Chapter Six

So, I had my own particular trick and my friend Bonnie had hers. She was fascinated by the things in the water, the things that moved but could not come out and run around.

I lost interest when I learned they could not play but Bonnie had always been fascinated by these strange creatures.

Bonnie hated water, she did not like to be in it, even just her feet and did not like to be washed - those times when Boss and Mrs. Boss would put us in a big container they had in our home and spray us with water and some horrible stuff that went all white and foamy. She would always try and escape from this container but never made it because the humans were bigger, stronger and even more determined than her.

However, she loved being by water. She never tired of it. From early morning until evening (allowing for our walks and the weather) she would sit or stand staring into the water, just looking and looking and when one of the strange creatures came close to her, she would wag her tail. There were other strange things in the water as well. They could move around, they did not walk or run like us but sort of hopped. In the early months of the year, there would be masses of them and we could hear strange sounds of them calling out.

This was normally Bonnie's signal to begin her watching until the cold dark days came again a long while after.

Bonnie would get really excited and even more so when Mrs. Boss took some sort of contraption and pulled some stuff out of the water. It was sort of a soft squishy substance with small dots in it. I smelled it once but it gave me no reaction. Mrs. Boss would already have set up another small pool of water where she would place this squishy stuff. Bonnie would go mad with delight because she now had two pools of water to stare into and would dash between each one checking them frequently.

After what seemed a very long time to us, the squishy stuff disappeared and there would be lots of tiny things swimming around, not like the big things that glided around the larger pond - no, these creatures would wriggle and cling to the sides of their pool. I came to know the names of these creatures because when they appeared Mrs. Boss would say to Bonnie "Taddies Bon" and Bonnie would run and look. So they must have been called Taddies. Later on these wriggly things would get legs and come out of the water and we would find them all over the garden and we would watch them get bigger and bigger.

In the hot months of the year, if the water had not fallen from the sky in a long time, the earth got very hard and very dry. Then, when the wet fell from the sky, the bigger hopping creatures would all appear from under rocks and leaves as if they liked the wet, actually enjoyed it and they would be hopping all over the green stuff that I came to know as grass. Bonnie would run around herding them all up and getting them back in the pond. I think she got very annoyed when they hopped back out again but she was never satisfied until she had rounded them all up and got them back where she felt they belonged.

I could never understand all those hours she spent looking at the water but as long as she still played with me from time to time, I was happy for her to get on with it.

Years later Boss put in a much bigger piece of water . How Bonnie would have loved that.