Chapter 1.01
“Come on, Honey!” Snow cried. “Let’s go possum hunting with the dogs! In the yuccas!”
“Coming!” I called and started pulling on six layers of plastic bags on each foot.
I was staying at my grandmas fifty thousand acre farm for a while, as I was visiting my father in Australia, and he arranged for me to visit ma. For the last few days we had gone hunting in the yuccas with the dogs. First it was just with Snow. We found it fun chasing the dogs around in the four hundred acres of yucca, even though we came out all cut up because we had been in mini shorts and t-shirts. The next time was with Lilli and Eve, our friends who came in long stuff anyway. We had on skinny jeans, and jumpers. Also, the first time I went I had worn low white canvas shoes, which were now filled with grass seeds. So I came up with the idea of wrapping plastic bags around our feet. They tore easily and looked dorky, but they proved to be very useful, as it was on grass anyway.
We had been exploring the yuccas all day for the last few days, and twice we came out the other end of them. At least, we thought it was the other end. We found all sorts of wildlife in them too. The second time with Lilli and Eve, Eve and Snow, the two younger kids ran off to try to be Bear Grylls, their idol, and they got out of the yuccas, but Lilli and I stayed with the twelve friendly border collies my grandma cared for, and bred. The females were; Pepper, Meggie [Pepper and Jack’s pup], Ember, [those were all red and white] Diva, Panda, Boo, Misty [a blue and white], Rosie [a tri-colored] and Pheobe [blue merle]. The males were Finn, and Monty. Finn was black and white, while Monty was red and white, and looked more like a lanky lion, than a dog.
Jack was another male, and a huge one, like a big friendly, loving teddy bear, but at three years old, his collar got caught in a fence when he tried to go through it. He went missing, and Ma and Pete thought he’d ran away and got shot, and of course were devastated. But at the time they were trying to sell their house, and they had two in that property, only around one hundred meters away from each other. When Pete was showing the people around the house, they found jack, head detached, dead.
Anyway, back to the second day with Lilli. We were walking around in the yuccas, when the dogs just stopped at this one yucca tree close to the entrance. Meggie, being the amazing, athletic, foxy one, climbed the yucca from the inside. But she didn’t find anything. Lilli and I brushed it off, then the dogs started stopping at random trees, and Meg would climb them. We knew there was something in them. Then we came to a very tight clump of four yuccas. The yuccas were clumped together already, though sometimes they would reveal small clearings of wheat grass, or a tight clump like this one. The dogs rushed in and we heard growling. Lilli lowered herself to the ground, to look in, see what was happening. At that moment, a possum darted out, I screamed, but Lilli was beside herself. Well, the possum had run over her face, so I would be too, if it were me. But we still chased the dogs around, and every fifteen minutes or so, a possum would sprint out from under the bushes. Even though it had happened around three times, Lilli and I shrieked whenever one would run out.
Then we came to another tight clump of five or six yuccas, and the dogs sprinted in. Again we heard growling, and Pheobe was sprinting out, around, then back in, as if she were confused. Then we really heard snarling and screams from the possum. It went on for a while, until Misty darted away with something in her mouth, and Panda trotted out with blood staining her gentle, snow white face. Unlike a normal border collie’s face, Panda’s face was mostly white, except one little splotch of black on her eye. This made her look gentle, and very pretty. Monty also came bounding out, his tongue lolling. He had blood stains on his paws and around his mouth. We later found the remains of the possum. Misty was eating it.
We told Snow, and now we went in the yuccas regularly, not really to hunt possums though, Snow just liked to think she could hunt, like Bear Grylls.
