Below you’ll find the responses to the Sage Challenge for December 2024.
Entries to the Challenges published previously are found in individual issues of the SouthWest Sage. Links to the issues from February 2023 to the present are on the Sage News page. SWW Members have full access to the Newsletter Archives starting in 2004.
Go to the Sage Challenge page for details about the current Challenge open to SWW members.
Challenge:
Write a poem or short story about a vacation with a pet.
No more than 1,000 words.
Excursion Day 1: Bonnie Oders
By Rosa Armijo-Pemble
I begged and pleaded with my parentals,
They approved Bonnie’s vast, canine credentials.
Plenty of space in the family car,
Curiosity won, though not far.
In one gulp Bonnie ate the can of dip,
Lapping it up on her first summer trip.
I hid the tin in an open backpack,
Lied to mom it was food we didn’t pack.
No drool, refrained from a howl,
Instead, Bonnie clawed glass waving at a dairy cow.
Able to paw open a view as we zoomed by Dusty’s Stockyard,
She was smart, but no clue to stenches beyond our backyard,
Smacked dad’s head with a whip of her tail,
Making him spit chips when he tried to yell.
He scolded have Bonnie reside on the floor,
What did he think, she shrunk to the size of a spore.
I nodded and pulled the old girl down,
Discreetly Bonnie devoured something sister found.
Great! Try to tell a two-year-old no,
I hoped it wasn’t from the open can of Play-Doh.
Away from home, less than two hours,
Mom gagged at the scent of rotten flowers.
I demanded release me from back here,
Twice mom checked, it wasn’t the baby’s derriere.
Bonnie peeked from the corner of her eye,
I mentioned she was clever; forgot to note she’s sly.
She stunk up the car, worse than manure,
It was the bean-doh combo, that was for sure.
Dad groaned take your stinky pet for a walk,
Roaming around we had a heart-to-heart talk.
I advised her what wasn’t safe for doggies to eat,
Back in our ride, she acquired more than one treat.
A Visit to the Homeland
By Sandra Mayne
“You can’t bring Mickey on our family vacation,” Mom said as she folded my swimsuit and tucked it into my suitcase.
“But he’s part of the family,” I whined.
“No pets kiddo,” she said as she snapped it shut, then gestured toward my empty backpack. “Find things that will keep you busy for a long car ride,” she said as she left the room.
I added a deck of cards to practice some new tricks, string for cat’s cradle, and a plastic box full of pencils. It was no use. All I wanted to bring was Mickey.
Eyeing the pencil case, I formulated a plan. I emptied the box, poked some holes in it, and lined it with Mickey’s bedding.
His food and a small water dropper went in a reclosable plastic bag. I rejected his squeaky wheel but slipped into the bathroom for some empty toilet paper tubes he could scoot through.
Early the next morning, I bypassed the clothes mom had laid out for me and pulled on the overalls she had branded as “darling” that I usually avoided at all costs. The big pocket would be a perfect fit for Mickey. I settled him into the box and situated it at the top of my backpack. Dad carried my suitcase to the car and added it into the mountain of supplies my parents deemed necessary for a four-day trip.
Mom’s eyes sparkled in the first tendrils of sunlight. Her dark hair was gathered in a high pony tail and she looked like her childhood pictures that hung on Grandma’s wall.
Seat belts buckled, and backpack next to me, we set off. Mom handed me juice boxes and crackers in intervals designed to keep me quiet, but she didn’t need to worry. I wasn’t going to do anything to draw attention.
I set the tubes in Mickey’s temporary habitat, and gave him some food. He skittered around the tubes and gnawed on their edges.
We waited in a long and slow-moving line of cars trying to get into the magic kingdom. I transferred some of the bedding from the box to my big pocket, and tucked his supplies in a smaller one. While Dad parked, I slipped Mickey from the box and into his home for the day.
He poked his pink nose and whiskers out, but Mom and Dad were distracted by the sculptured bushes, flowers, people, and shops laid out before us, so they didn’t notice.
“Look Mickey, it’s your homeland,” I whispered to my small friend.
Disneyland is a cacophony of sights, sounds and smells. We rode rides, ate treats, and hugged costumed characters that felt so real it was easy to forget there was a person inside. Uninterested in the characters, Mickey munched on popcorn that I slipped into my pocket.
My favorite ride was Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters. I tried to tuck Mickey deep in my pocket because I worried that he would be frightened by the flashing lights. When I peeked down at him, I saw he had his head all the way out, whiskers quivering with joy.
The smell of churros lured me to a cart and I begged dad to buy me one of the tantalizing spirals of fried dough. Mickey devoured his bite, then licked the crystals off my fingers. When the sugar hit his system, he whirled and squeaked and scrabbled to get out. Clamping both hands on my pocket, I pleaded for a bathroom break. In the stall, I gave Mickey some water from his dropper and a few of his food pellets. Satiated, he curled up for a nap.
The early start and excitement of the day hit us just before the sun set. Mom said we should head to the hotel for a swim. As we plodded toward the exit on tired feet, we passed another churro stand. Mickey stuck his head out to take in the enticing scent. Before I could stop him, he darted from my pocket in search of his new favorite treat.
“No!” I cried, scampering after him.
“What’s wrong?” asked Mom.
“I…dropped something,” I said, scanning the ground.
“What was it?”
“My tiger’s eye marble,” I lied, poking at the foliage.
“You have plenty of marbles. Don’t worry about it,” said Dad as he kept walking.
Mom took me by the hand and led me away.
Should I tell the truth? How would we find one tiny mouse in such a huge park? Maybe he would be happy here. There must be other mice, and he would make new friends.
But, he was my friend, my family.
At the gate, I started to cry.
“What is it sweetie?” Mom asked, rubbing small circles on my back.
I sobbed between hiccupping breaths but couldn’t get a word out. It was as if a balloon were in my throat, cutting off my air.
“Sensory overload,” Mom chuckled. “Someone needs a nap.”
A beam of light from the setting sun caught a flash of white on the nose of a larger-than-life Minnie Mouse shrub. I moved closer and peered between the branches to see a pink nose and whiskers hidden in the greenery. Standing on my tip toes, I reached up high. Mickey jumped into my palm. I cupped him in my hands and made soft cooing noises as he nuzzled my fingers.
Dad’s mouth gaped open. Mom’s eyes were as round as her mouth as she let out a startled, “Oh!”
“What the? Is that…Mickey?” Dad whispered.
I tucked him into my pocket.
“I had to bring him. He’s part of the family,” I explained, looking down at my feet.
I heard a soft snort, then a chortle. I glanced up and saw my parents holding onto each other, laughing with abandon.
Wiping his eyes, Dad tousled my hair.
Mom shook her head and grinned. “That’s our boy.”
I rubbed the velvety fur on Mickey’s head and smiled back.
It was the best family vacation ever.
Tink Goes to the Beach
by Nancy McGuire
It was August 1988, and I was on my way from Los Alamos, New Mexico, to College Station, Texas, to start my second postdoc. I hadn’t intended to do even one postdoc, but the electronics company back east started a hiring freeze between the interview that I had aced and the official job offer they had planned. “Lean and mean” was the new corporate trend; R&D was an expensive luxury that added almost nothing to the quarterly profits.
So I packed my silver Mazda 323 with a few houseplants and some odds and ends that I would need until the moving van could deliver my stuff. Tink and her things claimed the front passenger seat. Tinkerbelle, my little black-and-white angora cat with the silky black tail that she waved like a feather boa, had been my housemate since grad school in Arizona. This was the second of five long-distance moves with me over the course of our 12-year friendship. She wasn’t keen on car trips, but if she was snugly situated in her cat carrier, we weren’t going to the vet’s office, and I did not play Zamfir’s Master of the Pan Flute on my cassette player, she put up with it.
I would arrive in Texas about a week before I was due to start my postdoc at Texas A&M, so I planned to spend a few days at the beach near Port Aransas with Mom, Dad, and Dad’s brothers and sisters. It would be good to spend a bit of time with the extended family. Dad was the youngest of the siblings, and he had finally been able to retire, buy an RV, and join the “big kids” for their month-long surf-fishing and gab-fest gatherings.
When we arrived at the RV park, I set Tink’s cat carrier inside Mom and Dad’s RV so she would feel safe while I got settled in. The minute I let her out, she found a hiding place and hunkered down to observe this fresh new hell to which I had brought her. Later that afternoon, I decided that this Arizona-New Mexico cat needed to see the ocean, so I scooped her up in my arms and carried her out to the beach. Tink’s eyes widened and she sunk her claws into my shoulder as she looked out with horror at the alien landscape. All right, enough of that—I brought her back to the RV, where she quickly ducked into her hiding place.
The rest of the day passed uneventfully. After dinner with the aunts and uncles, I drifted off to sleep on one of the fold-out beds in the RV. During the night, a tapping on my arm interrupted my dreams. Tink was patting me with her paw: “Wake up. Wake up, human!” I opened my eyes, and Tink let me know that she wanted to go out. My clock showed 3AM, but she insisted. I woke up enough to find her harness and leash and put it on her. She never really liked her leash, but she had more important things on her mind, so she tolerated the indignity. We stepped outside the RV, and she strode purposefully toward the beach. The German shepherd from the next RV gave us a quizzical glance. Tink acknowledged the look, but she was a cat on a mission, and she continued on without so much as a warning hiss.
When we got to the edge of the sand, she parked herself at the top of a dune. I sat down beside her, and for what seemed like a very long time, we gazed out at the waves and the moon. No wide eyes, no claws in my shoulder, just Tink’s fascination and my drowsy wonderment. Two pals sitting on the beach in the wee hours of the new day. When Tink was satisfied that she had seen enough, she got up again and led me back to the RV. We settled in for the rest of the night and that was that.
