It looked dead, dead as a doornail with a softball sized hole ripped right where his heart should have been, laying on it’s side in the middle of my 5-year-old sister’s bedroom. The teddy bear was sitting there with a hole ripped into its heart. Stuffing was everywhere because, well, it was a Costco size teddy bear, which meant it was like five feet tall. The first course of action being the eight years nine months and eleven days old, four-foot three-inch, older brother, was to not panic. Something had destroyed the teddy and Davy the older brother was ready to find who it was. The first thought I had was that I had to be a detective. I ran into my room and came out thirty seconds later with my Sherlock Holmes outfit that I had gotten for Christmas the year before. I was back in the room in the blink of an eye, smoking my bubble pipe and looking through the magnify glass. When I re-entered the room, my sister, who had just stopped crying before I left the room to get my costume, was in tears again. My mom had come into the room as I was dressing up and had gone to get my sister’s other bear, this one being much smaller of course, but it was missing. I knew it had to be the same culprit that destroyed the larger bear.
I examined the tear marks around the hole in the bear to try to get better clues. It looked rough and stiff like it had been chewed. I wrote my observations down on a piece of paper with some crayons I found lying around. Then it was time to find the chewing culprit.
The first thing I thought of was a dog. A dog could chew things easily and any dog likes a stuffed animal to play with. The neighbors to the left of our home, and the home of my best friend Robby, his real name was Robert but everyone called him Robby. His family owned a big black lab named Tucker that was known to rip apart stuffed animals from the pet shop within days. I went over to Robby’s house and told him what had happened. He seemed deep in thought it seemed, but he finally said, “I don’t think Tucker ate the bear Davy.”
“What makes you think that?” I asked
“You see, we went to the store this morning and before we left Tucker was locked in the kennel and was still locked in there when we got back.”
I saw this as a very good point, and he and I started making a list of all the other animals in the neighborhood that could have somehow gotten into my sister’s room and eaten her bear. We Wrote the list on my paper with the observations using a broken red crayon. The list looked something like this:
1. Mrs. Martin’s dog George.
2. The Barton family’s fish.
We didn’t think that was a reasonable option so we crossed it off the list. But we thought we should check just to be sure.
3. Mr. McGregor’s dog Ham.
And 4. Our hamster, sniffles.
As an afterthought we thought we should also add,
5. Tucker.
With all this data we went around to all the people’s houses on the block. First, we talked to Mrs. Marten. She said she had no idea that my sister’s giant bear had been eaten and was terribly sorry, but it could not have been George. The Barton’s fish didn’t do it either. Finally, we had Mr. McGregor left. As we walked up to his house, we had this funny sort of feeling that this would be the culprit. As soon as we knocked, we heard “Come in! Come on in! The door is unlocked.”
We entered the house to the smell of freshly baked cookies and an old, slightly plump gentleman, maybe in his lower 70’s smiling at us from the doorway to the kitchen. “How about a cookie?” he asked.
Robby and I told the old man all about how I found my sister's giant bear torn apart in the bedroom this morning and what we had found out ever since. He said he had not seen his bulldog Ham all morning, so we thought it might be a good lead! Right after we finished our fourth cookies, Ham walked in. We didn’t pay much attention to Ham usually, but today was different. We looked over him well. We saw it at the same time. The piece of stuffed animal fluff hanging out of the corner of his mouth! Robby and I looked at each other, excused ourselves, and said goodbye to the old man. We followed a trail of the fluff out the front door, around the side of the house, and into the backyard. Each little piece we studied under the magnifying glass and drew a description. Sometimes it was hard to find the fluff. It was hanging on a branch or maybe twenty or more feet away! We followed it to the fence separating Mr. McGregor’s yard from ours. We thought we had it. We were so excited! The fluff led under a bush and when we looked, to our dismay, there was just an old torn apart dog toy that Ham had been playing with and must have gotten bored with. We were glum.
My mother yelled at us from the deck of our house, “Davy! Sniffles is missing again!”
“Ok Mom!” I shouted back. The family hamster had been getting out of its cage, and we could not figure out how, but he had been running around the house during the middle of the day. Robby and I trudged back to the house to get the hamster back in its cage. We found it after a quick but thorough search under the couch in the living room. Robby and I rounded up the little ball of fur by herding him into a corner where we were able to pick him up and bring him back to his cage.
As I set Sniffles back in his cage, I noticed something peculiar through the wood chips. Something white. I pulled it out and found a piece of fluff!
“Of course!” I exclaimed, “The hamster has been getting out of his cage and running around the house. I bet he chewed the hole in the teddy bear!”
“Ya!” exclaimed Robby. “See, near the corner under the water. There is a hole just big enough for him to escape through!”
We ran back to my sister’s room where my mom was vacuuming up the fluff that was still on the floor. My mother was vacuuming the fluff out of the room when we ran in.
“Where is the bear?” I asked
“Which one?” My mother asked.
“The big one!” I cried.
“Oh, look at this!” My mother exclaimed “Here is the other missing bear, right under the bed. How silly of me not to look there!”
“Mom!” I cried “Where is the other bear?”
“It is down in the sewing room being mended.” My mother replied.
Robby and I raced out of the room, and ran downstairs as fast as we could. There was the bear on the floor next to the sewing table. I whipped out my magnifying glass and had a look at the hole. Sure enough, there were little tiny nibble marks and some orangish white fur that matched Sniffles perfectly. “We have our culprit!” I cried triumphantly.
“Yay!” shouted Robby. “now let’s hurry and fill that whole before the hamster gets out again!”
No comments:
Post a Comment