I don't know if anyone else here likes animal stories, for some (maybe many) it might not be your thing. For those that do, what do you think of this opening piece:


Don Yawn had long been like this: morose, unlike most skinks of his kind. Although, it would do well to remember he was a psychiatrist. Don 'Yawn' Morose: Psychiatrist to the skinks and lizard-kind, the shingle above his door read.
Don was born like all other baby skinks. Well ... most. His birth was not unusual, per se, though he did cause his mother much grief during the term she had carried him. How she knew it was himself, and not some of his other siblings which she had carried during the same gestation period, he had never been able to discern. Since they were of an oviparous branch of the skink family, his mother would have laid a clutch of eggs, no live-birth recognition to give him away, specifically. But she had always insisted, singling him out as the malcontent. Personally, he had always blamed his mother for cursing the egg he had hatched from. During his time of confinement, he would have sworn his egg was haunted. When the time came, he wasted none of it tearing his way out of that egg and the bad dreams he had suffered therein. He would have liked to investigate further the 'mystery of the haunted egg' but another skink accidentally ate it shortly upon his departure. Then tried to eat him, also by accident, the other skink assured him.
But he was alive and, well, almost well. Seemingly completely healthy but for a bum rear leg. Another mark of his trouble-making infamy in his mother's eyes. She was forced to have him fitted with some braces early on in an effort to straighten out the leg. She would have taken him to one of the better robin or crayfish doctors, but at his age his mother reckoned he would have tempted them as nothing more than a free meal. So she took him to Dr. Fez Salamander instead, who completely understood his mother's predicament saying, 'Never trust a robin before a year is out, and never ever trust a crayfish.' At any rate, if he turned out to be only slightly more emotionally well-balanced than his leg was crooked to the rest of his body, why, then he was going to turn out all right.
Don had numerous siblings, fifteen or sixteen, he always lost count, but it must have been an odd number because he was directly in the middle. If he could ever uncover who the 'lost' sibling was, or who was being counted twice, it would've answered many questions. They were a picture of relatively contented familial bliss that only the unfortunately childless, or the miscreant, could be envious of.
Don Yawn grew up in this family, in a very normal home, on a very modest log, located in a very pleasant wood, that was situated in a most pleasing land. The most pleasing of all, it had to be, it was always said to be this, and so it seemed to Don.
When Don was still a child, he looked up to his older brothers, as most younger brothers do. But especially so to his, who were always doing neat things. Things which had no end of interest for Don. Whatever his brothers did, Don also wanted to do. Especially when it came to collecting things. His brothers were great collectors. They would amass great collections of (mostly) rubbish: discarded shotgun shells, beer cans which they would turn into a club house, popsicle sticks, all manner of strange and interesting things.
Now, Don’s sisters, especially those younger than he, tended to look up to him, as is only natural. If he was crowded out by his elder brothers, then Don was not the one crowded out with his younger sisters. And this pleased Don, for just as he played tag-along with his brother, now he had someone to tag-along with him.
But for all that, they might have liked to do girlish things from time to time; mysteriously drifting off, all of a sudden, on some feminine whim to do whatever they did. He had seen and heard enough in his young life of older brothers picking on their younger siblings, and just as his older brothers were not excessively cruel to him, then neither would he be to his little baby sisters.
Don especially liked to engage them in games that he could win. Which counted for almost any game or activity, and he played it to a hilt. The only time they ever came out ahead was when their older brothers came around and stepped in to try and even the playing field. At times this seemed to distress Don. But he could always manage to shrug it off, in the end only holding a slight grudge towards his sibling rivals.
Don Yawn's school days were fairly uneventful, if one considers the routine struggles of growing up amid peer socialization as nothing worthy of note.

The End, thus far...