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100% written and illustrated by kids ages 6-13

Animals


By

The Hunt

With a glance that bordered on premonition, he saw it Buck felt the wind blow through his shaggy hair as he pounded his way across the frozen forest, his whole pack following half a minute behind. The chase had lasted three days, three long days of running at top pace, his nose continually dipping toward the ground, sniffing for any twist or turn his prey might make. He had been on many hunts but never one this lengthy and tedious. But then again his prey wasn’t what it normally was. He wasn’t chasing humans, who were slow on foot and only dangerous when a club or gun was within reach. No, he was tracking something unique, something not normally seen in the sprawling forestland of the Alaskan wilderness. This type of animal was typically killed by predators at a young age, an age when its brawling hooves were not quite the works of death and destruction that they would later become, and those bloodcurdling antlers were not so large and sharp as they would grow to be. He could feel his prey getting closer, could feel it in the earth; the very ground he stood on was informing him. He understood it; he took its knowledge to be true, as true as the roaring wind or the vast bottomless sea. His prey must be resting. He himself had started to feel a pang of delicate soreness every time a paw hit the ground. Surely his quarry could feel it too. Buck was pondering this when he passed over a large hill. With a glance that bordered on premonition, he saw it. Proudly holding its ground on a patch of trampled and dirty snow waited the moose. Buck waited a few seconds for the rest of his pack to catch up before he decided to press on a little further toward the magnificent beast. It kicked up snow, dirt and even little bits of wood as the circle of wolves grew ever more tight and threatening. Buck was the first to pull up and try to make a go at the moose; he would have it no other way. As he made his approach he growled in a low tone so as to warn that he was ready to attack. Just as he poised himself to do so, his brother wolf and his younger sibling jumped in and began to rip at the strapping old moose’s flanks as if their attack had been choreographed. The moose quickly bucked them off his sides, his legs pistoning up and down in the air. As though it was caught in a sudden gale, the moose shivered and then charged straight at Buck. He artfully moved to the side, narrowly avoiding a certain death by the moose’s sharp, shredding antlers. Buck then took the one millisecond in which the moose paused, vulnerable to attack, to jump straight for its throat. Knowing the time had come, the whole pack dove upon the rampaging moose. Buck was slung back and forth on the moose’s neck like the pendulum on a metronome, but held on for fear of his own life, and for want of his opposition’s. The moose took a long time to die, but he did. And triumphantly, Buck stood over his kill, king of the forest for the time being. Will Stroud, 13Sacramento, California Ksenia Vlasov, 12Katonah, New York


By

Music from the Heart

“He’s back again?!” exclaimed Kaitlin, dropping her backpack on the floor. “What did the owners complain of this time?” Steve, the thirty-year-old manager of the animal shelter, replied, “Oh, the usual. He barks too much, bites, growls, and they simply can’t put up with him.” “Poor little Bullet,” she sympathized, going over to the sign-in desk. “This is the fifth time he’s been here. Wasn’t his mother an Australian shepherd?” “Yep. We still don’t know what his dad was. He’s cute though. Anyway, today you get a fun job. You get to clean all of the cages!” “Whoopee! What fun I’ll have,” Kaitlin said sarcastically. She turned and got a bunch of plastic bags, a pile of the last week’s newspaper, and rubber gloves from a closet on her right. Over her back she called to Steve as she left the front office. “See you around!” “Oh, Kaitlin! Wait!” he exclaimed, apparently remembering something. Kaitlin backtracked at his call to listen to what he had to say “There’s a girl coming today and she’s going to be working here from now on. Her name’s Gabriella; be nice!” “Don’t worry! Of course I’ll be nice. I mean, she’s going to have to put up with you and that’s always really . . .” she ducked as Steve threw a pencil at her. “Begone, rascal!” he said good-naturedly. Laughing, Kaitlin left, and went to her job. “He’s back again?” exclaimed Kaitlin I wonder what the new girl will be like, she thought. It had been years since anyone except for Steve and Kaitlin had worked at the shelter. As she started the first cage, she glanced down the dark row and toward the big black dog she and Steve had been talking about earlier. After being found when he was seven weeks old in a gutter, he had come to the shelter, and had had four owners since. Now he was a year old, with a bad reputation. Still, Kaitlin believed that he could be trained if someone just found the secret trick to getting him calmed down. A cat pulling on her long, red braid brought her back down to earth. “OK, OK, I’ll feed you,” she told the cat. “Just let me finish cleaning the cages first.” Forty-five minutes later she was done, and she went to the storage room for food for all of the animals. There, she found Steve giving a girl of about fifteen a tour of the building. She was a tall, skinny, Hispanic girl, with long black hair that hung below her waist. Steve grinned as Kaitlin walked in the storage room. “Here she is!” he exclaimed. “Gabriella, this is Kaitlin, who will be working with you. She’ll show you how everything runs here in more detail. We have a lot of fun here, and are really happy for you to join us! You can help Kaitlin feed the animals now, and later you can walk the dogs together. So long!” As he walked out the door of the storage room, he tripped over a bag of birdseed and knocked into a shelf, toppling a bag of dog food and causing it to rip open. Soon it was raining dog food. Kaitlin burst into laughter instantly. Steve looked hilarious lying on the ground with a confused expression on his face, and dog food in his dark brown hair. Gabriella was trying her best not to laugh out of respect for her new employer, but finally gave up and laughed hysterically. Bright red, Steve got up and went to get a broom, mumbling about how he should have hired a boy. In bed that night, as she did every night, Kaitlin tried to think of a way to convince her parents to let her get a dog. They were convinced that she wasn’t ready for the responsibility, because she had play rehearsal three days a week after school, and spent almost all of her other time at the shelter. “You can’t have a pet. You’re only thirteen, and you’re too busy.” Really, it was ridiculous that she couldn’t have a pet because her dad owned the shelter. Not that he cared about it at all; he had inherited it. Every month he would send Steve the money to pay for food, supplies, the vet bill and, of course, to pay him. It had been Kaitlin’s dad’s idea to hire someone else because he and her mother thought that Kaitlin spent too much time at the shelter. The very idea, Kaitlin thought, was absurd. Of course, her parents also worried about her because she didn’t have many friends. That was even more nonsense. She had Steve, all the animals at the shelter, and her teachers. But by the time she got to bed at night, she had always made out a pretty sorry case for herself. *          *          * The next day, as Kaitlin was doing her homework in the auditorium during rehearsal, a girl walked up to her. At first, she was so startled someone had even noticed her that she didn’t realize who it was. It was Gabriella. “Oh! Uh . . . hi!” she finally managed to say. “Are you in the play? I don’t remember seeing you here before.” “No, I’m not in the play,” was Gabriella’s reply. “My younger sister, Maria, is. She’s in seventh grade.” “Oh, I see,” Kaitlin said. She tried to think of what to say next. I know I’m not very good at talking to people I don’t know, she thought. What do I say? Is she trying to be my friend? “I was just wondering if you could tell Mr. Riley that I won’t be at work this evening because I have a dentist appointment. I’m really sorry, but I just found out, and my mom couldn’t change it.” Gabriella waited a moment and then asked cautiously, “Do you think he’ll mind?” Mr. Riley? Who’s Mr. Riley? Kaitlin wondered. Oh! She means Steve! Aloud she said,


By

Wolf Hunter

“Hi, Dad.” Rhea smiled for about a second at her dad and slammed the front door. He glanced up, and then continued reading the paper. Just like always, he didn’t care if she was home or not. “Rhea, will you please stop wearing that stupid shirt?” Rhea scowled at him. He knew as well as she did that he could have said something when they bought it. She frowned at him and stormed to her room. “I don’t want to hear about it.” She slammed and locked her door and stared into her mirror at her black shirt with a howling wolf. Her dad was angry because he made his money by selling chicken eggs and fresh vegetables to produce stores, and also shooting and skinning wolves and selling the pelts to fur companies. Rhea thought it was surely illegal but he insisted it wasn’t. “Well, it should be,” Rhea had muttered. Rhea was the complete opposite of her dad. Most people thought they weren’t related because Rhea had short brown hair and hazel eyes, and her dad had black hair and dark brown eyes, but Rhea knew the main difference was in their personalities. Rhea was a vegetarian. Her dad liked steak. When wolves were skinned, she snuck out of the house to the Animal Society and played with the animals until she felt that everything was over. Her dad’s hunting was actually the reason her dad and mom had divorced. Her mom had walked out the door a year ago, after her dad had shot a young wolf for, Rhea thought, no reason at all. And now, more than ever, Rhea wished that her mom had taken her. Rhea was torn from her thoughts by an ear-shattering gunshot coming from outside. He kept looking back, as if he was expecting the cage to close any minute “Not again!” she groaned in disgust. She decided to peek outside to see what her dad had killed this time, and fell backwards onto her bed when she saw the faint outline of a dead wolf lying on bloodstained grass in the forest behind their house. Her heart was pounding like a sledgehammer, and the only thing she could do was lie on her back in complete shock. So that’s exactly what she did for a long time. Finally, her dad called her downstairs for dinner. She sighed, and slipped off her bed, her bare, sweaty feet sticking to the wood floor of her room. As she went down the old staircase, it creaked on every step. Her dad was eating chicken, and he muttered, “Your dinner is by the sink.” Rhea pulled her ravioli from the counter and sat down as far away from her dad as possible. They sat that way very silently for a long time and finally Rhea asked her dad, “Can I volunteer at the Animal Society?” She already knew what the answer would be. “Rhea, we’ve gone over this before. You’re too young to go anywhere without adult supervision . . .” Rhea was suddenly tired of his excuses. “Dad, I’m twelve years old and it’s only three blocks away!” She dropped her fork and ran into the backyard. For a long time she sat on the ground, staring at the newly turned soil. A tiny beetle was crawling across a pebble, trying to get to a leaf, but every time it tried, it just fell back again. The third time it tried, it was flipped onto its back. Rhea picked the flailing beetle up and set it on the leaf. “I wish I were a beetle,” Rhea thought out loud. “Then my only goal would be to get to a leaf, instead of making my dad stop shooting.” Rhea smiled sadly. It seemed hopeless. The next morning, her dad told her he was going to kill the wolves attacking the henhouses. “Don’t get any ideas,” he said suspiciously. “I know you don’t like me shooting, but if wolves are killing our hens then you know I have to shoot them.” She smiled angelically, but deep down inside she didn’t agree one bit. “I won’t.” As soon as their old Toyota pickup was out of sight, she grabbed her bike and pedaled in the direction of the woods. “He didn’t really think I would stay!” she reassured herself. She figured that if she went straight through the woods instead of around them, she could beat him to the chicken coops. By the time she arrived, her dad was already there. He was pointing his gun at a female wolf guarding her baby. Her dad took aim, and she ran toward him, trying to stop him, trying to do anything, but even before she started running, she knew she was too late. The shot rang out, and Rhea prayed for the wolves to run away in time, but the poor, faithful mother wolf protected her baby until death. She howled in pain and her beautiful gray fur was soaked in blood. Tears poured down Rhea’s cheeks as she saw the orphaned baby whimpering and nudging his mother’s lifeless body, wondering why she wasn’t moving. Rhea fell to her knees and sat there until her dad came over. “Rhea, stand up this instant and come home with me.” Her dad sounded mad and she didn’t understand how he could just ignore the fact that the pup no longer had a mother. She dried her tears and was overcome with anger. “I hate you!” she screamed. Rhea stood up and grabbed the pup in her jacket, bundling him up like she was wrapping a present, and ran as fast as she could to the Animal Society. When Rhea got to the front desk of the Society she quickly told them what had happened. “I see.” The person at the front desk spoke soothingly. “Don’t worry, Rhea, we’ll take good care of your wolf.” Rhea nodded, gave the squirming bundle to the front desk, and started to walk out.