Adventures of the Rainforest

Watch Out

BY : Sydney Germain

Today is the day! I will finally let my sons go visit the canopy of a tree with me. It is Uncle Ed, Edward, James, and I, climbing the tree today. James and Edward are very excited to finally come to the place where I go almost everyday. I notice that James and Edward can barely stand still. “Calm down” I tell them, but it is clearly impossible for them to keep still. I go on and get the tree ready for them to climb when I look over and see James and Edward looking up “what ya looking at?” I ask them. “I'm looking to the future” James says “Think of it, in just a few minutes we are going to be up there”

I'm standing in the tree looking down at Edward trying to find a way to grab onto the nearest branch. “Do you need some help?” I ask Edward. “No!” he responds, seeming to be very offended. “I don’t need no help, for I am an independent man!” Uncle Ed and James who are standing right under Edward, give each other matching glances “I will admit you are quite mature but you are still a kid so let me help you.” As Uncle Ed is helping Edward get up onto the branch, I grab his hands and pull him up to the branch.

Edward and James who are now standing next to me on the branch wave bye to Uncle Ed, and we begin to climb up into the tree as he begins to walk away. I start to climb further up to the tree and constantly keep turning around to help Edward & James climb the branches after me. After a while of climbing we find a large branch to rest on for a while “You guys did an amazing job, for your first day of climbing a tree like this” James and Edward who are sitting down drinking from their water canteens. “Come on you two!” I say “If you wanna see the canopy before night, then there is no time for slacking off!” I then proceed to climb the tree and shout for my boys to try and keep up. We continue to climb, I find joy in watching James and Edward pick small fights over who climbs to the next branch first.

I can hear James speaking under me. “Oh man, oh man!” he shouts “Weird! Weird! Totally awesome!!” I ask him what he is talking about and he replies with “A beetle.” He then goes on to describe the beetle and says, “Maybe it’s poisonous” I do not wish for anything to happen to my son so I tell him to avoid it and continue climbing. Somehow these kids keep seeing these different animals and strange plants all over the place. We are continuing to climb when I hear that only I am moving throughout the tree, I know something is up. “Don’t touch the tarantula,” I call out to them. I can hear one of them let out a long sign, I give a small giggle.

We are coming closer to the canopy and then Edward lets out a long sigh “what are you sighing for?” I say “we haven’t even been climbing for that long” Edward looks at me with a crazy look “what do you mean?!” He says “We’ve been climbing for hours!” I roll my eyes and then point upwards into another tree. “Look! Once we cross this path and then do some more climbing up that tree we will reach the canopy.” The boys look over in the direction of my finger, and gasp “Were going there?! But that's so far!” James shouts. I start to laugh a bit at his reaction, “This is where I go to work and do my studies almost every day.”

“I cannot believe this” Edward says, “YOU HAVE BEEN WORKING UP HERE IN THIS AMAZING PLACE FOR ALL THIS TIME AND YOU HAVEN'T TOLD US ABOUT IT!!” We are not even at the canopy yet, I thought. I stand there in silence while staring at Edward. I look down at the branch under Edward and my eyes pop out “Watch out!” I yell as I lean forward and try to grab him and pull him away from the branch. Suddenly the branch under him collapses. I grab his hand and try to pull him up. “OWWWW” I yell. James, who is standing right behind me holding onto the tree yells “What happened!?”

James bends down and grabs Edward’s other arm attempting to help me Edward up to safer grounds. The wood from the fallen branch had cut into our skin like a blade slicing a fruit. We managed to get Edward back up onto the branch, all of us heavily breathing like we just ran a 200 meter marathon. “Let's get off this branch before the whole thing collapses.” James says.

We continue to climb up the tree, but this time we are more careful in trying to find out what branches we are able to step on. I noticed that Edward looked very paranoid about the branches now. “Hold on, I need to collect something for my research,” I say as I lean forward to see some nearby leaves on the branch next to us. “Come on!!!!” James yells, “We don't have time for pausing, we need to keep going!”

We finally made it to the canopy!” James yells as he goes and runs towards the end of a branch. We are sitting at the end of the branch, and by we I mean me and James. “Come on Edward!” James yells, I look back to see Edward grabbing on to the center of the tree. “What’s wrong?” I ask him, But then it hits me “I know you are probably a little worried about falling off the branch again, but I can assure you that it is not going to happen again, we have made sure that the branch will not break.”

I sit up and walk towards Edward. I grab his hand and carefully pull him towards the end of the branch. “Just look,” Edward looks out between the trees and gasps. We all sit down on the branch and admire the beauty of the rainforest. We saw everything around us, it was like the world was on pause, or we were in a slow mo movie scene. Suddenly we heard a crack, and everything went back to normal “RUNNNN!!!” James yells. Suddenly we get up as fast as we can and start running.

We managed to get back down to the ground at lightning speed. Suddenly we hear a loud crack… BANG! “What was that?!?!” Edward yells. Suddenly I shove Edward out of the way and then a large branch falls down onto the ground right to where Edward was standing. “Well now I know why that branch was cracking so much.” I say. I look at the ground in front of the branch and then see Edward laying face down in the grass. I start laughing as Edward gets up with a face full of dirt.

Rainforest Experience

By Lilly Healy

Today is the day! We finally can go up high into mom’s special place. Edward and I are super excited. Mom and Uncle Ed are super scared for us but we aren’t. At the start we were only about 77 ft above the ground. Uncle Ed had to go but were in the tree. We had to take a break because Mom was still working but Edward and I enjoyed the view. While Mom was working we saw a beetle but me and Edward started to argue. We were arguing about what color it was. I thought it was a purplish goldish color. Edward thought it was a brownish blackish color with a hint of red inside. Mom came over and said, “You two know my rule, no arguing! But I see that you are both right. It is both of those colors. Now let's get going!”

Soon we got to 82 ft above the ground. Edward was worn out but he had some water and he was good to go. Mom started to wave a net around. She swung it around about 4 times and then examined those bugs. While Mom was examining, Edward said that he was very itchy. He said that he thinks it was a mosquito bite and it was. Not too long after we all had mosquito bites. Mom remembered that she packed some bug spray in her backpack, but when she opened it she couldn’t find it. I said, “Hold up Mom, maybe I have some in my backpack!” Edward says, “Yeah, if it is not in Jame's backpack maybe it is in mine!” First I check my backpack and it is not there but Edward checks his and he does have it. We all put some on and the bugs go away. Mom finishes her studies and then we go higher.

Finally, we go 5 more feet above the ground. Edward is so happy that we made it to the canopy because he was annoyed after the mosquitoes. I love the canopy only because of the view and because I can tell my friends that I was 87 ft above the ground. Edward liked the view but I think he was just happy that this was over and I think he probably would not do this again but I totally would. Mom did one last examination and asked, “Would you like to do the 4 swings?” I of course said, “YES!!!” and did the swings. I enjoyed this experience and would absolutely do it again.

The Day of Troubles

By Lilly

It is finally time! Our mother has allowed us to go climb up into the canopy with her. “Wait here a moment,” she tells us, “I need to go do something to help my research” Me and James thing about it for a moment and then two matching grins appear on our faces ``Can we help!!!” We say. She smiles and then rolls her eyes ``Fine, but be careful. I don’t want you getting bit or stabbed by anything.”

We watch her demonstrate what to do and we think it's amazing. “It was so cool when she shook the tray thing to get all of the dirt out and then all of those bugs appeared on it?” James says to me, “That was just the dirt being drained out of the tray and the bugs inside of it were starting to show” I say. We bring the trays over to another area where our mother is taking pictures of the things that have been found.

“Look what we found!” James says. She turns around and looks into our trays, “Look there” she says, as she points down at James’s tray. “That right there is a rare type of beetle” James looks down at his tray and his jaw drops. “It looks amazing,” he says. I look over at his tray, trying to find the beetle. “I don’t see it” I say, not knowing what I was getting myself into.

After a while of doing that, mom finally says “It’s time to climb up to the tree” James starts jumping up & down. He instantly asks what tree we are climbing and as soon as our mother points to the tree, he starts running towards it and then jumps up trying to get a head start on climbing the tree. “Now wait just a minute.” Mom says “You need your harness, for safety purposes” James looks back and rolls his eyes.

“Weird! Weird! Totally awesome.” James says. “What happened?” Me and Mom ask him at the same time. I look down and see he has come nose to nose with a bark beetle glittering like an armored knight. “It looks like something out of a science fiction movie!” he says. Suddenly I feel a sharp pain in my left hand “ouch!” I say. “What happened?” mom asks “I don’t know. I think I got a splinter” I respond, as I look at my hand. I gasp as I see a large red bump with a small piece of wood sticking out of it.

We put our harnesses on and start climbing the tree. The tree is so big that it is actually hard to get a grip on one of the branches, because we cannot wrap our hands around it. “Don’t look down!” I hear mom call, and of course, James instantly looks down. “Woah! How high up are we?” I ask, and mom responds with “were 82 ft or 27 meters high.”

Mom tells me to climb up onto the branch that she's on so she can take a look at it. “Definitely a splinter” she says “Don’t worry though, I can easily get it out with my tweez-” She stops. Her hand quickly picks up the pace of looking through the bag. “I cannot find my tweezers” she says “I think we will have to go back down and get them if you want this splinter out”

James apparently overheard the conversation because he started complaining “but I want to see the canopy, why can’t he just rub some dirt on it? There's plenty of it around, he’ll be fine” Mom looks back up at me and quietly asks “are you okay with us finishing going up the tree and then going back down to get the tweezers? I don’t want the cut to get infected but your brother wants to continue, so it's up to you”

I think about it for a moment “I’ll be fine if we continue, I mean it's just a splinter. How bad can it be?” So we continue climbing. We were halfway up before but now we are about three fourths the way there. Suddenly I felt another sharp pain in my hand “I felt it again!” I say. I can hear James and Mom stop climbing and I can feel them staring at me.

“Edward come up here,” my mother says. I climb up to the next branch to go sit next to each other. Mom grabs my hand and then starts looking at the area of where the splinter is “WAIT!” she yells “I JUST REMEMBERED!!” I look at her with a confused expression on my face “remembered what?” she smiles “I always bring a med kit with me just in case of emergencies.” She reaches into a fanny pack that she somehow never notices and grabs out a bandage, tweezers, and a small bottle of water from another pocket in the fanny pack.

How much stuff is in there, I think.She grabs the tweezers and leans closer to my hand. She slowly pulls out the splinter, I feel a small sting for a moment but it is quickly over. She puts the water on my cut and starts wiping it down with a small cloth. Then puts the bandage on it and puts the trash in her back pocket. “It should be fine until we get back down the tree.

James starts whining again but Mom denies us climbing up any further. “We are going back to the ground and that's that. James rolls his eyes and slowly starts climbing back down. We reach ground level and I am sitting down on a chair right next to a small fold out table. It took us so long to climb back down that it is almost dark outside, but there is still a bit of light in the area.

Mom comes walking towards me with a flashlight and some other materials. She sits down at the table, and grabs my hand to take a look at it. She slowly peels the band aid off of it. I gasp as the pain from it ripping off some of the skin stings my hand. She looks at it and then gasps “That's not a splinter” she says, “Well it was a splinter but it wasn't just a splinter.” I look up at her and my eyes pop out

“What was it!?!” She looks up at me and tells me to calm down. “It was a spider bite” I jumped onto the floor and started screaming “I’m gonna die!!! The venom is going to kill me! I cannot believe that I stayed in that tree.” Mom and James both exchange looks and then look down at me “You know that.. The spider that bit you… it isn’t poisonous” I then quickly get back up and dust my shirt off

I sit at the table and smile “Oh so what was it?” I ask. Mom rolls her eyes jokingly and says “it was a Giant Fishing Spider” I then smack my forehead with my right hand and sigh “How did I not see it in the tray?!” James, who was behind us, leans forward, putting his elbows on the table. No manners whatsoever I think. “You didn’t see it because you were too busy looking at my amazing discovery.

I roll my eyes then look around “I think we should go home before it gets a little too dark” James frowns, regarding the fact that I just brushed his comment to the side. “That's the one good idea you've had all day” Mom stands up and then goes to grab her bag left resting on a nearby tree.

We start walking in the direction of home when James falls face first into some mud. Me and mom break out in laughter “that's what you get for talking smack about me this entire time!” James looks up at us and rolls his eyes. We eventually got back home and we put some antibiotic ointment to disinfect the bite as well as the cut. Turns out the bite wasn’t that bad and even though it hurt to touch things sometimes I think that the whole thing was worth it!