Summer holidays were the best time of year for me. I could relax and enjoy the time off without having to worry about school. I was looking forward to this summer in particular because it was out last year of high school. The four of us, Jesse, Anna, Josh and I, were sitting around a small, wooden table in our local coffee shop – the quiet murmur of others surrounding us. We had already planned to go to the beach and lie in the soft sand with the sun beating down on us, and we planned to go bowling, with the luminous lights bouncing off of us as the cheers and shouts of yet another strike echoing around us; but we wanted more to do. I wanted to visit a river around the corner from my house and take a picnic there. I loved going there because it was so peaceful and serene. The clear water was encircled by thousands of small forget-me-nots and buttercups that fluttered in the warm summer breeze. Around the edges of the field stood towering trees with bright green leaves that protected the area from noisy traffic. We were going to sit on the mossy bank and soak up the golden sun rays that oozed across the cobalt sky. I thought it would be a perfect place to go, but the others wanted to do something fun.
“That sounds like something my grandmother would want to do!” Josh laughed.
“Well what do you suggest we do then?” I replied.
“What about the zoo?” suggested Anna.
“The zoo… really?” I questioned
“Yeah, the zoo, what is wrong with that?”
So I began to explain.
Although Jesse was five years younger than us, my little brother was mature beyond his years, enough to be mistaken for our age. With his long, shaggy hair and tall tower-like structure nobody questioned him being friends with us. It was only a few months ago that Jesse decided to get the bus into town on his own. The bus was crimson in colour and clearly needed fixing up. The spiral stairway took Jesse up to the top level where the only available seat was on the back row. Jesse sat down next to a man wearing only a giant green raincoat. His milk bottle glasses enlarged his dull, lifeless grey eyes that were surrounded by scores of petite wrinkles. His long dark beard had remnants of food clinging to it, which made Jesse feel ill. Out of his coat pocket, the old man pulled out a holey plastic bag. He dug his grubby hand into the bag and brought out a handful of peanuts. Jesse’s eyes started to itch and bulge out of his sweaty head. His breathing began to slow and he could feel the rash climbing up his restricted throat.
That was all Jesse remembered before he blacked out. It was the first time he was admitted into hospital with a serious allergic reaction.
A few weeks later, Jesse and I decided to go for a walk up to a cave in the Lake District. We were told that when we arrived it would be a breath-taking view, but when we got there, we could barely see our hands in front of us. Jesse then had the idea that if he turned the flashlight on his phone on, we would be able to see everything; and he was right. The blinding light lit up the massive cave, showing us every crevice and reflecting off the stagnant pools of water that had collected at the bottom of the cave. But then, Jesse’s phone clattered to the ground. All of a sudden, a gust of hundreds of creatures rushed past us, flapping their big wings and tangling themselves in our hair. They swooped and swerved around us as we cowered back, trying to find the entrance to the cave. Once we had, we gathered our stuff and ran as fast as we could down the hill and back home. It wasn’t the bats faults, it was we who had disturbed their home.
It was another traumatic experience.
After our long day out, we collapsed onto the sofa and switched on the TV. I was not usually one to watch the news, but I was too exhausted to change the channel. The reporter was talking about the elephants that were being poached in Africa and India. I was also not one to normally get angry, but this really upset me. I couldn’t help but think about all the families of the elephants that were dying. Poaching was a selfish act to do and, in fact, taking any animal away from their family for our personal needs was cruel.
The zoo. We could go to the zoo over the summer holidays, but I didn’t really want to. All I could think about were the chipmunks that would be eating nuts, the bats that would be flying around, and the lonely elephants stuck in their cages.
“And that’s why I am never going to another zoo.”