A Little Adventure

Happy Friday!

I accidentally published this before I meant to.  It still had a number of flaws.  But here it is now, practically perfect!  How was your week?  Mine was rather exciting.  You can read about our largest adventure below.  

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Wednesday evening my mom, Willa and I were going for a walk.  We were talking about a German Shepherd who almost attacked them the other day.  My mom said she saw two giant German Shepherds at the park the day before.  Now we carry sticks with us, but they are mostly for drawing designs in the sand.  Arroyo
   

“Let’s just go home, my legs are jello just thinking about it,” Willa complained.

I was starting to feel a little uneasy as well.  Plus, we were planning on going swimming, so maybe we should turn back. 

“Yeah, let’s go home,” I agreed.

“I really don’t think we’ll see any dogs,” my mom said, responding to a text on her phone, “now, let me finish telling you about this thing at work…” She led into a long explanation.  Willa danced around the wild bushes, watching her shadow dance with her and dragging her stick in the dirt.  My mom kept talking and I began to relax, enjoying the purple mountains ahead of us.

Suddenly, about 30 feet ahead of us, two very large German Shepherds jumped out of the bushes.  They were not leashed and they were running everywhere hunting rabbits.  Their owner wasn’t really paying much attention to them. 

“Turn around, go!”  I told Willa urgently.  She seemed to pick up on what I was saying and walked very quickly back to where we’d come.  I started going with her, but then, what about our mom?  She was responding to another text and completely oblivious to what was going on. 

“Mommy, look!  Dogs,” I hissed.  She looked up, saw the dogs, saw us, and gathered enough to tell Willa to go knock on a friend’s back gate. 

We hurried back to our friend’s (Miss Marion) house, but she wasn’t out in her yard and her gate was locked.  In the spur of the moment I hoisted Willa on top of the 6-foot fence and attempted to climb over as well.  By this time our mom had caught up and was calling for Miss Marion to come out and asking if we could be in her yard for a moment.  She wasn’t coming, and the dogs were.  After trying to climb up and scraping my arms, I stepped on a bench and was able to get over the fence.  Willa had jumped down to a chair and was in the yard as well.  Our mom used the bench to climb up and sit on the wall. 

From her perch, our mom gave us a play by play of what the dogs were doing. 

“They’re in the Arroyo now.  We should wait a little longer though.  What if they just go to the end and come back?” 

It seemed likely, but instead of answering I hugged Willa, who was close to tears.

“Marion!  Did you call me?  Oh!  Hello there,” A surprised neighbor poked her head over her portion of the fence.   She looked rather startled to see three people jumping her neighbors fence.  And two of them carrying pointed sticks. 

“Um, can I help you?”  She asked.  My mom then went into a full explanation of what was going on and why she was sitting on top of this fence.  The neighbor, it turns out her name was Michelle, was very kind and concerned. 

While the two ladies talked, Miss Marion’s dog, Mona, and her cat, Zoe came out for us to pet them.  Zoe was so pretty.  She had blue eyes and white fur. 

After our mom was done talking Michelle offered for us to go through her yard, out into the neighborhood and take the long way home.  We gratefully agreed. 

On the long walk home we were all three rather jumpy. 

“We should have gone to church, like I was planning,” my mom said.

“No, we should’ve just turned back when I said.  Then none of this would have happened!”  Willa peered over people’s walls to look into their yard.

“I think this will make an amazing story,” I added.  They stopped to look at me for a moment, not understanding how I could think about that right now.  But as you can see, I was right.

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This really, truly happened the other night.  We all had a wonderful laugh when retelling the adventure to Lolly.  It seemed much less daunting when we were snuggled on the couch, eating ice cream. 

Love,

Pip