Veikko Was Against It: A Man, a Manual, and Twenty Eggs

This one belongs to Veikko.

He was against the snake. He said so at the time, he says so still, and he would like it noted in whatever passes for minutes in this household. He has also read the care manual twice, installed a backup thermostat, and then a thermostat for the backup thermostat, and he checks all of them at two in the morning because the thermostat is unreliable.

Told entirely from Veikko's side, this is the story of a quiet, sceptical Finnish man losing an argument to a reptile without ever once conceding it. He explains, at length, why the humidity matters to everyone in the flat. He explains why the lamp is a household expense. He explains why he is kneeling by the glass at night, and the explanation is always the equipment.

And then Aino asks the question he has been dreading since the day the young one arrived. Carmen is old enough now. Sisu is old enough now. Should there be eggs?

He says no. He says no for three chapters. Then he reads four books, telephones two vets, builds a lay box out of scrap wood at one in the morning, runs his beloved thermostats backwards for a winter he arranged on purpose, and counts twenty eggs into an incubator he made himself.

Sixty days of waiting, from the man who checks everything twice.

They keep one. The rest go, one at a time, to people Aino vets like a woman handing over a child, and the last strip in this book is Veikko standing in an empty hallway saying that the door was open too long and the temperature has dropped.

A hundred strips and six full Sunday pages about love expressed entirely as maintenance.

70 full-colour pages. DRM-free PDF and EPUB included. Read on any device.