Instincts for Survival
“Wesley!!!” “What…?” I woke up with a start. Oh, it’s just Mom calling me to wake up and come eat breakfast. I looked around my room. It was a mess, clothes everywhere. “Mom will kill me if she sees this” I thought to myself. So I jumped out of bed and tried to find some clean clothes to wear. I eventually found my Montana Grizzly T-shirt and a pair of shorts that were clean… or at least I thought they were. I put them on and opened my wardrobe. Then I slid open the first drawer. It was empty. I grabbed a bunch of clothes and stuffed them in until no more would fit. I did this again and the rest of the clothes went into the laundry basket. Then I made my bed.
My room being clean, sort of, I turned and looked out the window at the rain forest that borders our cul-de-sac. I love that rainforest and many a time I have gone out there with a sketch pad and pencil and drawn whatever comes to mind. In fact, that forest is the only forest where you can see the white tiger, an endangered species. My dad works at the Wildlife Animal Protection and I learned from him at dinner the other night that the W.A.P. recently caught a white tiger and were keeping it in captivity.
“Wesley!” Mom called. “Coming!” I replied, and sped down the stairs. Peeking into the kitchen I saw my mom at the stove and I could smell a wonderful aroma of bacon and eggs with pancakes in a frying pan. She turned to me and said,” Get ready for breakfast, oh and, set the table would you?” I hurried and set the table. My dad came down the stairs with some nice pillow hair that only made me snicker. He looked like he had just been hit by lightning with his hair sticking up. We sat down to eat breakfast and afterwards I grabbed a couple of granola bars and shoved them into my bag along with my pencil case and sketch pad. Then I told my mom I was going out and would be back before dinner.
I ran outside and to the hole in the chain wire fence that my friends and I made after school last year. Regularly I would go into the forest with my friends but they were all on summer holiday except for Nicky, who was in summer school and wouldn’t be back until six. I crawled through the hole and ran into the woods. After about five minutes I reached my favorite spot, a giant rock set on three other stones to make a sort of giant table. And in the center is a giant pit full of dirt, and in the dirt grows a giant tree, with roots that grew across the ‘table top’ and over the edge into the dirt below. It was on one of these that I climbed up onto the rock shelf and into the tree. There I hung my bag on a branch and fished out a pencil and my sketchpad. Then I started drawing. At first I wasn’t even sure what I was drawing, and then I found I was drawing a white tiger. About half way through shading in the stripes, I paused and ate a granola bar. Then I continued working at it. I did this for about an hour, then put it away and got out of the tree, leaving my backpack behind. Then I went for a walk.
It must have been an hour that I was exploring before I came back, but when I did I had another snack and continued my drawing. It must have been four o’clock when I drifted off to sleep. But when I did, I slept very deeply.
Day 3
I groaned. The pain in my neck had subsided but I found myself with a collar around my neck. I opened my eyes and looked around. I was in a forest. I got up and walked through the undergrowth to the place where the forest stopped rather abruptly. In front of me and down a bit, there were two men in white lab coats sitting in swivel chairs. One was at a computer, the other staring at me. I could see the badge on his lab coat and saw that his name was Bert. I couldn’t see the other man’s name tag though. Bert turned and said something to the other guy, who turned to look at me. His name was Ralph. Ralph smiled and pressed a button on the switch panel to his left. “Hello little guy.” boomed the intercom speaker, making me wince in pain because it hurt my sensitive tiger ears. Seeing this, the two men started laughing. It occurred to me to hurt them for being mean, but that was out of the question since I was sure there was some super strong glass between me and them, I just couldn’t see it. Right then a beautiful woman in a pink lab coat walked into the room and both Bert and Ralph stopped immediately. The lady seemed nice and her name was Janice. “Shame on you two. You are terrible, laughing at a beautiful creature after hurting it.” Then looking at me with her wonderful sapphire eyes, she said, “What wonderful stripes he has.” We stared into each other’s eyes for a while then she turned away.
I turned around and walked back into the man made forest. Right then it started to rain. Inside the building it started to rain, weird that they would set it up to do that. But that wasn’t my current focus. Right then I was hungry. I walked back to the edge where the people were and started howling. It was really loud. Janice looked up and I could see a look of sympathy in her eyes. Bert looked up and said, “Shut up.” Those words made me howl even louder. “Awww, the poor thing must be hungry. Bert, get him his food.” She said in a soothing tone. “Fine,” Bert replied, not happy with the chore he was given. He walked out of the room and I stopped howling. I lay down to wait but got up again when Bert reentered the room and placed a tray of food on a shelf where I couldn’t see it. Then he pushed it and the tray came in through a slit in the wall. I rushed over to it and started eating. It was cold venison but tasted fine, and I was really hungry. In less than five minutes the meat was gone and that was a lot of meat, probably about ten pounds of it. After eating I was content and found a good place to sleep and digest. I was partway into the forest. I curled up and fell asleep.
