Rich Schmitt/Staff Photographer
By HANNAH LUNKEWITZ | Special to the Palisadian-Post
Here is an excerpt from the first-place winner of the fifth- to sixth-grade category in the Friends of the Palisades Library Children’s Summer Creative Writing Contest.
One Swallow Made My Summer
Nobody but a swallow can all day long catch a fly every given minute. But at least I tried to. I used a flyswatter and an old mosquito net and found that the best places to get them were the inside of the stable windows.
But it was hopeless. I got about 40 until lunch, way too few for my bird to survive. When my mother suggested grasshoppers or beetles or any other insects could be included in the diet, my brothers came to help me. In the afternoon they crawled between the sheep, over the wildflower meadows and hunted down all the hopping or flying insects they could find.
My brother Carl, with his interest in anatomy, was also willing to cut them in pieces small enough to be fed to my swallow. In the morning of the second day my bird sat in its box, looked at me and spread its wings. It tried to flatter around and made it out of the box. With the swallow in my hand I went outside.
It had been raining earlier in the morning but now the weather was fine. Fluffy white little clouds silently passed passed by in the sky like a flock of sheep. The farmyard was washed clean by the rain and the air smelled fresh and salty. The little bird hesitated a while but then jumped and flattered to the other side of the yard. I could hardly pick it up in the corner of the
kitchen entrance.
All afternoon I went on to feed the swallow as much as I could and gave it water to drink. Then came the moment of truth. There was no way I could successfully keep on collecting its diet of insects at a sufficient pace. The bird would now have to master this challenge or it would perish …
Will Hannah’s bird ever learn to fly? Continue reading at palipost.com.
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