Guest blog: Snitsel on Human Behaviour

December 24th 2010.

Prins Snitsel, our undercabinet reporter, is researching human behaviour since November 26th 2009, the day he was born. Today Snitsel writes on the importance of indoor trees, breaking balls and puppets. This article is also published @nonfiXe blog.
By Snitsel Addison (Prins)

Tomorrow is Christmas day; people have been talking about it for weeks. They carry trees inside the house and decorate them with balls. Looks very funny, a tree with shiny glimmering red and gold balls in it. I wish there were trees growing like this in the woods. What a play!

When I checked one of the balls really close up I saw my distorted eye staring back at me. This frightened me, made me jump uncontrollably backwards in a swirl, much similar to the one I’ve been practising for quite a while now without success, but here today, doing it subconsciously, it turned out to be just the kind of swirl I wanted to be able to perform. I did not reckon that, besides the indoor tree, there was something else new that is usually not there. They had put up a tiny hutlike home – wooden with a straw canopy - with puppets inside. The puppets resembled people, most men in dresses, and a baby. One of the men wore bird wings. He bungled on the straw roof, smelling like the attic and dusty. There were some animals inside the cabin too, a sheep, a camel and a mule. Apparently the puppets were fragile, for, in my swirl, I hit the winged person first and he fell down breaking one of his wings on the head of the camel. That collapsed on its hoofs, fell aside on the crib of the baby and took one of the dressed men in his fall.

The noise scared me even more than the strange small unmoveable people. I turned quickly and by accident touched a golden ball. It fell on the stone floor in high tones and scattered all over the place. One of the pieces pierced my foot. Ouch. Never before I saw a ball as aggressive as this one. While trying to swing the stinging pieces of the ball out of my foot I did not pay attention to the indoor tree. It started to shake like a cocktail on a party before I noticed I had kicked it with my hurting toes. The tree swung to and fro three times and then decided to obey gravity, tumbling a little more to the left, losing balance and with an enormous blow it smacked against the floor amidst the scattered ball and broken puppets.

At that same moment my human ran into the room excited and shouting: Snitsel!! I sought refuge underneath the Chinese cabinet and lay there shaking. Can’t think of anything I did wrong, but boy, is he angry with me. Without giving me one more look, my human started to sweep the broken balls and puppets, erected the tree and shouted at his wife when she entered the room quite bewildered asking what ‘for heavens’ sake’ was happening.

Now I have been studying human behaviour for more than a year – since the day I was born - and I know that whenever they use the words ‘for heavens’ sake’, they mean serious business; then something is really really wrong, and usually the dog did it, or the kid, or something else outside themselves and smaller. So I stayed down under the cabinet and watched them clean up.

The shiny balls were all broken. He asked her: ‘What do we decorate this tree with? The whole family will be here in half an hour and we have a bare tree.’ She sighed (human behaviour when not knowing the solution to an apparent problem) Then she brightened up. ‘Wait. I have an idea.’ She started to run around the house picking up my toys, taking all of them into the kitchen (my favourite place). I heard the tap run. Blushed from activity she re-entered the room; ‘I washed them all. He – she pointed at me and I started to shiver even more fiercely for I know what humans are capable off – likes this tree. Why don’t we make it a doggy Christmas tree and put his stuff into it?’
From beneath the cabinet I watched them decorate the tree with my toys. They hung my favourite, a fluffy rabbit, in the top. No way I can ever reach it without the tree falling (strange, normal trees don’t fall when you piss on them or jump against their timber)

Just after they finished decorating the doorbell rang. A bunch of people and children entered. They laughed and seemed happy. The kids wanted to play with me and while I was having fun I heard my human tell the guests that I ruined their tree, but amidst his peers he laughed about it.

Evening fell, they ate, they drank, they talked until midnight. When the clock stroke twelve, all people in the room stood up from their chairs, toasted with glasses held high and repeated the same words: ‘Merry Christmas’.

Prins Snitsel undercabinet reporter on human behaviour for Doggy Review, in the series ‘On People’, today is guest blogger for nonfiXe. You can reach him through his twitter account: prinssnitsel, leave a comment here or contact nonfiXe.