ONE DAY IT HAPPENED TO ME that those hot, squeaky, smelly things moving around me were my brothers and my sister. I was very disappointed.
Even though my eyesight had improved to the point where I could see blurred shapes in the light, I knew that that big, beautiful thing with that long, wonderful tongue was my mother. I found out that feeling the cold air on my skin meant that my mother had gone somewhere, and that feeling warm again meant it was time to eat. Many times, finding a place to suck meant pushing the nose away from one of my brothers, who was trying to take my part off me, which was very irritating. I did not see that my brothers and my sister had any objective. As my mother licked my belly to stimulate the fluid flow from under my tail, I watched her, silently begging her to shake off the other puppies. I wanted it all to myself.
Little by little I was able to start seeing the other dogs and reluctantly accepted their presence in the den.
My nose soon warned me that I had a sister and two brothers. Sister was less interested in fighting me than my brothers. I named one of them Fast because, for some reason, he was moving faster than me. I called the other Hungry because he whined whenever Mother left, and when she came back, he sucked with a strange desperation, as if he could never have enough. Hungry slept more than my other siblings and I, so many times we jumped on him and nibbled on his face.
Our den was sheltered by the dark roots of a tree and remained cold and dark despite the heat of the day. The first time I went outside and felt the sunlight, Sister and Fast accompanied me. Of course, Fast was placed in first position.
Of the four of us, only Fast had a white patch on his face. When he jogged with joy, that white spot gleamed in the daylight. It was a star-shaped spot that seemed to launch an announcement to the world: "I am special." The rest of his coat was dark, with brown and black spots, just like mine. Hungry was lighter in color, while Sister had the same prominent Mother's snout and flat forehead. But we all looked quite alike to each other, despite Fast's proud trot.
Our tree was perched on the edge of a stream. I was glad to see Fast roll down the bank slope. But neither Sister nor I went down more gracefully than he did. The slippery rocks and the fine streams of water offered wonderful smells, so we followed that water trail to a cold, damp cave: it was a metal-walled conduit. Instinctively, I knew that this was a good place to hide in case of danger, but Mother was not impressed by our discovery at all: without any contemplation, she led us back to the lair after it became clear that we did not have enough strength in the legs to climb the shore slope.
We had learned our lesson: we could not return to our lair on our own after descending the shore. So, as soon as Mother left, we did it again. This time Hungry came with us, but when we reached the shaft he lay down in the cold mud and fell asleep.
Exploring seemed like the right thing to do, as we needed to find other things to eat. Mother, who was getting impatient with us, would get up before we had finished eating, and I blamed the other dogs for it. If Hungry weren't so insatiable, if Fast wasn't so bossy, if Sister didn't move so much, surely Mother would stay put and allow us to fill our bellies. Wasn't it true that I always made her lie down, sighing, when I tried to reach her while she was standing?
Many times, Mother would spend a lot of extra time licking Hungry. That injustice drove me out of my mind.
Fast and Sister had grown taller than me. My body size was the same, but my legs were shorter and thicker. Hungry was the smallest of all, of course. On the other hand, it annoyed me that Fast and Sister always played together and left me aside, as if Hungry and I belonged to another class within the pack.
Since Fast and Sister were more interested in each other than in the rest of the family, I punished them by denying them my company. So, I would go out just to go to the conduit. One day, while I was sniffing a delicious rotting and decomposing body, a small animal jumped into the air: right in front of me. It was a frog!
Delighted, I rushed towards her to try to catch her with my hands, but the frog jumped again.
I was scared, even though I just wanted to play ... I almost certainly wasn't going to eat it. Fast and Sister sensed my arousal and stampeded into the chute, slipping on the wet mud as they arrived and knocking me to the ground. The frog jumped. Fast pulled up over my head to jump at her. I growled at him, but he ignored me.
Sister and Fast fell on top of each other trying to reach the animal, but it managed to reach a pool of water and swam away silently and at full speed. Sister stuck her nose into the puddle and sneezed, wetting Fast and me. Fast jumped onto his back. And finally, we realized that the frog - my frog! - had disappeared.
Sad, I turned around. I had the feeling that he lived in a family of chumps.
I thought a lot about that frog over the next few days. I did it mostly before I fell asleep.
I kept wondering what it tasted like.
One day, when we anxiously and unruly rushed towards Mother, she began to growl
