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stopped by, and that led to quite a few accidents, trust me. And the business fell off a lot when I got older. A seventeen-year-old squeezed into a child’s dress with braids in her hair wasn’t as popular with the tourists.’
    ‘It started to get creepy.’ Joanna giggled. ‘And I had to put up with lots of flak from the dumb kids at school.’
    ‘I can imagine,’ I said sympathetically. ‘Did it bother you a lot?’
    She nodded, ‘Yes, at the time, not that I let them know that.’
    Then she added, ‘But Evie, I promise you this, you will NEVER see me with my hair in braids.’
    ‘Ok, Anne with an “e”!’ I said and we both laughed until we heard a polite cough coming from the waiting room.
    ‘I’ll go see who it is.’ And I skipped out to the waiting room.
    It was Him, the boy with the Rangers cap. In his left hand he carried a cage with a large blue and green parrot with a curved beak.
    ‘Hi!’ he said. ‘How is the messed-up turtle?’
    ‘Fine, more than fine, totally good, his leg was broken and it’s healing really well now,’ I babbled.
    ‘Good, glad he’s doing ok. I know you guys close earlyon Saturdays. I’m just looking for some beak conditioner,’ he said.
    Joanna breezed through the door and her face immediately broke into a wide smile.
    ‘Hi! Finn, how are you doing? What’s up with Kurt?’
    But Kurt jumped in before Finn could answer.
    ‘Booooreeeeeeed!’ he interjected.
    We all jumped.
    ‘Sorry,’ said Finn. ‘Kurt’s manners need a little work. I think his beak is overgrown again.’
    ‘Let’s take a look,’ said Joanna and she picked up the cage as Finn and I followed her into the examining room.
    Unluckily, the phone rang. I ran back and picked it up. It was that pompous old windbag, Adrienne Weismann, a woman with hair the colour of cigarette ash and the bane of Scott’s existence. She currently has three cats, Muffles, Delilah and KitKat, and she is on her fourth husband. She wrote a book about a zillion years ago called
Kitty Tips; From One Cat Lover To Another
. She considers herself an expert in the field of feline veterinary medicine. By the time she has exhausted her homemade remedies on one of her sick cats and brings them in to Scott, it’s usually far too late to help them. Then she acts like Scott killed her beloved pussies through his incompetence, but she still keeps coming back. Scott thinks her only joy in life is torturing him. It took me at least ten minutes to schedule an appointment for her to bring in Muffles and get her off the phone.
    I ran to the examining room to see what was happeningwith Kurt. I’d never come across a rude bird with a beak problem before. As I turned the corner and reached the step, I tripped so that I landed right inside the doorway, head first, on my knees.
    ‘That’s one way of making an entrance,’ said Finn, reaching down and hauling me up like I was a sack of potatoes.
    I glared at Ben. He not only had access to every bed in the roomy apartment upstairs but he was also the sole owner of his very own, comfortable, super soft, donut bed. And yet, he decides to take a mid-afternoon snooze on the step up to the examining room. Why didn’t we just give him a key to the apartment, since he acted like he owns it! Ben yawned and he seemed to be laughing at me. With Finn and Joanna, that would make three then. I glared at Joanna as well. She’s just as clumsy as I am so I didn’t know what she had to laugh about.
    Finn picked up Kurt’s cage and stepped past me.
    ‘Still boooored!’ said Kurt.
    ‘Shut up, Kurt!’ said Finn, ‘And say hello to, what’s your name?’
    ‘Evangeline,’ I said, firmly, ‘but everyone calls me Evie.’
    ‘Say hello Evie,’ Finn instructed.
    ‘Hello, Evie, pleased to meet you,’ responded Kurt promptly and he held out one of his claws through the bars of his cage for me to shake.
    ‘My pleasure,’ I responded and shook his claw gingerly. I didn’t totally trust Kurt.
    ‘Finn