Inspired by a short story I heard last week and an actual event which happened to my little boy last Summer. I may have written it in my head at 4am...it's a little random but I hope it gives you a little joy.
My home was the safest,
most beautiful place I’d ever found.
I’d been there for years.
Tucked away in the corner,
at the end of a long, thin garden, where the ivy and the hawthorn had grown so
thick and so dense that even the smallest of birds had trouble getting inside
and therefore my carefully laid plans were left uninterrupted. There was plenty
of food milling around too so I never needed to leave my safe abode.
There was also a dog who
lived in the garden, a nervous little thing who barked at everything, especially
the birds, which kept them away from my area so I didn’t mind her noise at all.
They stuck to the safety of the tall trees along the side of the garden, where
they were free to nest in peace.
It was perfect.
That was, until the noises
changed.
The old dog was gone.
The elderly couple no
longer sat on their green, wooden bench near the back door.
A new family must have
moved as there was lots of hustle and bustle. The house smelt different when
the back door opened.
Everything was changing;
the tall trees along the side were chopped down, making my dark corner annoyingly
brighter. The birds, at a loss, attempted to nest in my home, but to no avail,
thank goodness! So, they went elsewhere and everything was quieter for a little
while.
One day a huge wooden shed
was erected right next to my home, and it was great because made my little
corner even darker and more sheltered than ever before. There was more food and
more dark corners to hide in. I thought things couldn’t get any better, but I
never considered they’d get much, much worse.
All of a sudden everything
changed.
There was noise underneath
me, the ground was being cleared. Then great big chunks of my home were being
removed. As the human grabbed a handful of ivy, so intertwined it was with the
hawthorn, each ivy tendril clinging on to the thorny hawthorn branches around
it, it tore huge holes in my domain. Light poured in and my favourite hunting
spots were vanishing quickly. I tried not to panic, but kept on the move,
trying to stay out of sight.
There were more humans
now, smaller ones, presumably their young. They move faster and with a lot more
noise.
They stopped removing my
precious home, leaving what was left of the overgrowth to create some kind of roof
over what they called their new den.
Except it wasn’t their
den. It was my home.
I kept moving, trying to
find a quiet spot out of sight. But they were everywhere.
Without any warning, a
small boy brushed past me, knocking me off the branch. I fell into a strange,
dark place. It was warm and so unlike home, but I couldn’t work out where on
earth I was.
Hours past.
I felt the sun go down.
The place I was in kept
moving, like the walls couldn’t keep still. I had to roll up as small as I
could to avoid losing a leg. I had to try to predict where the next gap would
be as another set of walls closed in on me. And the heat, I’d never known
anything like it. Not even the brightest sunshine of the hottest British Summer
day was ever this hot.
“I’ve got an itch” I heard
someone say.
Suddenly, everywhere was
flooded with light, I couldn’t see for a moment but I could hear the screams.
I felt myself drop to the
floor, the moving walls gone; I was surrounded by nothing but air. I stretched out
my tired legs just in time to see a large glass land perfectly over the top of
me. Pulling my legs in and adjusting them as a piece of paper slid between the glass
and the floor, trapping me inside.
The humans were still very
noisy, and now they were peering at me in shock through the glass.
“You had that in your
pants all afternoon?” yelled a woman.
“It’s huge! How did you
not notice that?”
I felt movement, heard a
window open, then suddenly the paper was gone and I was falling through the
open air.
It was a long way down,
but I landed with a soft thud on the grass below and welcomed the darkness of
the night, the fresh air and the freedom to finally go and find myself a new
home.
Maybe one of these sheds
will do…
