Reckless

My name is Copernicus. They started calling me by name only when it was obvious I was going to stay. The name belonged to a human person. When they mention him, they show respect, as if they were talking about a wise dead man. I was a quiet kid, my mother says, with a keen sense of observation. I was always looking above, Jack and Elena say, lost in the sky. So they gave me the name of a wise man with a pompous foreign name.
It happens when you grow up that the confines of your home are not enough, not even the sky above you is enough. I gained strength and height and started dreaming about great adventures. I exercised my nascent teeth in the furniture of the house while I imagined myself chewing the leg of big game, being king of a pack. For that innocent reason, they put us outside during the day, our beds carelessly thrown in a small room in the patio. that was fine until the fall and the beginning of the rain season. Then, things turned miserable. I was wet half of the time. The humans were out of the house for long hours, hunting who knows what. Even the food went wet if the ants didn't eat it first. Eloisa was mad at me for this adverse turn of fortune and in her distress, started chasing the birds out of the backyard. For the obvious reason that they have wings, her efforts were futile. She drove me nuts sometimes and in my desperation I turned my own bed into rags. Because of half heard conversations and arguments I deciphered, I knew that some neighbors were complaining about us. the kids were friendly but their parents were a different breed. They didn't adore us anymore. Like fallen idols, our limbs were ripe to be torn apart by a disappointed crowd. I saw people in uniforms quietly coming to observe us and write mysterious reports for their chiefs. People left papers with those garbled lines they call written reports giving advise about us. In the end, we were placed inside again but the familiar landscape of the kitchen and the living room have disappeared in favor of a bare bunker where all the plants, furniture and books were covered and protected from us. I didn't enjoy being alone for so long, now that the days were short and darkness fell on us so early. With that non descriptive longing of youth, I missed a world I didn't know beyond my imagination, paced the house almost in tears chewing empty bottles and old socks, wasting my adolescent courage in useless despair, while prey and mates were outside, out of my reach. What was I guilty of to be left in prison? Why everyone was annoyed about my transformation in a dog person instead of some parody of a boy or a toy? In my heart I felt that Jack and Elena enjoyed having a wild beast in the family, but they couldn't support my behavior in front of their big pack. Human people have too many regulations and fears, they remind me of an army of frail ants instead of the big animals they really are.
One day, at the end of winter, they forgot to cover the couch. We started an innocent game with Eloisa, just pulling some cushions to the floor. At some point our tug of war turned rough and all the energy I have repressed for so long, came out; it was an altered state of spiritual inebriation, a symbol of joyful violence, a remembrance of the feeding frenzy of a victorious predator. It was all this until they came back. It was just shame in the months ahead.