Flexing My Brain (part 2)

The foot was a swollen, a purplish-red from the blood flooding the vessels.  So swollen, in fact, that the toes were beginning to look like they were adhering to one another, becoming one giant toe appendage, aAnd eventually nothing more than a long pointed foot, with no without toes at all.  The laceration from the bite was clearly visible at the angle of the joint connecting the foot to the poor creature's leg.  It was a fairly deep slice--the result of a razor-edged jawbone with razors for teeth.  Above the site of the attack the lower leg was also beginning to swell. and mMovement of the entire limb was quickly rapidly being restricted.  Injectable antibiotics were necessary, and but it was clearly evident that the foot would eventually fall off even with treatment.  
The price would have to be marked down, naturally of course.  After all, who wants to would pay $175   for a dragon with a missing foot?  It truely was a shame.  It She was such a beautiful dragon, too.  Not that it isn't  she wasn't still, but then we come it circles back to the asthetic value of the animal.  Who wants a dragon with a missing foot?  I guess there are those people in the world who have a soft spot for such unfortunate creatures.  I myself am one of them.  But they are so few and far between.


I think it reads better this way.  There is less clutter of redundant and pointless words.  It just flows more smoothly than the original version.

I have plans for this passage.  It is destined to become something much bigger than its current 71 words.

While I was copying the original version, I remembered the inspiration for the writing.  The dragon in question is not, as can be inferred, a fantastical species.  It was a baby hatched in the pet shop I was working in at the time.  A Bearded Dragon, native to Australia.  The hatchlings had been kept together until I came in to find this little one's injury one morning.  It ended up going to a good home with another employee.

Young Bearded Dragon

The "beard"

Because of their animated personalities
I call them "living cartoons."