Tokki and Croatia pt.4

We extended today’s walk a bit and went to explore the island. We didn’t find a whole lot, but since I can’t legally (without the girl screaming like a lunatic) hunt insects I found another pastime activity. I hunt pinecones. There’s plenty of them all around and all sorts and sizes. So I jump on them, chew on them or just kick them and run after them. The latter activity is sometimes joined by the other two bipeds and then we are all kicking them around and there is dust everywhere and I am running through it. Then I steal the cone from them and run away with it, since they don’t know when to leave me alone and I want to chew it in peace.

As I’m chewing my thirtieth cone, I hear behind me, “Aren’t these cones leaking amber? I don’t want him to be covered in it.” The boy replied, “I hope not,” I immediately spit the cone out of my mouth and kept listening, but they started talking about where to go now and so on. One day you need to know something useful from them and they start talking nonsense. So how about the cones? What’s the deal with the EMBER? I don’t want to get burned. I’m sitting in the middle of the road, looking at them and the pine cone, at them and the pine cone, they must be getting what I mean, right?

The girl evaluated my word-less communication by saying: “What are you looking at, take the cone and let’s move on.” How could I ever expect her to understand that? And forget about putting the cone in my mouth until I find out what the leaking ember can do to me. As if I don’t have enough to deal with without extra problems. I circled the cone like wet grass and pointed my ears. We came to a tree with piles of pine cones under it and the girl was calling to me happily: “Hey Tokki look what you got here.” I watched the piles with horror in my eyes and the lady was happily digging and stuffing them under my nose. She wants to get rid of me, that’s for sure, she wants to get burned with the EMBER and then get rid of me, after all she was so serious about it. I ran to sit down on the other side of the road in a hurry, pretending I wasn’t there at all, but they kept tempting me and trying to see if I would be persuaded.

After ten minutes they gave up and we went on… ugh I survived, I’m not burned. And the next thing I know, I hear, “Oh, crap, I’m worried the dog will get it on himself and now I’m gonna get it.” I turn around and I see the girl running her handkerchief over her shoes and feet. I run over to her to see what is the deal with the EMBER. I sniff carefully at her feet, smelling only the sweet taste of honey from the cones. I lick it off, since it’s really good, and the girl says, “Well, at least he likes the taste, but I hope he doesn’t poop himself after eating it.” And then it hits me, they call that EMBER from the cones an AMBER, but it tastes like HONEY. They scared me for nothing, the idiots. But I really didn’t want to poop myself (they put some diarrhea gel in me when I do and I don’t like it at all) and so I collect pine cones only with a handle just so I don’t even touch the AMBER and I’m safe.