DRAGONS

DRAGONS
By Michaela (9)


People from all over the world used to believe in dragons. They imagined them in all different ways. Some dragons are nice like the Chinese dragon and Quetzalcoatl. Others are mean like the Classical dragon. All dragons have something in common, they have lots of stories written about them and these stories have been around for thousands of years. In some countries people even worshipped dragons like the Quetzalcoatl Dragon of Mexico.

The Chinese dragon is one of the nicer dragons. In fact it is said that the Chinese dragon gives wonderful gifts such as making rain come so crops will grow. Sometimes when you look at a picture of a Chinese dragon they’ll have a big pearl either in their mouth, under their chin or on their paw. This gives them power and sends them to heaven. All Asian Dragons live in water because of their fear of centipedes. Under the water they have wonderful palaces of marble and jewels. They sleep in their palaces all winter and fly out in the spring to make rain so crops will grow. If rain does not come, farmers will shout and bang drums to wake the dragons. The word dragon in Chinese is Lung. Lung can be the colors blue, red, black, white, and yellow. My favorite Chinese dragon is the Imperial Dragon. The Imperial Dragon is made up of different kinds of animals on earth. It has the body and neck of a snake, the scales of a carp, the head of a camel, horns of a stag, eyes of a rabbit, ears of a bull, the neck of a snake, the stomach of a clam, the paws of a tiger, the claws of an eagle, and sometimes the mane of a lion around it’s neck, on its chin, or on each elbow.

Classical Dragons are probably one of the more scary dragons according to myth and legend. They had a big scaly head; long neck and a snake like body. They had big bat like wings, talon feet, and a long powerful tail. Thick armor protected the Dragon, The Classical Dragon eats mostly sheep, ox, and sometimes humans. Legend says that they also eat virgin maidens.

Quetzalcoatl was not a very scary dragon. It was covered from head to toe in feathers and was supposed to be half serpent and half quetzal, which is a kind of bird with really long feathers. Quetzalcoatl was worshipped by the Aztec people of Mexico as a god and would visit them by turning human. Quetzalcoatl was the god of wind, wisdom, and life. It was also a sky dragon that could fly without wings.

There are thousands of dragons all over the world. Dragons are still popular. There are lots of stories written today about dragons for example, Dragon Rider and Eragon. There are even people called dracontologists who study dragon lore today!