Wheels of time

Zoo blues

Losing a loved one is a very traumatic experience. Just losing a long term pet can make someone enter depression, so just imagine the effect of losing more than one of your immediate families within the space of seconds. It’s an event that should not be wished upon anyone. I should know it happened to me…

My name is Olivia and this is my story…

It all started on April 3rd our first family outing for the Easter holiday. We had planned to spend the day at the zoo, see the animals, do some of the kids activities (like colouring in an animal mask) that had been set up for the holidays and go look at the display my class had made and had put up.

For the past term at my school we had focused the majority of our work around animals. We were given projects that were to be on an animal of our choice. The project had to include our animal report that we did in English and our matching animal which we did in art.
I was especially proud of my project as I had worked really hard on it. I chose to do the koala and had found some really good information and some great pictures to go with it. Mummy had even helped me put the whole thing together like a book.

Then there was the art project, Mrs Green allowed us to use anything we could find outside, in the art room or bring from home and it could be any art form, a picture, a painting, a clay statue the list was endless we could do anything we could think of. Zachary Gibson an annoying boy in my class who is often disruptive managed to occupy himself happily by creating a dinosaur using Lego blocks from home.
One of my close friends Marissa Grey made the most wonderful butterfly out of screwed up coloured papers which she stuck onto her drawn picture and Luca Italiano who was new to our school this year made a spider out of a ping pong ball, toothpicks and two googly eyes that he got from his Zia... That means Aunty in Italian.

For my project I drew a picture of a koala in pencil as a starting point, when I was happy with it I went over it in black marker and then stuck cotton wool on to it to make it fluffy. Once the glue had dried I painted the wool grey like real koala fur.
To finish it I made eyes out of two shells that I’d gotten from our last holiday in Harvey. On the last day on the way home Mummy and Daddy took us home via the beach it was great fun, we swam, made sand castles, went for a walk along the sand and collected shells, Daddy even let me bury his legs.
I then glued two raisins onto the shells to look like pupils, I also used black sun seeds for claws, and then I added leaves and bark to make it look like it was in a tree eating.

So needless to say I was very excited about seeing it up on display and of course Daddy seeing it. I’d wanted to show him it before I handed it in but Daddy had been too busy with work trying to get everything done so that he could spend the holidays with us. Daddy said that his boss was really mean and was always getting on his back so I understood why he always came home so tired. Mr Lewis is much, much, much bigger than my Daddy and I don’t think it’s nice for him to just jump on my Daddy’s back.

We had just finished making our masks at the zoo, I had made a monkey and had coloured in very slowly in order to make the best mask ever and Ella had scribbled orange and purple crayon all over her elephant mask. Mummy and Daddy were both very excited about seeing the display and had promised we could go and have a look as soon as we had quickly revisited the elephants, my younger sister Ella’s favourite animal.

I didn’t mind the detour I quite like the elephants myself and it’s no wonder Ella finds them so fascinating, not only are they, yes... Dumbo! But they are so smart, they can be trained but I don’t think they should be they should be able to roam wild and free, and they have a great memory. In James Groger’s project he said that ‘animal experts believe that an elephant never forgets a face’, and to top it off I reckon elephants have a sixth sense. I swear it was like they knew it was about to rain, it’s like they can feel it before it gets there, it’s amazing. Still I’m not going to claim to be some kind of animal expert, especially not at the ripe age of seven.

“Ook Mummy fants going way” Ella mumbled in her quickly developing baby language her first word had been ‘fawy’ which we assumed was her way of saying fairy. Mummy, Ella and I love fairies. It’s our favourite thing in the whole wide world. Not Daddy’s though... Between you and me I think he’s scared of them.

“How peculiar” replied Mummy it’s a wonder how, but ever since Ella began talking Mummy just understood whatever she burbled out like they had a secret language.
“Maybe it’s because the elephants have been invited to a special tea party with all the other animals”, she also always knew what to say to make Ella smile.

“Really dear must you? I thought the whole idea of this outing was that we have a break from all the magic, mystical and make believe” said Daddy a frown on his brow, scared again. With that began a down pour cold and heavy. By far the strongest rain I had ever been out in.

“Wain!” exclaimed Ella as if it were her very first encounter with the rare event known as rain.

“Quickly” said Daddy “Let’s find some shelter”. Daddy threw Ella over his shoulder as she flew through the air it surprised me, at times he could show such amazing strength. Mummy grabbed my hand and we all ran to make refuge under what looked like an old food stall.

“Mummy, waining now fants can’t have pawy” exclaimed Ella in complete honesty, she looked as though she could feel their disappointment and that at the first crack of thunder she may just burst into tears, for no one went out in a thunder storm and especially no one ever had tea parties.

“I guess they will just have to wait until the rain clears up” assured Mummy clearing up the concern on Ella’s face. Daddy turned away anger flaring his nostrils, he hated Mummy talking about magic.

“Waining, pouwing, man is scowing” Ella cheered bringing a smile to all our faces, she had the ability to break up even the most awkward of situations.

“Attention all staff and visitors! Due to unexpected weather conditions, we ask that everyone make their way to the front gate as soon as possible where you will be refunded your money. We are very sorry for any inconvenience. That is everyone is to evacuate the zoo, make your way to the front gate immediately, thank you”.

After ten minutes of queuing for our money back Daddy rejoined us near the gift shop. “Well I guess that’s that! What are we going to do now?” concern in Daddy’s voice “So much for that family outing”.

“Well we could go home and have a movie day, you know blankets, warm drinks and snuggling in front of our favourite movies” Mummy was quite clearly excited about her own suggestion she reeked of enthusiasm though she was rarely pessimistic.

“Faiwies!” Ella shouted, this of course was her, mine and Mummy’s favourite movie. We watch it all the time and when it finished we would all go outside to search for fairy houses hoping to find and befriend our very own fairy.

“Well I guess we can watch your movie girls, and then if the weather eases and you go on your hunt I can get some of my work done” Daddy grunted not to keen on either. Ella began clapping making everyone smile, I think Mummy’s right, babies excitement can brighten anyone’s day it’s like pixie dust or rays of sunshine, it’s uplifting and beautiful.

We waited for a gap in the rain, when it eased Mummy and Daddy swiftly helped us to the car. Mummy put Ella in her car seat and I sat next to her to keep her smiling, she wasn’t fond of her car seat because she liked to be able to see what was going on around her and this one was very restricting. For that reason I always sat close in the hopes it would comfort her. Daddy started the car and switched on the heater, we were all cold from the rain that had caught us on our way to the car.

“Right should we get this show on the road?” Daddy said starting the engine “Everyone ready?”