Monday, November 21, 2005
The Epic of Aubrey
Book the Third: The World Below
Then I hit a tree. The branches thwacked against my body and I tumbled head over tail through the sticks and limbs toward the ground. I grabbed at the branches with my claws, trying to stop my fall. Finally, I caught onto a tree limb with my front paws, and I hung there for a moment, hind legs dangling, gasping for breath.
I am very athletic, so needless to say I was able to execute a pull-up until I was all the way on to the limb. It was just wide enough to lie on, so I lay there, panting and clinging for dear life to the wood. After a minute or so I started to calm down. My fur was still standing on end, so I bathed myself as best as I could while still clutching the tree. I licked my shoulder for a while, trying to get some tree sap off. Grooming is a good way to reduce ones’ anxiety.
Feeling better, I decided to take stock of my surrounding. The tree was knotted and large, filled with leafy branches because it was still early fall. Oak, I think it was. I was on a good-sized limb about ten feet from the ground, and there were quite a few branches below me, but nothing that looked like it could hold a cat. I looked toward the trunk of the tree. It was broad and rough. I had no idea how to climb down a tree. I had never even climbed up a tree before!
There was a twitter above me, and I looked up nervously. Apparently, this tree was home to quite a few of those annoying little brown birds. They all looked down at me, scolding, or were they laughing? I pinned my ears at them and hissed, but they just kept staring down and warbling like little fools.
I stood carefully on the limb and made my teetering way toward the tree trunk. The incessant chatter of birds grew louder and I growled at them in annoyance. When I was about two feet from the spot where the limb intersected the trunk of the Oak, I heard a loud flutter of wings. I froze in horror, afraid that the monstrous, hook-beaked bird had returned for me.
Then I felt a glancing blow to the side of my head, and another to my shoulder. A sharp peck at my ear. The stupid little brown birds had started to dive bomb me! They swooped down and pecked at my eyes and face, screeching angrily, hitting me with their little bodies and clawing at me with their tiny feet.
One little brown bird is no big deal. They are hardly worth the effort of hunting, they present so little of a challenge. But it is a very different story when a whole flock of them are attacking you in a tree. I ran for it, flung myself at the trunk of the tree and scrambled my way down, face first, falling half the time. I hit the ground with a thud, rolled over a few times and settled, stunned, in the weeds below. The birds swooped down at me, but now that I was on the ground I had the advantage, and I growled, hissed and batted them into a hasty retreat.
Keep on the lookout for Book the Fourth: Lost at Sea
I am very athletic, so needless to say I was able to execute a pull-up until I was all the way on to the limb. It was just wide enough to lie on, so I lay there, panting and clinging for dear life to the wood. After a minute or so I started to calm down. My fur was still standing on end, so I bathed myself as best as I could while still clutching the tree. I licked my shoulder for a while, trying to get some tree sap off. Grooming is a good way to reduce ones’ anxiety.
Feeling better, I decided to take stock of my surrounding. The tree was knotted and large, filled with leafy branches because it was still early fall. Oak, I think it was. I was on a good-sized limb about ten feet from the ground, and there were quite a few branches below me, but nothing that looked like it could hold a cat. I looked toward the trunk of the tree. It was broad and rough. I had no idea how to climb down a tree. I had never even climbed up a tree before!
There was a twitter above me, and I looked up nervously. Apparently, this tree was home to quite a few of those annoying little brown birds. They all looked down at me, scolding, or were they laughing? I pinned my ears at them and hissed, but they just kept staring down and warbling like little fools.
I stood carefully on the limb and made my teetering way toward the tree trunk. The incessant chatter of birds grew louder and I growled at them in annoyance. When I was about two feet from the spot where the limb intersected the trunk of the Oak, I heard a loud flutter of wings. I froze in horror, afraid that the monstrous, hook-beaked bird had returned for me.
Then I felt a glancing blow to the side of my head, and another to my shoulder. A sharp peck at my ear. The stupid little brown birds had started to dive bomb me! They swooped down and pecked at my eyes and face, screeching angrily, hitting me with their little bodies and clawing at me with their tiny feet.
One little brown bird is no big deal. They are hardly worth the effort of hunting, they present so little of a challenge. But it is a very different story when a whole flock of them are attacking you in a tree. I ran for it, flung myself at the trunk of the tree and scrambled my way down, face first, falling half the time. I hit the ground with a thud, rolled over a few times and settled, stunned, in the weeds below. The birds swooped down at me, but now that I was on the ground I had the advantage, and I growled, hissed and batted them into a hasty retreat.
Keep on the lookout for Book the Fourth: Lost at Sea
# posted by Alison @ 10:49 AM 