The Early Bird Gets The Worm, But Not The Snail!

• Lily Morgan, Grade 4, Killara Primary School
• Short Story
• 2015

Excellence Award in the 'Beyond Words 2015' competition

The forest was quiet; unnervingly so. The only movement was a snail crawling up an old tree, the branches gnarled with age. The snail was quite ordinary, really. Its deep, chocolate-coloured shell had paler streaks of tan, and its dark green body was silently bubbling; its slime almost seeming to glow as the thin rays of light reaching through the trees fell on the silvery trail. His eye stalks bobbed up and down as his eyes rotated, hoping he wasn’t seen. He shuddered at the thought of being stripped of his shell, skewered at the end of blood-covered talons.
Unbeknownst to the anxious snail, the keen, all-seeing eyes of a famished hawk were scanning the area with the same desperate precision. His razor-sharp claws were tearing, ravaging at the branch like crazed lumberjacks, and a river of sap was erupting from the tree, like a sparkling ruby waterfall. Suddenly, a sparkle caught his eye...a trail of slime glistening like dew in the morning sun. A word appeared in his mind: Snails! A sliver of saliva escaped his wanting mouth as he stared hungrily at the plump snail, dangling upside down from the branch like a fresh fruit. He fantasized about the heavenly, smoky taste of snails. His mind exploded with an idea: What if he could introduce a new item to the menu: Smoked Snail? He looked at the sharp piece of steel embedded in an overhead branch; likely left there by hunters, and a flintstone lying on the ground. “Hmmmm….”
Whoooosh! The fire raced along the ground, encouraged by the many dry, dead leaves spread across the forest floor. The smiling bird admired his handiwork with satisfaction. The glint of the metal clutched in his talons matched the sinister one in his eyes. To get a better look, he went looking for another branch.
The hawk found the perfect view, all the fiery colours of sunset in the raging flames before him, licking inches from his feet. He noticed a twig below him. He settled down, his scaly claws wrapping around the smooth wood. He closed his eyes and thought about juicy snails and water rushing past his claws…His eyes snapped open as he realized there was water bubbling past his feet, emerging seemingly endlessly. His eyes went wide as he realized he had dislodged a squirrel’s water supply. The water then fell towards the raging fire, the drops clearing smoke-filled paths through the fire, like a headmaster walking through a busy school. The hawk was enraged as his work was erased in a matter of seconds.
His black eyes flamed and his claws angrily stabbed into the wood. His wings spread out like the American Bald Eagle. He dived, he swooped, and in one move he had the snail tightly gripped in his talons. Mmmm!