Tangles

• Alyssa Dakin, Grade 6
• Short Story
• 2014

He had curly white hair, brown eyes and a loving, kind nature and from the first day I met him I knew that we were the perfect match. I loved him so much and he loved me as much as I loved him. Tangles was my orphan calf. I would wake up every morning at 5 a.m. to feed him milk and crumble. Most afternoons dad and I would go for a walk with Tangles around the block. He would moo and moo when we got back because he was so hungry.
But sooner than I thought he was almost grown up and the time had almost come for him to move away and live his own life. He only moved half an hour away though. So I would visit him as much as I could, but I still missed him extremely. No more moos in the morning and no more moos in the afternoon. No more walks in the afternoons and worst of all no more Tangles.
I missed him badly, so I had to do something to put me out of my misery and I did. I had come up with a plan. My plan was to beg and beg mum and dad to let me keep him.
But dad words were, “Well how are we ever supposed to get an eight-hundred kilogram bull in the Ute, bring him home and feed him?” “And if we do manage to get him into the Ute, how will we pay for two bales of hay every day for one or more years?”
And my answer to that question was, “I know it will be hard but I don’t know what I will do without him and I understand if we can’t, but can we please just try?”
So we did try it and it didn’t work.
A couple of months after he had moved to the farm we took my nana for a holiday to Noosa and we stayed in a really nice place. We had so much fun there. We bought new clothes and went surfing. But eventually it was time to go home.
On the way home from Noosa we decided to stop in at the farm. When we arrived it was a bit unusual because my dad called the cows and they all came except for one the one that was missing was Tangles. So we got into the car and went looking for him. We looked every that we thought that he would be lurking but still couldn’t find him. All except one place and that one place was near the dam. When we arrived at the dam Tangles was stuck in the dam, because he was trying to find water during the drought. Or so I thought that he was stuck. But as soon as he heard the sound of the car he turned around, started running straight towards me and put his head on my shoulder. Then we walked Tangles back to his paddock.