Witzi the dachshund
“When I was a young man I once owned a female dachshund, her name was Trixi. She was in every way an unusual dog. Against all rules, I loved to take her duck hunting, because she swam like an otter and brought back the birds full of enthusiasm. However she was usually too late: a beautiful duck would sink in deep unreachable water like a rock, or an injured duck would crawl into the reeds or undergrowth, where even Trixi couldn’t find it any more.
One day, as she crawled out of the water, again without a duck and looked at me for forgiveness with her doleful eyes, I said to myself “If you could only fly….!” It should have been a consolation for her, but these well meant words stayed in her mind. Because she loved me above all she took these words as a reproach.
We kept a large herd of geese at one of the farms attached to the castle. When in the fall the wild geese migrated north, they always stopped in with the domestic ones to share some of their food.
One day I noticed a beautiful large wild gander waddling behind my Trixi. At first Trixi was a bit annoyed by the insistence of the gander, but after a while took it as a compliment. When the wild geese continued on their journey, the large gander stayed behind and they became inseparable. Even with me he lost all his shyness and even accompanied us on the hunt occasionally.
One morning Trixi and her gander companion disappeared. It took almost eight days before they showed up again – but they weren’t alone any more: a small female dachshund waddled on her short legs between them. I looked at the animal a bit closer and almost died from fright. It was a lovely young dachshund of course, but from his shoulders grew a set of fully developed wings of a wild goose and the down became intermingled with her red brown fur.
Full of pride about this strange creature, Trixi snuggled up to me. As she couldn’t fly herself, she brought me as a present, a hunting dog with wings. The gander also gave me to understand that some praise was due to him. I managed to hide the incredible pair in an abandoned forest cabin belonging to my father. The little winged dachshund I named “Witzi” because I could not think of a name that suited her better.
Sadly, my old forester Hadrian took Witzi as the devils roast and he kept this opinion even to the time when Witzi was grown up and became a fantastic hunting partner.
Witzi had learned to fly and luckily got out of the habit of squawking like a goose. After a short take off run on her little bent legs, she opened her wings and took off like a shot. She circled the cabin and barked happily when she saw Hadrian and me standing by the front door. With his pipe between his teeth, the old forester looked up and disappeared shaking his fists, when I motioned Witzi to come down.
One day my school friend Pieter van Groenhagen came for a visit to come hunting with me and I introduced him to Witzi.
He stared with wide eyes at the winged dachshund and then at me. He was dumbfounded. I however bent down to pick up a small stone, whistled and threw the pebble high in the air. Retrieving was Witzi favourite pastime. She barked once, shot after the pebble as if fired from a pistol, caught it, returned in a wide arc to lay it at my feet and jumped up at me barking happily, waging her little tail.
I gave her a lump of sugar as reward.
My friend Pieter had nerves of steel, but when he saw Witzis flying demonstration he was beyond himself for a few minutes. Finally he turned towards me again, looked at me with indescribable eyes, threw his rifle over his shoulder and just said:
“Well are we going….!”
Along the way he grunted:
“One should try to create a new breed with this funny animal”
I could have come up with this idea myself! I pretended that I had thought of the breeding idea a long time ago and answered:
“That would be difficult, as there exists only this one female and if Trixi and the gander….”
“Anyway, one should think about this idea” he rambled on. It was obvious that he wasn’t happy about Witzi. As a professional breeder of hunting dogs, he felt slighted by me.
I have never been able to teach Witzi the proper way to hunt. For example, if I shot at a pheasant sitting on a high branch, she thought that I wanted her to retrieve the bullet. With incredible speed she shot after the bullet, caught it with her mouth, stuffed it behind her molars like a piece of chewing tobacco and only then cruised after the pheasant to grab him by the neck. She placed the pheasant at my feet, spat out the bullet and looked up at me with shining eyes waiting for the deserved reward.
Witzi never brought an animal back alive. Whether it was a pheasant, a grouse, a wild duck or a heron – none of them survived the fright of being chased high in the air, by a barking and flying dachshund.
Pieter slowly seemed to have got used to Witzi. However I became a bit suspicious of him when I surprised him and Hadrian the forester, talking about my dogs in the evening.
One day near the end of autumn I lost Witzi forever .She must have had more goose in her little dachshund heart than I realised. A school of grey geese flew over one day, Witzi looked up from her breakfast, listened, happily wagged her tail and shot out through the window like lightening to follow the geese.
Concerned, Pieter, Hadrian and I watched her fly away.
First she caused terrible confusion among the wedge of geese. However when she moved up to the point with her encouraging yapping, the geese reformed their well practised wedge and happily followed her.
“She will never come back” concluded my friend dryly, “she has no character!”
“well excuse me Pieter” I protested
“she doesn’t have any” he insisted.
“OK she doesn’t have any character” I answered angrily, “but your grandiose idea of breeding flying dachshunds is also finished now!”
“so, you think so…!”
An alarming undertone could be heard in his voice. Forester Hadrian got up and shortly returned with a basket full of eggs, which he held under my nose.
There were about 20 neatly arranged eggs, as large as goose eggs but all with a lovely red-brown colour.
A foreboding thought came to my mind. My heart started beating faster and I looked at Pieter.
“You didn’t by any chance…?”
He gave off a short gleeful laugh.
“Of course I did, it was the simplest way. Everything that has wings lays eggs! I taught your little Witzi to lay eggs. But now that she should be sitting on the eggs, this characterless beast takes off.”
I went pale with envy as this breeding success left mine in the dark.
“So, how did you manage to do this Pieter?” I asked him stunned and a bit sheepish.
In my imagination I could see swarms of flying dachshunds chasing every flying game bird.
“My secret!” he dryly answered my question.
Then I had an idea.
“Maybe we can find a breeding chicken or goose and slide the eggs under her” I said guilefully. “But do you really think that little ones will come out of these eggs, even though Witzi laid them without having a husband?”
“Why not” answered Pieter surprised. “After all, so many unusual things have happened already!”
I had to accept defeat.
We managed to find a breeding goose who also accepted the eggs.
“Well my dear ones” Caprioli ended his story. “this was the only time in my life that my friend Pieter got the better of me. But nature herself gave me back my honour soon after”.
One day, as she crawled out of the water, again without a duck and looked at me for forgiveness with her doleful eyes, I said to myself “If you could only fly….!” It should have been a consolation for her, but these well meant words stayed in her mind. Because she loved me above all she took these words as a reproach.
We kept a large herd of geese at one of the farms attached to the castle. When in the fall the wild geese migrated north, they always stopped in with the domestic ones to share some of their food.
One day I noticed a beautiful large wild gander waddling behind my Trixi. At first Trixi was a bit annoyed by the insistence of the gander, but after a while took it as a compliment. When the wild geese continued on their journey, the large gander stayed behind and they became inseparable. Even with me he lost all his shyness and even accompanied us on the hunt occasionally.
One morning Trixi and her gander companion disappeared. It took almost eight days before they showed up again – but they weren’t alone any more: a small female dachshund waddled on her short legs between them. I looked at the animal a bit closer and almost died from fright. It was a lovely young dachshund of course, but from his shoulders grew a set of fully developed wings of a wild goose and the down became intermingled with her red brown fur.
Full of pride about this strange creature, Trixi snuggled up to me. As she couldn’t fly herself, she brought me as a present, a hunting dog with wings. The gander also gave me to understand that some praise was due to him. I managed to hide the incredible pair in an abandoned forest cabin belonging to my father. The little winged dachshund I named “Witzi” because I could not think of a name that suited her better.
Sadly, my old forester Hadrian took Witzi as the devils roast and he kept this opinion even to the time when Witzi was grown up and became a fantastic hunting partner.
Witzi had learned to fly and luckily got out of the habit of squawking like a goose. After a short take off run on her little bent legs, she opened her wings and took off like a shot. She circled the cabin and barked happily when she saw Hadrian and me standing by the front door. With his pipe between his teeth, the old forester looked up and disappeared shaking his fists, when I motioned Witzi to come down.
One day my school friend Pieter van Groenhagen came for a visit to come hunting with me and I introduced him to Witzi.
He stared with wide eyes at the winged dachshund and then at me. He was dumbfounded. I however bent down to pick up a small stone, whistled and threw the pebble high in the air. Retrieving was Witzi favourite pastime. She barked once, shot after the pebble as if fired from a pistol, caught it, returned in a wide arc to lay it at my feet and jumped up at me barking happily, waging her little tail.
I gave her a lump of sugar as reward.
My friend Pieter had nerves of steel, but when he saw Witzis flying demonstration he was beyond himself for a few minutes. Finally he turned towards me again, looked at me with indescribable eyes, threw his rifle over his shoulder and just said:
“Well are we going….!”
Along the way he grunted:
“One should try to create a new breed with this funny animal”
I could have come up with this idea myself! I pretended that I had thought of the breeding idea a long time ago and answered:
“That would be difficult, as there exists only this one female and if Trixi and the gander….”
“Anyway, one should think about this idea” he rambled on. It was obvious that he wasn’t happy about Witzi. As a professional breeder of hunting dogs, he felt slighted by me.
I have never been able to teach Witzi the proper way to hunt. For example, if I shot at a pheasant sitting on a high branch, she thought that I wanted her to retrieve the bullet. With incredible speed she shot after the bullet, caught it with her mouth, stuffed it behind her molars like a piece of chewing tobacco and only then cruised after the pheasant to grab him by the neck. She placed the pheasant at my feet, spat out the bullet and looked up at me with shining eyes waiting for the deserved reward.
Witzi never brought an animal back alive. Whether it was a pheasant, a grouse, a wild duck or a heron – none of them survived the fright of being chased high in the air, by a barking and flying dachshund.
Pieter slowly seemed to have got used to Witzi. However I became a bit suspicious of him when I surprised him and Hadrian the forester, talking about my dogs in the evening.
One day near the end of autumn I lost Witzi forever .She must have had more goose in her little dachshund heart than I realised. A school of grey geese flew over one day, Witzi looked up from her breakfast, listened, happily wagged her tail and shot out through the window like lightening to follow the geese.
Concerned, Pieter, Hadrian and I watched her fly away.
First she caused terrible confusion among the wedge of geese. However when she moved up to the point with her encouraging yapping, the geese reformed their well practised wedge and happily followed her.
“She will never come back” concluded my friend dryly, “she has no character!”
“well excuse me Pieter” I protested
“she doesn’t have any” he insisted.
“OK she doesn’t have any character” I answered angrily, “but your grandiose idea of breeding flying dachshunds is also finished now!”
“so, you think so…!”
An alarming undertone could be heard in his voice. Forester Hadrian got up and shortly returned with a basket full of eggs, which he held under my nose.
There were about 20 neatly arranged eggs, as large as goose eggs but all with a lovely red-brown colour.
A foreboding thought came to my mind. My heart started beating faster and I looked at Pieter.
“You didn’t by any chance…?”
He gave off a short gleeful laugh.
“Of course I did, it was the simplest way. Everything that has wings lays eggs! I taught your little Witzi to lay eggs. But now that she should be sitting on the eggs, this characterless beast takes off.”
I went pale with envy as this breeding success left mine in the dark.
“So, how did you manage to do this Pieter?” I asked him stunned and a bit sheepish.
In my imagination I could see swarms of flying dachshunds chasing every flying game bird.
“My secret!” he dryly answered my question.
Then I had an idea.
“Maybe we can find a breeding chicken or goose and slide the eggs under her” I said guilefully. “But do you really think that little ones will come out of these eggs, even though Witzi laid them without having a husband?”
“Why not” answered Pieter surprised. “After all, so many unusual things have happened already!”
I had to accept defeat.
We managed to find a breeding goose who also accepted the eggs.
“Well my dear ones” Caprioli ended his story. “this was the only time in my life that my friend Pieter got the better of me. But nature herself gave me back my honour soon after”.
Bilg had listened with open mouth, but Larissa was shaking with laughter.
“How did nature do that, and what happened to the eggs?” she wanted to know.
Well, they did hatch alright, some were deaf, but the rest developed into beautiful geese.”
“Geese?” wondered Larissa.
“Yes, but they had to end up in the oven fairly quickly. They…barked. Nobody could stand that!”
Larissa shrieked with laughter.
Bilg looked at the count with big eyes and thought about the story.
“How did nature do that, and what happened to the eggs?” she wanted to know.
Well, they did hatch alright, some were deaf, but the rest developed into beautiful geese.”
“Geese?” wondered Larissa.
“Yes, but they had to end up in the oven fairly quickly. They…barked. Nobody could stand that!”
Larissa shrieked with laughter.
Bilg looked at the count with big eyes and thought about the story.
No comments:
Post a Comment