WRITINGS: When I was a little girl

When I was a little girl it was very peaceful growing up on the lake. The days where long, quiet and solitude. I spent most of my time catching fish with my bare hands and trapping wild birds just to look at them and let them go. There were manatees in those days.. They would come in the winter, my mom would give me heads of cabbage to feed them. They where so gentle you could swim with them although they would swim to the deep whenever you touched them. One year I saw a cormorant while swimming in the canal, he followed me home. The next day I saw him again and he became my friend. He would play games swimming with me. We would swim under water synchronizing our moves sometimes he would swim with incredible speed and bite down on my toes very hard. After a few months he disappeared.

I had other friends though, There was an old tree over looking the water with a hollow in it. Every summer wood peckers would raise their young. I would catch tiny fish and feed the fledglings while the parents where away. I looked forward to this more than Christmas. I loved their smell, they smelled like pink skin puppy's. They had long strait necks, all popping up at the same time with huge yellow mouths gaping open at the slightest vibration. Then one year their home became rotten.. Sadly I knew they wouldn't return. Later that summer I found a very tiny blind and naked bird on the grass. He had fallen from a nest at the top of a giant palm. I took him home with me and fed with an eye dropper every 4 hours. My father would get up in the middle of the night to feed him for me. He eventually grew into a beautiful sparrow. I taught him how to fly by having him chase me. He would run and flap his wings taking flying leaps through the air to catch me as his favorite perch was my head. He was a lovely companion that enjoyed his freedom, that he eventually took full advantage of. 

 There where no ducks on the lake back then as the lake was new. But for some strange reason I found a very sick half grown duck. I brought her home and my father and I cared for her for several weeks. Then one day I came home from school and my father was digging a hole with a pickaxe. He said she was dead, that rigamortis had set in. I cried and begged him not to bury her. I cried tears over her and begged her to come back. Then I noticed her eye blink and to my parents amazement she lived... this made us all wonder about miracles. She was what I loved most about coming home from school. One day she left and I was heart broken... I waited for her for months... I knew she would return and one day she did with a dozen or so baby's. After that she would lay her eggs under a bush by the side door. Every day I would inspect them. I could hear the ducklings calling in the eggs pecking there way out.

My  father was a kind man that taught me to respect animals and their right to freedom. It pains me greatly to see them in cages. Once my older sister Helen took me to a circus, I hated it. It made me cry to see the tigers and bears being bullied. I felt their emotions, their unhappiness, even at that distance. What's wrong with everyone? How could people enjoy this? My sister said that something was wrong with me, that all children loved the circus. I think at that moment I realized the world of people and I were disconnected. I understood animals but didn't understand people.

 

Written by: Annette 

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