Elephant Encounter

• Caitlin Walton, Grade 5
• Short Story
• 2018

We were out in the African jungle, not far from home when we saw something. It was an Elephant ready to slowly trot on my brother Samuel and I. “Lisa, Samuel” Mum cried but it was too late. The creature was a metre away from us. I screamed “Run!” thinking this could be the last word I ever spoke. Our hearts were pounding out of our chests like someone was stomping on them. We were panic stricken when we realised we were at a dead end. I squealed louder than everyone in the universe put together in their whole entire lives. There’s not a word that could describe how afraid I was.
At that very moment, Samuel got out his strawberry lollipop and unwrapped it. What was he doing? He started sucking it. I couldn’t control my temper so I screamed, “Are you mental? Get that lollipop out of your mouth” and so he threw it on the floor and climbed the large, thick tree that was making the dead end. But I couldn’t make it.
Samuel reached for my hand and I tightly gripped onto it, still horrified. When climbing the tree, I scraped my lip on a piece of bark and it began bleeding. If I happen to still be alive, it would be the first story I would tell my friends at school tomorrow. “Brrrrr” the elephant said as it raised its long grey trunk. I was hoping it meant ‘do you want a ride?’ or something that isn’t close to ‘I want to kill you’ because my brother and I are too young to die.
In the distance I could see Mum tearing up and screaming to my Dad, pleading with him to rescue us. “I won’t make it Sandra,” he explained but Mum could not keep cool a second longer. Neither could Dad, neither could we. I opened my backpack and reached for a pineapple. My brother told me that this is one of the things elephants ate so I nervously put it towards its trunk as it sucked it up. The enormous elephant was distracted, so this was our chance to get away.
We ran rapidly trying to escape from the heaviest animal in history trying to squash us like we were ants. Then the elephant suddenly choked on the spike on the pineapple. My brother and I would have felt sorry for it, if it weren’t trying to kill us. We ran the rest of the way, all the way until we reached our parents. We all dashed back home as quick as we could and sat on the couch. Each of us with a rush of relief. “We made it,” I said and we all smiled apart from my brother who frowned and said, “I want my lollipop back.” Then we celebrated our lucky escape by having a family movie night and ham and PINEAPPLE pizza for dinner.