KDW

This was one of the first stories I ever wrote. It was entirely on my own, not for school (as you can see, the paper is ungraded.) I estimate it’s from 1972. At that age I must have been obsessing about Greek myths, fairy tales, and dinosaurs and combined them with a plotline from Saturday morning Bugs Bunny cartoons.

The Rise and fall of dragons

Pherhaps [sic] you are wondering where dragons came from. Once they were just big ordinary reptiles like dinosaurs. They went to church and went on picnics with princes.

Well, one day he was on a picnic with Prince Verogeti. He bought [sic] along some spicy Italian food that he shared with the dragon. The dragon (whose named was Punker) was very sensitive to spicy, hot food so he cried out “Water, Water.” The prince gave him Tabasco sauce instead. The Punker dragon’s throat was so hot that he breathed fire. Punker ran shrieking into the woods and was never seen again.

As the ordinary dragons died off, Punker’s ancestors [note: I think I meant descendants] breathed fire too, so many years later all dragons were fire-breathers. They weren’t normal and nice anymore. They wrecked castles, ate fair maidens, and did countless damages for revenge on what Prince Verogeti did to Punker.

However the smoke that the dragons breathed out they breathed in again, like smoking. Because of this many dragons died of Lung Cancer. The remaining ones buried themselves and are known today as volcanoes.

This is really a pretty inclusive legend giving an explanation for the origin and then extinction of dragons, not to mention volcanoes.