Instincts for Survival

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.