A Class Visitor

This is an excerpt from a series of short stories I am writing. This one is non-fiction and part of a year my family and I lived in a float house on an isolated island in northern British Columbia

Amanda and Daniel were in grades four and two, so that means homeschooling for them. It’s time to set them up and get them ready to do their schoolwork. Once they were set up and working on their schoolwork, I could take a little walk on the island to see if I could find Cecil and let him know that the water line needed to be fixed. I knew that in the next few days Amanda and I would be flying out of camp to do our grocery shopping and check our house in town.

Amanda and Daniel were sitting at the kitchen table Amanda working on her reading and Daniel working on his printing. I had put a bunch of clothes in the bathtub to be washed, but with no water I needed to take the clothes back out of the tub and put them into a bag instead. I won’t have time to wash them before Amanda and I fly out, so we will have to take them home and wash them there.

I’m in the bathroom taking the clothes out of the tub and putting them into a bag when I hear Daniel yelling, “Mom, hurry up. There’s a bear looking at me.”

I yell back at him, “Stop messing around and do your printing.”

“I’m not messing around! There really is a bear looking at me.” He yelled back.

Still thinking he was just trying to get out of doing the schoolwork, I went back out into the kitchen to see how much work he had finished. I walked into the kitchen. Daniel says,

“See,” pointing toward the window. Low and behold, there it was, a bear sitting at the kitchen window looking into the house. The only thing between us, and the bear, was a screen on the open window.

I told Amanda and Daniel, “Don’t move. Any sudden move might have the creature coming in through the screen.” The bear put its nose onto the screen and we watched the screen move as it pressed in on the screen. The next thing we would hear was a huff as it exhaled through its nose. It kept looking from one to the other of the three of us. I don’t know how long the bear sat there looking at us, but it seemed like quite a while. Then we all breathed a sigh of relief when the bear got up and walked away from us. It was the strangest looking bear. The front of it was golden brown like a Grizzly, but the back of it was black like a Black Bear.

The three of us ran into the living room and watched as the strange looking bear sauntered over to the stiff leg. The stiff leg was our walkway slash wharf going from the deck around the float-house down to the shore of the island Cecil was logging. We had thought it was too narrow for bears to climb and walk on, but this bear proved us wrong. As the bear moved further away my thoughts were, “So much for doing schoolwork after that bit of excitement.” The adrenaline ran too high to go back to doing schoolwork or housework for that matter. Instead of schoolwork I figured Amanda and I should start packing for our trip.

It’s been a couple hours since our excitement with the bear and Amanda and Daniel want to go outside. I tell them, “I don’t think going outside right now is a good idea. We don’t know where the bear went.”

There was a clump of trees just past the stiff leg and the bear might have chosen to take a nap there. I continue trying to convince them to stay indoors, “ I don’t want to risk running into the bear again, not today anyways.” They were not happy with having to stay inside, but they didn’t argue. We opted to watch some movies we had pre-recorded onto VHS Cassettes.

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/03/19/article-2295882-18C7EF2A000005DC-56_634x454.jpg

#homeschoolingexcitement #floathouse #bear