Susan Soderstrom

Mary Lou Beattie

A Hudson's Hope Children's Bedtime Story

    My name is Erik. Momma told me that Erik means “A fearless adventurer” and a strong one too. My sister Summer and I were born awhile ago, I think about two weeks ago, and our Momma is a big big elk. Of course I am growing so fast that I might catch up to Momma soon. 

She left all the rest of the herd and came here to Six Mile with my Uncle Ted. He helped her safely along the way because she was close to the day when we were born. He was even taller, a lot bigger than Momma. Now when I look up at him my neck gets sore trying to look up at those really big horns. He lays in the sun and snoozes most of the time.

    That’s what he was doing when Summer and I decided to have an adventure day. First we found lots of old pea vine, that winding curly weed and we wound it all around his big horns, then used willow branches to wave them back and forth just under his nose. His nose started twitching, a little at first and then it really twitched a lot. All of a sudden he started shaking and roared so loud that Summer and I dashed away as fast as we could.

    Now Momma was so busy feasting on all that delicious new grass that she didn’t see us slipping away on our adventure. The first place we were going was the old fish pond. We knew the way well. A visitor had showed up there. It was a big otter and he was hoping for a fish lunch. We knew that there was only one fish left in the pond and he was big and I mean really big and very smart too. So Mr. Otter would have to look somewhere else for lunch. 

    Our adventure was going well so far. Racing up the hill we heard that machine coming. It was a noisy red thing and someone was sitting on it and a black dog was running behind. We had seen this thing every day it seemed. So Summer and I hid in the bushes till it went way up the hill. A few minutes later we saw that little black bear turning over more logs to see if those tasty ants were underneath. Summer and I tried those ants too but we didn’t like them. The red willow patch was much tastier. We feasted on the willow bushes and the fresh buds tickled our noses and the smells were like heaven.