Trailer Park Files: Trailer Park Pets
Trailer Park Pets
The Trailer Park Files: Adventures at The Ritz Carlton, Prevelly Hills AKA The Prevelly Caravan Park
I would like to introduce you to two of our pets that frequent The Ritz Carlton, Prevelly Hills AKA The Prevelly Trailer Park: Wilbur the Womcat and Maggie the Magdog.
On one our first nights here at this luxurious resort, Texas Dan-my American friend who may be the only surfer ever to come from Austin, TX- and Dave’O- the surf-crazed Irishman, heard a crash on the roof. I wondered if a tree had fallen on the roof, or if a thunderstorm had suddenly blew in.
It turns out that the noise of the crash was amplified and exaggerated slightly by the space age materials used to construct The Ritz Carlton, Prevelly Hills, and it wasn’t a tree after all. You see, the roofs here are made of a new age construction product known as tin. And as many of you can imagine or have experienced, large sheets of tin or various metals tend to be loud when impacted by any object.
On a side note, do you know that the term “don’t let them steal your thunder” is rumored to originate from someone stealing an old play writer’s special effects secret method for mimicking the sound of thunder in a theater? You see, this chap was innovative, and as the story goes, he figured out that banging large sheets of tin with some sort of blunt object creates a loud sound similar to thunder. And, as the story goes, someone liked his idea so much that they stole it and used it in their own theater play. Upon learning this, the man allegedly said “they stole my thunder!”
Anyways, upon walking outside that night to investigate the source of our own thunder on the rooftop, I looked up above me to see the silhouette of a cat looking back down over the edge of the roof at me. Me, being me, attempted to reach up and pet the friendly looking cat. (I know it was just a silhouette, but it was a friendly looking one). The cat’s silhouette simply looked at my hand for a while, then quickly vanished behind the roof, out of view.
Dan, Dave, and I took a seat on the numerous plush seats present on the balcony which overlooks the rest of The Ritz Carlton, Prevelly Hills, and settled into a conversation that was quickly interrupted by a strange creature that leaned over the edge of the roof, looked at us, and jumped on to a beam inside the porch with us.
We had no idea what it was, or if it was dangerous. I thought it might be a Wombat (I still have no idea what a Wombat looks like). We quickly figured out that this was the creature that I was attempting to pet earlier, and Dave’O immediately decided to repeatedly announce what a moron I was for mistaking it for a cat and attempting to pet it moments earlier. With those two completely irrelevant pieces of information, we simply decided to dub this strange new species “Womcat.” All Australian creatures seem to have weird names anyways, so Womcat seemed fitting enough.
Wilbur the Womcat frequents our Penthouse Suite at The Ritz nearly every evening. He comes for the complementary feast typical of our evenings at The Ritz, which is normally composed of the cheapest bread that money can buy. Every once in a while he brings his girlfriend along for some kind of Womcat date night.
We enjoyed these evenings and often looked forward to their visits with anticipation, preparing feasts of store brand bread for our expected guests. All was well until one evening when Wilbur mistook my hand for a piece of bread and leapt swiftly across the width of our luxurious porch, grabbed me with his claws and bit me.
Luckily I was able to defend myself from this dangerous creature with my incredible rolled-up-magazine kung fu fighting style, and I escaped without great injury from the formidable beast. Wilbur was banished from our suite temporarily for his bad behavior, but he has since been forgiven and he now returns in the evenings again for his nightly feast of generic bread, although he seems to keep tabs on any magazines that may be lying around.
We have another friendly pet here named Maggie. She is a Magpie that apparently thinks she is a dog as evidenced by her tendency to follow me around the park, trotting awkwardly behind me like a dog, which is why we scientifically named her sub-species “Magdog.” Maggie knows to come when signaled with a half whistle, half smooching sound.
She has not bitten me yet, but she does sometimes remind me of the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park in the way she stares at me sometimes.
Braving such wild and dangerous beasts is just how we live our lives.
All in the name of chasing waves…
The Quiet American…
Margaret River, Western Australia AKA The Land of Broken Boards…
