Week 2 Story: The Daily Chase.

The updated version of this story is here.

The Daily Chase

Some things just never change. Every day Bosco is let out into the yard as soon as his owners are ready to leave for work. Every day the Squirrel lets Bosco know how much of a stupid mutt he thinks he is and runs towards the fence. Every day the squirrel seems to climb up the fence while Bosco tries to jump at him barking “I’m going to get you one day, you mean old squirrel!”

Well one day as the squirrel ran to the fence and climbed it he said to Bosco, “How long will it take you to figure out that I’m too quick for you!”

It finally hit Bosco. “The squirrel is right. I must somehow trick him into coming close enough to me, that I will be able to catch him before he jumps for the fence.”

So, Bosco spent the rest of the evening pondering ways to trick the squirrel. Bosco thought about his daily routine real hard. He realized that the squirrel always is standing in the same spot in the yard. “I have to make him come to me somehow.” That is when Bosco got his idea.

Bosco decided to beg his owner to let him out that night, so he could put his favorite bone near the bottom of the rose garden by the house. This was a huge sacrifice being that he chews on his bone every night before bed, but he reminded himself that it would be worth it.

The next day when his owner let him out, Bosco didn’t run after the squirrel as usual. Instead he ran over to his bone barking “My bone! My bone! There it is!”

The squirrel was confused and slightly moved closer to Bosco before he heard “OWWWWW! A thorn is in my paw!”

Bosco just laid there whimpering for a minute before the squirrel decided to move closer to Bosco to get a better view of his nemesis.

Bosco keeping a close eye on the squirrel continued to act out how much pain he was in, until he knew the squirrel in close enough distance where he could get him. At the exact moment when Bosco realized he could get the squirrel, he jumped up and ran towards the squirrel and trapped him in his paws!

“You’ve finally outsmarted me dog! Please show mercy!” squeaked the squirrel.

“Of course, I will show mercy. But you must never refer to me as stupid ever again and you must give me more of a chance to catch you in order to keep our game fun” barked Bosco.

From that day on the game was different each day, but they made sure to both respect each other for the enemies secretly had a friendship.

I found this image on Pixabay. I felt that it was a good representation of Bosco chasing the squirrel.

Author’s Note:

My story is based on The Crocodile in the River from the Jataka anthology. In this story, every day a monkey would go to an island in this river he lived nearby in order to eat fresh fruit. The only way the monkey could get to and from the island was to jump from the bank on a big rock, and from the big rock to the island. Well one day, the monkey noticed that the rock was higher out of the water than usual so he decided to call towards the rock to see if it would respond. Thinking that the rock normally did respond each day to the monkey, the crocodile responded making the monkey realize he must trick the crocodile in order to escape. The monkey’s trickery ends up working and the two ends up respecting each other. In my story, I wanted to create a more relatable setting so I used a dog and a squirrel chasing after each other in a backyard. Instead of having the monkey do the trickery however, I made the dog who symbolized the crocodile perform the trickery. I made sure that the two continued their daily rituals however I wanted the two to gain a respect for each other just as the monkey and crocodile did.

Bibliography:

The Crocodile in the River from Vanarinda Jataka, in The Jataka: Volume 1 translated by Robert Chalmers.