Orpheus

This is my English narrative.  If you have any suggestions, please comment!

Orpheus

 

            “REEEEEEEEEEEEEEET!” sounded a shrill groundhog whistle.  I jumped to feet, dropping the deer bones I’d been bleaching for my collection.  A curious, black-grey creature was crawling up the hill toward me.  I’d seen animals come from the forest before, but none like this one!  It’s faced peeked up as it crested the hill up to the corner of the concrete pad where I’d been working with a face that radiated cuteness.  It was too late; I’d been adopted.

            His name is Orpheus.  He was a baby groundhog, who was by some freakish scenario of nature removed from his mother.  She could have been hit on the road, he may have just wandered off, or he may have even been booted out of the den, perhaps because he may have been a runt or for some other reason had become unwanted.  Every day through that August week, Orpheus would have about five meals a day from his baby bottle, which was meant for nursing kittens, but a groundhog shouldn’t be any different.  He lived in an old guinea pig cage, and his favorite shelter was his pink towel that he liked to nestle into.  He required a lot of attention, and if he wasn’t happy, would whistle louder and higher than Mr. Ginder.  Many times I remember waking up well past midnight to feed him.

            My dad had been making some calls about Orpheus to find out what he could.  One call was to a woman working for the DNR, and she told him it was illegal to possess wild groundhogs in Indiana.  He broke the news to me that I had to let Orpheus go.  I wasn’t too happy, but agreed it was probably best.  We had found a den of groundhogs beneath our shed that had babies.  We were sure, because they were often out playing in the yard and would scatter to den openings across the lawn at our sight.

             So on Tuesday night, nine days from when he found me on the concrete flat I released him into the burrow.  Time passed, but we fate was going to allow us to see each other again.  Today, a year a two months later after letting him out, he lives beneath our wood deck in a retreat of his own.  He still loves to eat dandelion weeds, and has developed a taste for Cheetos.   A year may have passed, but he’s still the adorable groundhog I knew that August long ago.

 

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Tags: Life, School, Animals, Pets