Leaf Life

• Caitlyn Smith, Grade 7
• Short Story
• 2016

Leelar was a gumtree leaf. She was a friendly happy leaf, who had great relationships with all the local leaves. The only problem was the koalas, who kept eating all Leelar’s friends, which is very saddening. One time a ‘friendly’ trapdoor spider named Jaden and a hungry caterpillar tried to eat Leelar, but she was able to fight them both off. She has a lot of injuries from them. She has even dealt with the meanest, scariest koala around—Michelle. She is the bully of all koalas. She eats all the leaves and steals the other koala’s leaves, and she eats dark green ones, they taste the best she says. Leelar is dark green.
Michelle was really mean to all the leaves she ate, but Leelar appealed the most to all the koalas. She was the most juiciest and delicious looking, from a very far away tree, she stood out the most. Michelle started to swing from branch to branch, tensely, as Leelar turned around she could see that Michelle was coming over. Leelar was getting worried, she has never been threatened to be eaten before. She didn’t know what to do, so she panicked, she was puffing and wheezing loudly, she asked the other leaves for help, but they didn’t know what to do for her as they were stuck on a branch.
As Michelle came over, all her mates came over as well. It was really scary for the frightened leaf, the koalas tower over the whole branch, looking especially at Leelar. “H-how c-can I help y-you?” stuttered Leelar. She didn’t know what else to do or say. She was petrified, not knowing that she is shaking all over.
“Well, let’s just say, we want to eat you!” roared Michelle as the other koalas laughed their bitter laughs. After a while of really bad laughter, Michelle asked for silence really boisterously, partially deafening Leelar and her friends. Leelar was thinking about how Michelle is doing this just for fun. Michelle was acting all tough, she stood nice and tall, showing off her muscles.
When Michelle asked for silence, there was still a bit of giggles here and there. The koalas started a fight, it’s pretty typical for koalas to fight randomly, and as they did a koala named Cory tried to grab Leelar because he hasn’t eaten a leaf in 2 months! He was dying to have a taste of her little scared body. The koalas stopped fighting because they saw him. Then they all started fighting over Leelar. They all started screaming at each other saying things like “she’s mine” “I’ll eat her first” etc. After a while of verbal fighting, they tried to grab Leelar, and pick her off. She struggled to get out of every paw. She did well, but not well enough to hold off Michelle.
The picking started to stop and the verbal fighting became big again. As they were verbally fighting over Leelar, a baby koala, Elle, was on her mother’s back, feeling a bit hungry. When she sees a delicious leaf, she can’t hold back. As she was searching for food, she came across Leelar. So Elle hopped off her mother’s back and swung from branch to branch, like Michelle, when she got there, she licked her lips, picked Leelar off, as that happened, Leelar quickly whispered, “Please don’t eat me.” Elle was shocked and very frightened that leaves can talk, she felt so sorry for Leelar, that Elle grabbed a few other leaves, and climbed down from the tree, and hid them all so they won’t be eaten.