Jaycee and Precious the Dragon

“There weren’t always dragons in the valley. In fact, when I was your age, I didn’t even believe dragons were real.”

I tell this to my granddaughter Jaycee, who asked right away if I have always had a dragon. Jaycee has just been dropped off by her mother, who didn’t even get out of the car.

“But now people can’t imagine raising sheep in the valley without them. Really, Jaycee, besides you, I think our dragon Precious is the most special being in the world to me. I’m glad you get to finally meet her. She does more than guard our sheep. She is like a member of the family. Your family.”

We walk out to the Red Barn, and Jaycee takes my hand. It is a lovely warm summer morning, perfect weather for her first day ever on the farm. When my son Peter died, her mother took Jaycee to live in the city. I have been waiting years to have Jaycee visit and today is the day. Of course, we need to go directly to the barn.

Jaycee stops and looks up at me.

“Grandpa, when do I get to meet Precious?”

“Soon, my dear. That’s where we’re going right now.”

Jaycee is vibrating with excitement.

She might be excited, but I’m even more thrilled to have her meet my dragon. At her age, I couldn’t even imagine meeting a real dragon. I would fantasize about having a dragon for a friend. I would draw endless dragons in my notebooks. I would read one fantasy novel after another. But I knew in my head that dragons weren’t real. Even so, I guarded a spot in my heart for the possibility that magic and dragons might exist.

Then, in what seemed like a wizard’s magic to my young self, a remnant population of dragons was discovered by scientists, high in the Andes mountains in a secret valley. I remember cutting out the stories in newspapers and magazines and posting them on my wall when I was eleven. Magic was real after all, even if it was far away.

If I could go back and tell my eleven-year-old self that I would someday have a dragon as a friend, I don’t think he would believe me.

“Why does Precious live in the barn?” asks Jaycee.

“It is where she is happiest. She has been in the house before, and she does fine there, but she gets distressed whenever she is separated for too long from her sheep. And the sheep will make noise any time they can’t see her. They have a special bond.

“I can remember a time when people would lose sheep and lambs every spring to lions, wolves, and bears which would come down from the hills. I think it was about 30 years ago when sheep farmers in the valley first imported dragons. Now almost every farm in the valley has at least one dragon, and our valley produces some of the finest wool on some of the most prosperous farms in the county.

“We have Precious, our lovely chestnut brown motherly dragon, who protects our sheep. It is more than that. Since Precious came to live with us, you might not believe it, but the farm has been abundant in other ways. We find more wild mushrooms. The chickens lay bigger eggs. And the corn never fails to give two big ears per stalk. I think she brought magic here with her when she came.”

Jaycee and I pull open the creaky door to the red barn. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust.

“Where is Precious?” Jaycee asks as she looks around.

The barn is quiet, except for the buzz of flies.

“Hmm. I don’t see her. She must have taken the sheep out to the back pasture. I should have told her you were coming.

“One of the advantages of having dragons instead of guard dogs for sheep is that dragons can open and close gates and move the sheep around to find the best grass. I can also talk to Precious, and she will understand me. Jaycee, if I had told her that you were coming, I have no doubt that she would have had the sheep lined up to meet us.

“Well, let’s go see if we can find Precious,” I say, and Jaycee and I enter the sheep pen and walk out the back door of the barn. We follow the sheep path down the hill and into the woods that will take us to the back pasture. As we walk, Jaycee asks more questions.

“Where did you get Precious?”

“I helped out on my neighbor’s farm shearing sheep about ten years ago. And on that day they had a whole fresh litter of young dragons, each one cuter than the next. They offered Precious to me as a gift for my help since they couldn’t sell her because she was too small and plain. Precious might be the smartest, most loyal dragon in the valley, but at barely 40 pounds, she is kind of small, and her brown scales make her worth next to nothing on the collector market. She is what the brokers call an ‘L.B.D.,’ a ‘little brown dragon.’”

“People collect dragons?”

As we walk through the oak forest, I tell Jaycee the story.

“Oh yes, people definitely collect dragons. Not as much as they used to, but there is still a good market for especially colorful or large ones, even though, without sheep or other animals to protect, dragons make for terrible pets. But the rich people don’t want them so much for companionship as they just want to impress their friends. So it is a sad life for those dragons. We rescued Precious and gave her a place on our farm.

“When the secret valley was discovered to be the home of real dragons, the first thing rich people wanted to do was own them. Of course, the dragons had been known to the local Indigenous people, and they had never thought to own them or sell them. But when the scientists’ first photos and videos of dragons reached the rest of the world, it set off a race among bad people to find them and capture them to sell to rich people.

“The original scientists refused to give up the location. For a long time, the scientists' photos were the only evidence. In those first photos and videos, the dragons clearly resembled dragons from the movies and stories. They had scales and they could fly and breathe fire. Anyone could see they were dragons. And although the dragons were not as big as we all expected from the movies, the dragons looked real enough to set off a frenzy of search parties.

“Then one day, a man showed up in a city in Peru with a baby dragon. It turned out to be the first of many. As far as we know, the scientists never disclosed the location of the secret valley, but smugglers had found it anyway.

“The Peruvian government did everything they could to stop the export, but soon criminals had somehow gotten several baby dragons to the United States, where they hoped collectors, circuses, and even zoos would pay top dollar for a real dragon.

“I shudder to think how those baby dragons made it here. I can only guess that a greedy smuggler had killed the parents and stolen the terrified babies. I know that my Precious would not have given up her babies without a fight.”

Jaycee stops walking and looks at me. “That wasn’t fair.” I know Jaycee understands that those first baby dragons were stolen from their families and that their parents were likely killed defending them. I wonder how much her own mother has told her about her father Peter’s death. I wonder what she is thinking of the fight that the dragon parents put up, or even if she is making a connection between those orphaned baby dragons and her own situation. My heart breaks a little more, along with hers.

I continue the story, as the oak woods begins to open up and the path widens out into the far pasture.

“At first, the dragons did poorly in captivity. They would not fly, nor would they eat well. They stayed small like little sickly cats, not big like the large muscular dog-sized ones from the videos taken earlier in the secret valley.

“Quite by accident, a collector discovered that these dragons thrive when they have someone to protect and care for. The collector had bought a baby dragon as a pet for his child. But, like most rich people and their possessions, the family got bored after the novelty had worn off. Their dragon had been sent to live in the family’s barn with the other discarded animals. Luckily, it was adopted by the flock of sheep, and there it grew healthy and strong.

“It turns out that when dragons grow up with sheep, they can be much better guard animals than dogs, by far. When raised with sheep, the naturally possessive instinct of a dragon attaches to the flock. Dragons can also count well, and they are continually watching to make sure the whole flock is where it is supposed to be.

“When a strange person goes down to our barn, the sheep will all run to position themselves behind Precious. Her hackles will go up and she will go into a defensive stance until I reassure her that the person is not a threat. After that, she will approach the stranger and smell them for a long time, so she will remember them the next time.

“Once that rich collector discovered that his dragon was healthy and growing well when living with sheep, he soon got a whole set of adult dragons reproducing, and then he started to sell them. He became even richer because other collectors would buy dragons just because they seemed to always be growing in value. Dragons were like rare gemstones. For a brief time, each male dragon was worth at least a million dollars, and a breeding female could fetch ten million dollars, easy.

“Then, without warning, the dragon market collapsed over the course of a few days. The original collector had made millions, and then all of the rest of the investors had all sunk their own money in, assuming the market would keep growing. When the market faltered a little, the original collector fled, and then dragon values kept spiraling down until most of the collectors who were only in it for the money ended up giving their dragons to sheep farms, where at least they could be happy and useful.

"Dragons soon proved to be very valuable to sheep farmers, who would breed them as guards and to sell them to the few zoos and collectors still looking to buy dragons.

“Our Precious was given to us by our sheep farming neighbors, Jessie and Luke. From the day Precious came to our farm, we knew she would bond with our sheep. Even though we only had two sheep at the time, they immediately ran to her, and she stood between them and gave them a hug with her wings. It was as if they’d known each other their whole lives. Now we have dozens of sheep, and Precious sees them all as her children.”

I look up and I see the sheep in the far pasture, but they are not grazing as they should be. No, they are huddled in a circle under the lone oak tree. As we get closer, I can hear them baa-ing loudly and continuously. They look scared. And Precious is nowhere to be found. I look in every direction, and then I look up. But the fields and skies are empty, except for the flock of bellowing anxious sheep.

“Jaycee, we need to get these sheep back to the barn, and then I am going to need your help finding Precious.”

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Photo credit: David Floyd: https://www.pexels.com/photo/gray-dragon-figurine-on-green-grass-5366443/