Dragons for Global Warming!
Vern wrote this back in 2010. It's a lot warmer in Los Lagos this year, and he's still not happy about 30 degreed F, but he does feel better.
It’s four below here in Los Lagos, by your Fahrenheit scale. -20 Celsius, which sounds way worse. On a dragon scale, it’s somewhere between “Torture” and “Hellish.” (Hell is cold. Unless you’re a yeti; then it’s a balmy 102 because that adds to your despair.)
Cold is not good for dragons, especially North African Wyverns. I may be warm-blooded, but I lack fur, fat, or other naturally insulating material. When it got cold, I would retreat deep into some mountain, preferably near a lava spout, and tuck in for a few months. Once, I hibernated through an ice age. I was weak from hunger when I woke up, but was I rested!
Anyway, I can’t hibernate here. There’s always someone knocking on our door wanting lost treasures found, or they came up on the wrong side of a Faerie scam (I really should write the Dragon’s Guide to Avoiding Stupid Scams So You Don’t Annoy Me. Grace says it needs a better title.) Police Chief Santry, for all his griping, still calls on us when there’s Faerie trouble his troops can’t handle. And, of course, Grace thinks I should attend Mass and adoration and all those other things that take me into the chilly air to a chilly car to a chilly church when what I really want is to blow a fire into our pot-belly stove and curl up with the electric blanket and the magically bespelled one Grace made me. I have a jacket of sorts, but it barely makes a dent in subzero. A lady at Little Flowers knitted me some wool socks a few Christmases ago. I’ve never worn them--I have some dignity. Or had. This year froze it out of me. No, you won’t see me in them, but I begrudge taking them off just to meet with some Mundane too stupid to stay indoors and out of trouble in this weather.
You Mundanes talk a lot about global warming. I’m all for it. Bring it on!