Have I just seen a dragon?!

It’s a couple of days now since I went to meet Lucy Arnold at the old power station. I have been putting off blogging whilst I thought about what I saw there; I’ve been trying to make sense of it all in the hope of writing a sensible and reasonable post! Needless to say, this hasn’t happened. So I am NOW blogging everything in the hope that it will make more sense written down (perhaps any readers out there will be able to help with any ideas?)

So I turned up on Saturday morning, completely expecting this to be some kind of stupid joke, or maybe just a lonely teenage girl wanting someone to chat to. I was actually ten minutes later than our agreed meeting time, having lost my nerve a few times (walking back and forth between the car and the house and not actually opening either door because I kept changing my mind. My neighbours must have thought I was insane!)

Even after I parked the car and walked to the old entrance, I didn’t really expect Lucy to be there. Nevertheless, there she was, looking nervously up and down the street. She gave me a tight little smile when she saw me, and motioned that I should walk with her, as she turned and headed along the side of the old building. I followed her around the outer wall until we came to the entrance, a rusty steel door which Lucy shifted to one side revealing the huge main room of the power station which was surprisingly brightly lit considering there was no longer any roof on the building. There were piles of bricks where inner walls had been demolished and old beer cans littered the floor – this place was obviously a favourite with people that had nowhere better to go.

Lucy started to make her way towards a closed door which looked like it might once have been a boiler room or something to that effect, I hung back. The entire building was very ominous looking with those huge big towers and the walls looked like they might cave in any minute!

“Lucy I’m not going in there, can’t you just tell me what’s going on?” I said in exasperation. I was getting sick of just following her instructions and not finding anything out.

Lucy turned to face me and took a deep breath. She opened and closed her mouth a few times before she finally managed to string a few words together,

“So, where my cat got those fleas from...it’s here...I mean, they came from an animal and the animal’s here. But you’d never believe me, you have to see it for yourself.”

And then she beckoned me again to follow her into the locked room behind her. Was this girl ever going to make any sense?! Reluctantly, I took a few cautious steps towards her, dodging a few piles of bricks and puddles along the way. Lucy waited until I was close enough to her before unlocking the padlock on the door and quickly heaving it open.

“Quick get inside!” she said.

I made my way inside and Lucy closed the door behind us with a thud. The noise made me jump, and being totally enclosed made me more nervous. Suddenly, a small pile of bricks in front of me tumbled loudly to the floor a few metres in front of me. Before I could even think about moving a little creature that looked like a lizard (but it was red) darted across my path and disappeared behind another large pile of bricks and rubble. Its sudden appearance had startled me, and with my heart racing and my mouth dry I whispered to Lucy,

“What was that? Was that it?”

Without moving from where she was, she nodded,

“Yeah that’s it, this is why you had to see it, it’s a type of dragon”

My brain was churning and struggling to search back through my work and studies, trying to pinpoint what species it could be, trying to find an explanation. I shook my head to clear it a little,

“Lucy that’s ridiculous, it looked like a lizard, like a salamander actually, I think you’re getting confused.”

“It’s not a lizard.” Replied Lucy evenly, “It has little wings, didn’t you see? It’s a dragon, I’m telling you, look...”

She crouched down and made a sharp hissing noise, as you would to attract a timid kitten. I craned to peer over and around the pile of bricks, but Lucy motioned me to keep still. She made the encouraging sound again, and this time a tiny little red head edged out from the depths of the large pile of bricks. It looked exactly like a lizard – except for the colour. It was a strong, pillar-box red. Weird!

Lucy took a sandwich bag out of her pocket that was full of cooked chicken. She took a chunk and held it out in front of her. The lizard crept further, poking its neck and front legs out of the cave of bricks it was hidden amongst. Now I was holding my breath...its front legs were much too long and clawed to be a lizard! It edged even further forward, and the breath I had been holding came out in a sudden gasp; it had wings. They were the same red as the rest of it and folded against its body, but they were definitely little wings. The thing (dragon?!) grabbed the chunk of chicken in its mouth and quickly darted back amongst the bricks. Lucy got to her feet and looked at me expectantly. I couldn’t form any kind of sentence, I just stood with my mouth open.

“Let’s walk” said Lucy, opening the door again and gesturing for me to leave before closing it as quickly as possible again with another huge bang that echoed around the disused shell of the old power station. We headed back the way we came in and started to walk around the local area. Lucy told me all about her trip to Snowdon, the eggs she had found, and about the dragon (Argh! Can’t believe I’m using that word!) that had escaped from her rucksack and was now hiding in Battersea power station. I didn’t really say much, just nodded and listened. When she’d finished I still didn’t know what to say. She asked what I thought we should do now, if it was safe to leave the dragon where it was. I was still struggling to take in the whole story, and in the end I had to just say I’d think about it all, promise not to tell anyone what I’d seen and take her mobile number so that I could call her once I’d though it over.

So that’s what I’ve been doing; thinking it over. And I still don’t have a clue how this happened or what to do next! I saw it with my own eyes, that thing had wings and proper claws, it definitely looked like my idea of a dragon. But they don’t exist! They just don’t! (it definitely wasn’t a Komodo Dragon or a Salamander) Although from a logical point of view it’s a bit like a lizard with wings isn’t it? Except how big will this thing get?! Lucy said that it was a baby, and it was already a foot long.

Just leaving it there might not be safe for the creature and the local drunks that seem to frequent the power station. But it was in that locked room which seemed secure enough for the time being. What else could be done? The only other option would be to capture it or control it somehow and that seems impossible – it already escaped from Lucy once, right?

I’ll have to ring Lucy and see what she thinks we should do, I’ll let you know if we manage to come up with some kind of plan! Argh! Dragons! I must be insane!

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Should I stay or should I go?

Hello my loyal readers! (At this point it probably only applies to my computer-competent grandmother). The last time I blogged I had left a message on the Arnolds’ answering machine, asking for more info about their cat’s mysterious condition! Well, I am close to getting some answers!

On Wednesday I had the busiest day EVER at work, which included a diabetic dog, a hyperactive cat and a very embarrassed father who had been forced to bring in his four year old daughter and her stuffed rabbit. Turns out that she had dropped the toy rabbit in the bath that morning, and was convinced that he had either drowned, or suffered some kind of post-traumatic shock as a result. An almighty tantrum had apparently ensued, which resulted in a harassed father and a very determined little girl sitting in the waiting room! He assured me that they would wait until all the real animals had been seen, and after an examination I prescribed lots of bed rest to help the bunny recover.

By the end of the day I was ready for a glass of wine and an episode of QI on the television; however the receptionist informed me that there was still one more person waiting to see me. I popped my head into the reception area, fully intending to inform the customer that I was leaving and another vet would see their animal. I quickly changed my mind however, when I saw that it was Lucy Arnold! She was looking rather worried and asked me nervously if we could speak privately, so I ushered her into the treatment room and closed the door behind us. She seemed a little on edge and was speaking really hesitantly, constantly glancing towards the door, as if she was worried that we would be overheard. Lucy told me that she thought she had an idea where the strange fleas had come from, (at last! A breakthrough!) But I must swear to keep the information to myself. This was so intriguing that I instantly promised not to pass on any information that she could give me, and to keep it between the two of us. She still seemed nervous though, and told me that I would need to see where the fleas had come from for myself. She was convinced that I would never believe her story, despite my best attempts to persuade her to tell me what was going on. Instead, she promised that everything would make sense if I met her on Saturday morning, at Battersea Power Station. She said that she would be able to show me exactly where the fleas had come from, but that I would need to show up alone and keep our meeting secret. I was so intrigued and anxious to find out what was going on that I agreed to the meeting, and with a final promise of confidentiality I showed her out of the surgery.

Except...am I mad? What on earth am I thinking, agreeing to meet a teenage girl at a disused power station on my own? It’s probably a ridiculous practical joke...I’ll arrive and thirty teenagers will leap out at me with water bombs or something. Only, I can’t help but be a little curious. The secrecy and the mysterious meeting, it’s all so cloak-and-dagger it almost seems ridiculous. Only...what if? What if it really does help to shed some light on the strange fleas and their origin? I can only deduce that I am completely insane to go, but of course, I know that I will! I’ll let you know what I manage to find out!

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Maybe they have a lizard?!

It’s been a while since my last blog post, but I’ve been searching high and low for a clue to these strange fleas that I found, and it’s been taking up all of my spare time! I left a message on the Arnolds’ answer phone asking them to call me with any more information, but I haven’t heard back yet so I guess they must be pretty busy right now. I just had to do something myself, so I got busy looking through all the old archives of various flea species to see if any of them looked similar to the ones that I found. This is where the mystery deepened! After trawling through what felt like millions of files and descriptions, I finally found a type of flea that I reckon is identical to my mystery bugs. The picture of the preserved flea looked exactly like those from the Arnolds’ cat; same shiny jet black shell, slightly larger than the average flea. It has to be the same one! Except.....it was last recorded in existence almost 300 years ago....how could it possibly be the same one? Perhaps the species died out but somehow a few were preserved, or they migrated to another country but had found their way back to the UK. It just didn’t make any sense! I seem to have found an extinct species of flea, alive and well on a suburban cat! The original name of this flea species has an old form of the word ‘lizard’ in it too...but surely fleas aren’t attracted to lizards? Perhaps these ones were? Hopefully I can get some answers from the Arnolds when I hear back from them; I’ll let you all know what I discover once I’ve spoken to them! (Maybe they have a lizard?!)

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Mystery Fleas

So, since I last blogged, I took the little flea creatures that I found on the Arnolds’ cat up to the IVM to get some checks run on them. I was hoping that this would shed some light on their species and maybe give me a clue as to how the cat could have picked them up; I hate being caught out in my job by a question that I don’t know the answer to, so I was eager to find out what they were. These little bugs were one big pain!

And this was the point where everything started to get a little strange! It began when I met up with Buckley to go over her findings; she had none. She couldn’t find any species of flea, lice or tick that matched the bugs that I had found on the Arnolds’ cat, and she really knows her stuff when it comes to strange and rare animals. She agreed that they seemed to be a type of flea, but had never seen anything like them before! How incredible! Were they an entirely new species? And if they were, how on earth had that cat picked them up? I would have to get in touch with the Arnolds and see if they could give me any more information that would make some sense of all of this!

If this is a new species of flea its certainly an interesting one...Buckley observed their jet black shells and noticed that they seem to be even more hardy than regular fleas. Your average cat flea is pretty tough, and can’t be easily squashed or killed by scratching. However, these bugs seem to be much more resistant to damage, particularly from heat. God, just think, I could get credited with discovering a new species! I’ll ask the Arnolds for more info, and also check through the National Species Archives to see if I can find anything similar in there...there has to be an answer to these mystery bugs!

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A Vet for Dragons?!

I think being a vet is easy; it’s something I have been desperate to do since I was five, and helping animals and their owners every day is the best job in the world! I love animals, always have, but dragons?! Now that’s another matter! When Lucy and her family brought their gorgeous cat to my surgery, nothing seemed out of the ordinary, just a simple case of fleas that I could cure pretty easily. The first step to removing fleas is to give the cat a good brush with a damp comb, which unsurprisingly they are never too happy about! You can also put Vaseline on the comb to help the fleas stick to it (ICK!), so as we were wrestling with the cat and getting water EVERYWHERE I got a chance to get a look at a couple of the fleas that had stuck to the comb. Little did I know that this moment would change everything, including my career! The fleas that I had managed to trap looked different to the types that I was used to. Fleas are absolutely tiny, about two millimetres big, but these looked a bit bigger than normal, and were completely black instead of a grubby greyish brown. Very weird! I gave Lucy and her Dad some treatments for their cat and sent them home, and then got the fleas under my microscope straight away! They didn’t look like anything I’d ever seen before, with a hard smooth shell that was jet black and shiny. I’ve always fancied myself as a bit of an investigator, so I decided to get working and find out what these little things were! A friend of mine, Buckley, worked as a scientist at the IVM (Institute of Veterinary Medicine), and I knew that she’d be able to help me identify my mystery bugs! I very carefully packed the fleas up in tiny sealed dishes, and stored them in the little fridge at the back of the surgery where we keep medicines. Then I called Buckley straight away to arrange a trip to the IVM for some answers!

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