by Guy Takamatsu

Created on: July 28, 2009

Once upon a time, in a forest far away, there lived a bear named Alison .Her full name was Alison Theodora Bear. She loved to eat and sleep. When she slept, she would snore very loudly. The other animals of the forest were amused by her snoring. She was not a very big, bear. In fact she was about the size of a small hand sized teddy bear. But she sounded louder than ten big full sized snoring bears put together. A squirrel recorded Alison's snoring and played it back to her. Alison was not amused. Alison tried to bite the squirrel, but the squirrel was too fast and ran up a tree out of reach.

One day a dragon came to the forest demanding tribute. The animals were in a panic. Tribute meant they would have to turn over their food stuffs to the dragon. And when that ran out, the dragon would then eat them. Finally an owl came up with a plan. Mr. Dragon, he said we would like to pay tribute to you, but Alison insists that we pay tribute to her. Hmph, who is this Alison? snorted the dragon. Alison is this giant bear who lives in a cave. She is even larger and bigger than dragons. Impossible! There is no such thing. Oh, yes there is. Remember not all dinosaurs were large. Some were the size of chickens. And also remember that the blue whale is larger than many dinosaurs. But I'm a dragon, not a dinosaur! Dragons and dinosaurs are the same thing. The word dinosaur was not coined until the 19th century by Richard Owen. What we now call dinosaurs, were once called dragons. The Chinese referred to dinosaur bones as 'dragon bones' and ground up the bones and used them for medicine. In rural China today, there are still people who grind up dinosaur bones for medicine. As a result dinosaur fossils are lost to history. Look I'm not here for a history or science lesson. I want to eat. Well, first you must challenge Alison. We dare not risk the wrath of Alison.

So the dragon stomped off to Alison's cave to challenge her to a duel. When he arrived at the cave he saw the sign Alison T. Bear. He heard Alison's snoring. Panic seized him as he contemplated Alison's size. Judging from the sound of the snoring the dragon thought Alison must be equal to the size of a dragon. Then he thought no bear could be that large. It must be some sort of amplified recording. He decided to challenge the recording. Hey, Alison the Bear, I, the great dragon, challenge you to a duel. My name is Alison THEODORA Bear! Not Alison THE Bear! boomed an angry voice. How dare you make my middle name a definite article! Not only that, you woke me up and made me very angry. I am going to grind your bones to dragon dust. Alison's voice was louder and more powerful than her snoring. The force of Alison's voice knocked the dragon to the ground. The dragon could hear the sounds of Alison's loud footsteps as she started to leave the cave. Fortunately for Alison, the dragon never bothered to stick around to see that Alison was really a tiny bear. He took off and never returned to the forest again.

The other animals were so grateful to Alison's actions. Alison never thought of herself as heroic. She was just annoyed that someone disturbed her sleep. But from that point on; the animals never made fun of Alison's snoring. In fact they told visitors to their forest that Alison's snoring was the sweetest music this side of heaven.

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