The Eagle
Ashley Margaret
Once upon a time there was a little wolf pup who grew up in a pit of snakes. She loved her snake family and for years the wolf believed she was one of the snakes. She thought she was just as cunning, resourceful, and ambitious as her snake family. She was taught that snakes and eagles were two completely different animals that did not roam the woods together for eagles were a dangerous predator. She slithered along on the ground with her brothers and sisters, never realizing she was not in fact like her family at all.
As the wolf and her fellow snakes grew older, the wolf began to notice slight differences between her and her family. Why did they eat different foods? Why did she have four paws and fur when they did not? Beginning to see herself as an outsider, she began to spend many hours wandering the forest on her own.
It was then that she met the eagle. Weeks passed and the wolf and the eagle eventually started to become friends. In the evenings the wolf would always return to her snake pit where her snake family lectured her about the eagles, stating that snakes and eagles could not be friends; it was as simple as that. However, the wolf did not understand what was so wrong with her eagle friend.
Soon the wolf and the snakes began to see the differences between them and a divide started to form. The wolf, realizing she wasn’t like the rest of her family, left the snake pit and wandered the forest, miserable and alone.
A few days later, the eagle swooped down and told the wolf that she could follow her back to the eagle nest. Taking the wolf under her wing, the eagle introduced the wolf to all of the others in the nest. The eagles did not care, like the snakes did, that the wolf was a little bit different than the rest of them, that she had four paws and no wings. They became friends and the wolf found her new home. The wolf came to realize that it didn’t matter what kind of animal you were, whether you were a snake or an eagle or even a wolf, you could be friends with whoever you wanted.
Thank you to Kyrie for being that eagle friend, and to RQT last summer for being there for me – Kyrie, Mattie, Arielle, Kaiwa, Edmund, Pavel, Scarlet, Charz.
