Meph's Story!

It’s been a few years now since our little dragon Mephistopheles (or Meph for short) came into our household.

It all began when my aunt and uncle gave me that wondrous hand-painted egg. It had been in the family as long as anyone could remember and we believe it originally came from Sweden. It was just under 4 inches long, looked incredibly old and had always been kept in a beautiful but strangely carved oak box with mystical rune letters inscribed both on the inside and outside.

Well, that first summer my wife and I kept it in a place of honor on the hearth of our fireplace.Whereas my aunt and uncle had always kept the egg stored away, we wanted to enjoy its beauty.

Winter and the holiday season came before we knew it that year. I had been planning to clean the chimney so we could light a fire in our fireplace, but it wasn’t until late December before I took the time to do it. So, on that fateful snowy night in deep December, we lit our first fire of the season in the fireplace and settled down for a romantic evening. But it was not to be. We first heard a slight cooing sound, a whisper at first, that steadily grew louder. We had no idea where it was coming from. Next came a tiny cracking noise and then a chirp. Astonished, we both looked at the hearth. Warmed by the fire, the egg was hatching! Slowly, piece by piece, something was chipping its way out of the shell. First a little green hand, then a horn appeared from within. Finally, a tiny nose slowly, cautiously peeked out, followed by the biggest blue eyes we had ever seen! The emerging creature looked at us, made a soft sound as if reassured and accepting of its surroundings, crawled out of the egg shell, curled up on the hearth and promptly went to sleep. We could not believe our eyes, but here, right in our own living room, was a sleeping baby dragon.

That’s how Meph came into our family. It’s been a few years now and we’ve learned a lot about raising a baby dragon; it's all been trial and error, I assure you.

For instance, we’ve learned that Meph is very much like a kitten. She (I say “she” but to tell you the truth, we don’t know if Meph is a little boy or a little girl) is very curious and constantly gets into things. She likes cookies, milk, hamburger, pizza and she has this strange affinity for broccoli. She likes to sun herself on our window ledge and seems to like heat very much. She has incredibly good hearing; usually she will perk up at a noise before the dog does. She’s very fast and impossible to photograph, although we’ve tried many times. It seems she just doesn’t want to have her picture taken, so we’ve stopped trying. She loves to pose for my drawings though. I've recently started imagining what she might look like when she gets her wings (I can feel little nubs just under the skin on her shoulders).

One of the strangest things that we have encountered is Meph's apparent effect on the other animals around us. Our neighbor's dog had puppies a few months ago and two of the puppies were born with wings! And just a few weeks ago another neighbor's cat had kittens and most of them had single horns on their heads! My daughter has started calling them PeggaPuppies and Uni-Kittens and the name has sort of stuck. I cannot imagine what's going to happen when the puppies learn to fly.

A lot of people ask us why we named her Mephistopheles. I guess since it was the fire that started her hatching and the fact that she does have horns, my wife came up with the name of the devil from Faust. It does seem to fit; she can be “devilish” at times, getting into things she really shouldn’t. It doesn’t matter though, she keeps our lives interesting with her antics and we love her very much. We certainly hope you do too!

-- David and Meph!