Langurs |
noun: plural of langur; any of various arboreal monkeys of South and South East Asia having long hair surrounding the face, a slender body, long tail. Genus: Presbytis. |
Nasturtium |
noun: any of various plants of the genus Tropaeolum, having round leaves and yellow, red or orange trumpet-shaped flowers. |
Ophelia was wriggling around on my face, Portia was sliding around tickling my ears, Hamlet was resting his head on my shoulders and Kathy was giggling.
This might be a good moment to mention that Ophelia, Portia and Hamlet were snakes and only Kathy was human. She was blonde and glamorous and looked to be in her thirties but a VHS poking out of the video player labelled ‘Kathy’s Big 50th’ gave her secret away. Kathy was the proprietor of Kathy’s Critters and when she’d asked me if I fancied meeting some of the critters, eager to please I’d rather unwisely said yes.
‘Well, I used to work at the zoo,’ said Kathy, explaining how she came to be in loco parentis to so many animals. ‘And I used to take the critters out and do educational work; school visits and so on. I got asked to do some birthday parties because kids love bugs and snakes and critters …’
‘Ri-ight,’ I said, my voice rising as Hamlet made his way up my torso and around my neck.
‘Well, obviously they weren’t my animals but I asked my boss and he said, “OK, we’re not using them at the weekend,” so I started doing them and it built up and eventually I started Kathy’s Critters.’
‘So meeting Hamlet, Ophelia and Portia would be a treat for an eight-year-old?’ I asked, confused because being a corn snake’s adventure playground didn’t seem as much fun as, say, having some cake.
‘You’re lucky I didn’t bring the python upstairs,’ said Kathy. ‘Being a Brit, you’ll like this. His name’s “Monty”.’
I chuckled a slightly lame chuckle, not because I didn’t think the Monty Python reference chuckleworthy but because my attention was elsewhere. Hamlet appeared to be trying to get inside my T-shirt and Ophelia and Portia were taking an arm each.
‘I used toys to help with the education,’ Kathy continued, ‘you can get some anatomically correct stuffed toys and things, and people started asking where they could get them so I started selling those as well. That’s when I started RealCoolToys.com and pretty soon my biggest sellers were edible insect candies so I started InsectCandy.com too.’
‘And they’re sweets shaped like bugs and stuff?’ I asked.
‘No, they’re real insects,’ smiled Kathy. ‘You know, ants covered in chocolate, mealworms, that kind of thing. Boys love ’em. I’ll give you some later.’
‘That’d be lovely,’ I lied. ‘You will get me a couple of googlewhacks too … won’t you?’