Who pays for a river rafting trip?

Once upon a time, in a green lush forest, there was an ever-growing community of forest creatures. They all lived together, in the forest, in harmony. There were the snakes, slugs, and bugs. There were the squirrels, raccoons, and skunks. There were deer, bear, and boars. And there were too many birds of every size and color to count. It had been this way for as long as any of them could remember.

All the creatures of the forest took great pride in their homeland. None of them would dare litter or pollute the forest in which they lived. The other birds, and me would fly and build nest in the great tall trees. We would build our bird nests from broken bits of branches, dead leaves, and scraps of anything that we could carry in our beaks. The many deer, bears, and boars would roam the forest eating berries, leaves, and fruit from the trees. The squirrels, raccoons, and skunks gathered nuts and such, all day long. The squirrels, raccoons, and skunks would save half of their nuts and such to eat during the winter months. The snakes would crawl around under the thick bushes and lush ground cover chasing the slugs and bugs, who would find safe hiding places under older, larger fallen trees.

There are no clocks or calendars in the forest. There are day creatures and night creatures that roam the forest. Owls are rarely seen during the day, but can often heard at night, crying out mysteriously, “Who?”

All the peaceful creatures of this forest had heard other creatures from other forest tell tales about how loud rumbling noises could be heard before anything could be seen. The skies would be a beautiful shade of blue, and in the distance could be heard loud roaring and trees, many trees falling and cracking. Other creatures from other forest told of massive, yellow, metal, machines that would scrape the green earth until only raw brown dirt was showing. The other creatures from the other forest homes were being destroyed and they were running for their lives. Their river became muddy from the raw brown earth that now flowed into it with every rainfall. In all their genetic memory, nothing like this had ever happened before.


Then very early one morning strange creatures entered the great lush forest. As birds, we were the first to notice the strange creatures, and flew around the whole forest excitedly announcing the arrival of strange new creatures. The new creatures had hard, bright yellow, plastic hats on their heads, and bright yellow vests that matched. These strange creatures walked upright on two legs, and were carrying strange objects with them. For days and days these strange two-legged creatures walked around the lush green forest. Several of them carried a big bag of wooden stakes. Some of the wooden stakes had vivid red flags, and some had bright yellow flags attached to one end of the stakes. The strange creatures had a small black box that spoke to it in a language that none of us forest creatures could understand. The small black box would speak and the strange two-legged creatures would stop and then drive a flagged stake into the ground. It all seemed silly and harmless.

After a while, the strange two-legged creatures left. Suddenly, very early one morning very loud roaring noises were heard. Trees could be heard falling and hitting the earth. The earth shook. Birds whose nests were in those trees could do nothing but watch in horror as their young fell to the ground with the trees. We all watched in horror, as huge, yellow, metal creatures were cutting and plowing through our forest. Then there were other black, metal creatures that covered the earth in a hard substance. The substance was hot, and it had an oily smell. The two-legged creatures were heard talking about asphalt and roads.

We watched as they made the roads. We watched as they brought in large trucks full of limestone and covered the earth with the limestone from the road to the rivers edge. After a few years, more two-legged creatures built a wooden shack, and hung signs. Then more and more two-legged creatures came in different colored, metal machines of all different shapes and sizes. All the two-legged creatures that came would give the men in the shack lots of pieces of green paper. The men in the shack would then give them big, black round tubes that they would put in the river waters, and float for miles and miles. Some of the two-legged creatures put big, red and white boxes inside of one of the black round tubes and would tie it to the tube that they were using to float down the river.

Now, the once white sandy beaches along the river are littered with shinny metal cans, paper plates, plastic forks, large and small black plastic bags, and other things that these two-legged creatures bring with them. Sometimes they leave marshmallows, and other bits of food on their rafting trips. Once we saw a pair of two-legged creatures that were so drunk that they almost drowned and needed to be rescued. Some other two-legged creatures said that they were siblings.

While we were out looking for another lush green forest in which to live, since these two-legged creatures had destroyed our own forest, we came across some very big, ill-tempered creatures called alligators. We introduced ourselves, from a safe distance of course, and told the alligators our story. There are almost as many alligators now as there are birds because for many years now the alligators have been on a protected species list. The alligators were very interested in exactly where all these two-legged creatures were just floating around in a river.

The next year when we were migrating we stopped by our once lush green forest. The shack on the rivers edge was all boarded up and there were large signs posted everywhere that said, “NO SWIMMING – ALLIGATORS”.

Written for {bittem:333655}

The New Prompt is:
Write a story about a river rafting trip, two siblings and a rescue. Don't forget the marshmallows