like this (in the summer the first coachloads are already there waiting when we open at 8 A.M.) is a drag but it does mean we get regular deliveries of gas to run our generators. I admit I wouldn't like living without computers and even hot baths (occasionally). We're festooned with solar panels but they aren't enough. Too many trees and too many clouds, and solar panels don't seem to like the dragon fence much either. (Our solar-powered tourist buses do most of their tanking up in the parking lot outside the fence.) There's the barracks and the staff houses and a few permanent camps farther in, but that's about all in terms of human stuff. It's enough in terms of upkeep to get through our winters.

So I'm going to give you a rundown on the zoo, and then we're out of there, okay? So pay attention. The whole Draco mess started with some eighteenth-century British explorer guy calling that Russian lizard Draco russo. We have three nice russo in the zoo, and the female's pregnant, finally. She's Eleanor's favorite because they're going to be the first babies since Eleanor's been old enough to pay attention to what goes on at the zoo. Russo's pretty mellow too so nobody stops Eleanor from (strictly out of tourist hours) poking rhubarb through the bars at the expectant mom, since only the males are poisonous. And Eleanor does know to call them lizards. I told you she has some sense.

After that we have the Chinese dragon, Draco chinensis, which usually goes about eight foot long and mostly eats snails. Sure, if it stepped on your foot you'd go "ow" and it has a scary face, but those fangs are just tufts of hair on the jaw. We have six of them, but they all poop in the same corner most of the time, which makes me like them, as much as I'm going to like any lizard, but sweeping up the snail shells is a pain, because we have to do it really carefully — they won't eat anything they haven't peeled themselves so that limits the options. One of them still managed to get an infected foot once from a broken snail shell and wasn't that a big hassle. There's a vet in Cheyenne that knew a lot about lizards before she moved to Cheyenne and has learned a lot more since, but it's expensive to get her here. We don't have our own regular vet, of course — we can't afford it. I have to give Eric credit, much as it goes against the grain, he invented his own correspondence course in reptile veterinary, and mostly he copes.

Then there's the Madagascar dragon, Draco madagascariensis, with its vestigial wings, but if you were up on your paleontology you would know that it spent a few million years being a bird and then changed its mind and went back into Reptilia, and it hisses because it hisses, not because it used to breathe fire. It eats anything and everything, including very small children and very tottery old people, but it's no threat to the rest of us and no threat at all as long as it's got plenty of other stuff to eat — it doesn't actually like to go to the effort to catch anything.

My favorite f.l. arguments though are for Draco sylvestris. This is just a big chameleon, and the point is it lives in trees. The thicker the trees the better it likes it. Sounds like a real short evolutionary dead end to me, evolving flame-throwing when you live in a forest. Duh. Because it all comes back to fire, you know. Never mind the size, or even the wings. Dragons are the only animals (besides humans) who habitually eat their food cooked. They don't like it cooked through, but they like a nice char-broiled effect.

By the way, sylvestris is the least popular of the zoo exhibits — they're really hard to see. You don't believe they can be, because they run up to twenty feet long, but you'd be surprised. They look like branches of trees. Really. Us cage cleaners have to count them to make sure we got them all before we lock them up on the other side and clean their empty cage, or we may find one of the tree branches getting startled and trying to run away. I awfully nearly lost one out the door once, where I'd parked my wheelbarrow, but fortunately it didn't like the look of the wheelbarrow either and veered away at the last minute. Kit was next door cleaning out madagascariensis that day so he saw what happened, but he didn't tell Eric.

I've already told you about odoratus, who is at the very end of the other row of Draco houses. It doesn't usually get much more than six feet long, but it has these huge smelly sulfurous belches that the f.l.s say mean that it used to breathe fire like a real dragon, and that it's just evolved in the wrong direction for the last million or so years. Please. It evolved into huge smelly sulfurous belches because no one would want to eat anything that smells like that. Which is why our odoratus house costs more than all the rest of the zoo put together, because it's all glass, to protect the tourists. We need the tourists to keep coming. We need the money. I know I already said that. We say it to each other all the time. It's the truth. And, okay, I admit it, the zoo is a draw, since you're not going to see our real dragons, except in the tourist center theater.

Listen to me now because there will be a test later. There is only one real dragon, and that's Draco australiensis. They're extinct in the wild, but there's a place not far from the Grampians outside Melbourne that's been made a sanctuary that has quite a few of them — maybe as many as five hundred — although rumor has it the numbers are dropping and it hasn't been as many as even four hundred in years, but it's not a rumor I want to believe, so I don't. Australia's nearly the only place that has enough space left to give some to dragons. I suppose they also have guilty consciences because it's mostly their own poachers that killed them off, although when dragon endocrine extract became the fashionable aphrodisiac about a hundred years ago a lot of foreign poachers came to help, aided and abetted by the local sheep farmers because dragons love toasted sheep.