Tag: dengee

New Release: Alena’s Baby

March 28, 2018

New Story Release!

Yippee!  My illustrator team (Christina and Rebeccah) did some awesome cover art again! This time for the fourth story in The Devonians series!  It’s currently available in ebook and paperback format.

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The Devonians are space castaways who have developed a colony on a strange new planet (they name it Devonia).

This newest story, Alena’s Baby, begins a few days after the end of A Foundling Furball.

It seems that Joseph Taylor has been leaving his work because he knows his younger brother, Charley, will do it.  Charley thinks he’s tricking Joseph into having to take him fishing in the afternoon since he does Joseph’s chore.  Both boys think they are tricking the other; they are manipulating, and that isn’t right.

Alena and her sister, Janine, and brother, Michael, are taking care of Tawny, Alena’s baby dengee.  The children had rescued her from Ice Cube Creek (this story is in A Foundling Furball!) a few days ago and want to ask the council for permission to raise her.

In the afternoon, while Janine is catching a fish that almost takes her into the creek, the Taylor children’s father comes and gets to meet Tawny.

For a peek into Devonia, read this excerpt from “Alena’s Baby!”

“I’m always funny,” Janine giggled, made a funny face that only little sisters can make, and skipped back toward the house. 

Sandy smiled.  “Michael,” he grabbed the attention of both boys and Alena, “Tawny is a growing infant.  Think about how most babies grow.  They grow far more quickly in their first few weeks with the growth rate slowing down as the baby ages.”

Sandy balled his fist, “see, if you could draw a circle around the first joint in her paw like a fist, that’s approximately the size of her stomach.”

“Wow,” Joseph gasped.

“Don’t baby animals digest milk quickly so sometimes they eat more than their stomachs can hold?” Alena asked.  She remembered something about that from raising the rejected lambs.

“Very good,” Sandy nodded, “yes, they do.  Milk is usually a perfect food for the baby.  Since this is Brown-Sheep milk and Tawny is a dengee, she may not digest it as easily as she would her mother’s milk, but she’s appearing to do rather well.”

“So, we should feed her until she doesn’t want any more?” Michael asked.

“Yes sir,” Sandy nodded, drawing out the word “sir” into two syllables, “she won’t take any more than she needs.  You have to care for her completely until she can eat herself,” Sandy reminded as he stroked the tiny blind creature.  Tawny mewed gently, pawed Sandy’s hand, and attempted sucking on his knuckle.  Sandy chuckled, “once she opens her eyes, she’ll start to get some independence.”

“Daddy,” Alena sighed, “she can’t even crawl well yet, she scoots like she’s swimming.”

“And lambs are not born blind.” Michael added.

“They are up walking just after they are born,” Joseph remembered.

“Yes,” Sandy was walking about, checking the lambing boxes to see if any ewes had birthed, the children trailing behind him. “In the wild, Brown-Sheep are born in the meadow or forest without any protection so they have to be able to follow the herd.  Dengees stay in one area and mark a section for their den where the pups are born and cared for until they can leave to join the pack.”

“So how long do you think Tawny will be an infant?” Alena asked.  Michael had refilled the bottle with a little milk and returned it to Alena.  She was now feeding her gurgling dengee pup.

“A few days at least,” Sandy replied, “maybe a few weeks; we’ve never been able to study a dengee pup.”

“So you’ll be my baby for a long time,” Alena whispered to the brown-tan blob of soft fur.

… (continue reading Alena’s Baby here!  Or browse all titles and formats here!)

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

 

 

Meet Alena

February 5, 2018

Meet Alena Summers

Alena Summers is an adventurous animal-loving girl who lives in the village of Covenant.  Her home is the planet called Devonia, an Earth-like planet far away where her parents’ transport ship crash landed many years ago.

Alena has one brother, Michael, and two sisters, Janine and Raquelita.  Janine is just big enough to start helping and doing big-kid stuff like fishing at Ice Cube Creek.  (Fishing is one of the Devonian children’s favorite things to do!)

Alena loves babies of all kinds.  She wants to study animals like her father and doctoring like Mrs. Nala and Mrs. Emma.  She loves getting to nurse the baby Brown-Sheep if they are rejected by their ewes (mother sheep).  Sometimes Alena’s temper flares fast.  She speaks the truth without tempering it.  Her father often says she must learn to speak the truth in love instead of in anger or pride.  Alena loves her beautiful world.  She comes across many unique animals and has fun adventures with her siblings and friends.  Alena also loves stories; she thinks that Butterfly tells the best ones.

One of Alena’s favorite stories in the world is the story of how Tawny came to be a part of her family.  That story is found in the third book in The Devonians Series called, “A Foundling Furball.”  When Alena tells it later, it starts like this:

One day while fishing, Alena heard what she thought was a baby crying.  The fishermen looked for this sound.  They discovered a baby dengee (a wolf-like animal) that was badly hurt!  Alena brought this dengee pup home and her father oversees while she doctors it. (Alena’s father studies all types of animals and their family tends the village’s current herd of Brown-Sheep) Alena names this baby girl dengee, Tawny.

Come follow Alena and her friends on fun adventures in their special world of Devonia here!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you later…

~Nancy Tart

Meet Tawny

The backstory of the little dengee adopted by Alena in A Foundling Furball. Meet Tawny:

January 18, 2018

Meet Tawny

On Devonia, a world far from here, but more deserving of the name Earth’s Twin than Venus, a dengee (a strong, wolf-dog-like creature) female birthed a litter of pups.  One of those tiny, sightless, nearly deaf, fluffy balls was a tan-brown female with black rings on her tail and black markings.  Her first two days of life were normal for any dengee pup.  She shoved her way to her mother’s warm belly and warmed herself inside and out with her mother’s milk and thick soft fur.

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But then something unexpected happened.  She was too young to understand, but the lead pack male was forced out by a trio of incoming younger, stronger males.  In the dengee world, those males would then destroy all of the previous male’s young.  Although some of the mother dengees had been wounded while trying to fight them away alongside the pack male, others resigned themselves to their fate.  The new trio of males, one lead pack male and the other two his cohorts, hunted down and destroyed all the six dens with the old male’s pups.

What the pup knew was that mean teeth snapped at her and a rough angry paw tossed her out of the warm den and into the cold early morning where it was just as dark to those with open eyes as it was to her blind self.  Miraculously, the tiny female pup, now heavily injured, managed to elude her pursuer and slide into the edge of a frigid creek.  She called for her mother.  She cried will all her might.

Her new mother heard her cries.

Alena Summers, a human child fishing on the bank of the Ice Cube Creek that early afternoon, heard the pitiful calls of this lonely baby and followed the sound.  Joseph Taylor, another human child, swam into the cold water to rescue the blob of tangled fur from her prison in the bushes on the edge of the water, and there Tawny became a ward of the humans.

This little three-day-old dengee pup whose eyes had never seen her own kind was rescued from drowning by two children and warmed in her new mother’s soft apron.  Tawny’s life had already been so full of turmoil!  Even on the bank after being rescued, the other children considered tossing her back because dengees were deadly foes to the humans – attacking their livestock and more than once, even the humans themselves.  Thankfully, Alena wouldn’t have that; she took full charge of this tiny creature.

With slow, tender, loving care, Tawny’s wounds will heal.  Four days later, at only a week old, and without yet opening her tiny eyes, little Tawny will face another challenge as the council of elders on Devonia has to decide if Alena can keep this dangerous animal.  Of course, Alena and her friends will swear that this pup is nothing dangerous – but that remains to be seen.

For now, Tawny, the newest member of the Devonian settlement of Covenant, is resting with warm Brown-Sheep milk digesting in her belly laying on a soft rag-blanket-bed on straw in the Summers’ barn listening to the sounds of Alena’s pretty lullabies, Brown-Sheep ewes, and baby lambs and dreaming of new warm sun on her body and the soft, warm love of her human mother.

If you want to read about how Alena, Joseph, and their friends find and rescue Tawny, you can read A Foundling Furball!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you later…

~Nancy Tart

 

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