Animal Crime Dare

• Jana Lashin, Grade 5
• Short Story
• 2015

“Class dismissed,” said the teacher. As I take the bus, I read. "Oh let me introduce myself, I’m Nora, I’m eleven years old and this is a story about teamwork. As I got off the bus, I met Sarah. you can call her a show off. I don’t call her a friend, but she always plays with my friends." “I heard you’re inviting your friends, but not me, I’m coming along,” Sarah said. I didn’t dare to say anything.
As I arrived home, mum told me to turn on the news. The news was saying animals were getting endangered, they said it can’t be a disease because the numbers got lower just yesterday. They’re suspecting someone is stealing.
I said, “I wish I can solve this and I’m going to be a Detective when I grow up. I’ve always loved crime fiction, Sherlock Homes was my favourite.”
Sarah said, “No way I DARE YOU!”
“Dare accepted,”
Sarah said, “I’m entering the dare.’
I have to think about this logically, “How can I solve this, I’ll have to search in the wild for hunters.’
I opened the news to see the latest crime and the animals became endangered in Africa. I looked up ways to go to Africa. There was a writing contest and I entered. I found out there was only two who were entering so that’s easy to win.
I actually won! Sarah didn’t enter because her parents agreed to her begging to go to Africa.
As we arrived to the hotel, I said, “I’ll go to buy some stuff,” but actually I was going to the wild. When I arrived, I saw Sarah crying for help. “Please help, we can work as a team. I’m tied in an animal rope trap.” I agreed to help her. When we were walking, we saw a hunter with a lot of animals, and he saw us. “Come back here!” then he stopped talking. I walked into an animal trap, he knew I was there. “Help!” I cried, Sarah ran and left me to suffer. The hunter walked up to me, grabbed me and said, “I’ll deal with you later” and went inside his big, expensive tent. I said, “Why steal the animals?” He looked at me with a very dirty look. “Well because I’m trying to get an extinct animal back to life, and if anyone knew, I’ll be in big trouble. I put something in the animal to make them breed to anything and that’s illegal.” Just then, Sarah came in to save me but the hunter caught her and trapped her in with me in the animal cage. I said, “Why did you betray me?” “I wanted to win the the bet but then I was guilty and came to save you.” Then I realised my watch has a tracking device. I message my mum and in 5 minutes, the cops were here, and the hunter got arrested and we were the heroes.