Robbie and I walked along the hiking trail, picking up small sticks as we went.
“Hey, look over there,” I said, pointing to a small pile of sticks near some rocks. “It looks like someone else was gathering wood but didn’t use it all. I’m going over there to get it.”
“Hang on there, Freddy,” Robbie said, grabbing me by the shirt. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
“Why not?”
“Remember what Jessie said about snakes and skunks.”
“Well, I don’t think a person was collecting those sticks.”
“You don’t?”
“Nope. That looks like a skunk’s den over there. I think a skunk was gathering sticks for his house.”
“Really? How do you know?”
“I don’t know for sure, but I was doing some research on the computer before we left, and that looks just like the picture of the skunk’s den I saw on the Internet.”
“Well then, I will definitely stay far away from that,” I said, holding my nose and backing away. “I don’t want to take any chances of getting sprayed by a skunk.”
“I know what you mean,” Robbie said, laughing. “Skunks really stink!”
“They are P.U.! Let’s get out of here.”
We started back down the path, but then all of a sudden, Robbie stopped dead in his tracks. “Shhh,” he whispered, and he put up his hand to stop me from walking any farther. “Look over there,” he said, pointing to a big rock.
“What?”
“Shhhhh. Over there.” He pointed again.
“Where?”
“On that big rock. There’s a lizard.”
This time when I looked, I saw what he was pointing at. “Wow! I think that’s the biggest lizard I’ve ever seen!”
“I know. His tail must be six inches long!”
“Let’s try to catch it.”
“But your dad said we weren’t allowed to catch any critters.”
“He just said we couldn’t bring any back with us. He never said we couldn’t play with it here,” I whispered. I quietly put down the sticks I had been carrying and slowly started to tiptoe toward the lizard.
Robbie followed right behind me. “You go that way, and I’ll go this way,” I said. “We’ll try to surround him so he can’t get away.”
We tiptoed closer until we were just inches away from catching the lizard. “OK,” I mouthed to Robbie, “on the count of three, we grab him.” I silently put up one finger at a time. One, two, three!
We both pounced on the lizard and could feel his scaly skin beneath our fingers. “I think we got him! I think we got him!” I yelled. But before we could close our hands around him, he slipped through our fingers and disappeared into the bushes.
“Shoot!” I cried. “We were so close. We almost had him.”
“I know,” said Robbie. “I thought we had him, too. Boy, was he fast. He was there one minute and gone the next.”
“Bummer. I really wanted to keep him as a pet just for the day since my mom would never let me have anything like that in the house.”
“Maybe we can find another one later. We’d better finish collecting the firewood, or your dad’s going to wonder what happened to us.”
“You’re right, and we want to make sure we have enough time for fishing, so we’d better get going.”
We both picked up our little piles of sticks and continued on down the path, collecting more sticks as we went. We were almost done when Robbie stopped in front of a big tree.
“Why did you stop?” I asked.
“I’m just looking at something,” he said, staring up into the branches.
“What?”
“I think that’s a beehive up there,” he said, pointing to a branch not far from the ground.
“You think so? A real, live beehive?”
“Do you think there are any bees in there?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
I jumped up and tried to grab hold of the branch, so I could pull it down closer to me.
“Hey, Freddy. What do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m just trying to get a closer look. I’ve never seen a real beehive up close before. I’ve only seen pictures of them in books.”
“And I think you should leave it that way. Do you remember what happened the last time you tried hanging from a tree branch?”
“What?”
“You ended up in the emergency room with a broken arm, that’s what!”
“Now you sound like my mom. I’m not going to break my arm,” I said, still trying to jump high enough to grab the branch.
“Besides,” Robbie continued, “bees don’t like it when you disturb their hive.”
“Got it!” I said, ignoring Robbie and finally grabbing hold of the branch. I started to pull the branch down toward the ground to get a closer look when … SNAP! The branch broke, and the hive hit the ground.
The jolt must have awakened the bees. At first we heard a low buzzing sound, but then all of a sudden the buzzing got louder and louder. Then a gazillion angry bees burst out of the hive and headed right toward us.
“Run for your life!” Robbie shouted. “It’s a swarm, and they’re after us!”
“AAAAAHHHHH!” we both screamed as we took off running down the trail with the swarm of angry bees close behind.
