Survival Stories
"A hunter knows he is never alone." She had heard Father say that once.
Aneze looked into the trees. She spoke out loud to the bush. "There's always you, Chickadee," she said to the small birds skittering above. "And if I stare long enough at the sky, I'll see you, Eagle, circling with your wife. You will show me where Rabbit and Vole are hiding. And nearby in the stream, you are swimming, Jackfish. And you, Beaver, you are working on your house."
"You see," Aneze told the woods. "I'm not alone at all."
Clearly, any field trip involving manure is not right for a bunch of fourteen-year-olds.
But manure wasn't even the worst part of the stupid field trip.
The worst part was that the farmer grows pigs. And pigs are also called hogs. And there's this poor guy in our class called Dan Hogg who everybody hated.
I don't know why exactly. Maybe it was his hair. Or his teeth. Or his glasses. Or the fact that he answered Mr. Benvie's questions as if he might actually have a brain. Usually he just tried to sort of disappear, but it never worked. Idiots like Shane Coolen or Tyler March wouldn't take their eyes off him. They wouldn't shut up about him. They wouldn't quit laughing at him.
