Everyone and Everything
Page 9
The man and woman looked around them and decided that there was enough food here to last them a very long time, so they stayed.
The very next day the man and woman decided to look for some food to eat for their dinner.
Eventually, they came to the waterfall and a stream beneath it. The stream flowed with the clearest water they had ever seen and was filled with the biggest fish. They caught two fish, which they cooked for their dinner.
The twigs, which they collected to burn to cook the fish, came from a pile near the corner of the woodland and had been the home of two moles a badger and thousands of insects. Once their home had been burnt by the man and woman, these creatures packed their belongings and left the ‘Nature Garden’ forever.
The man and woman enjoyed the fish so much that they became greedy. The next day they caught four fish to eat for their dinner and collected more twigs and bracken to burn on the fire.
That day, more creatures packed their belongings after having had their homes burnt and left the ‘Nature Garden’ forever.
Before too long, the stream, which had once been filled with fish, was empty as the man and woman had eaten them all. Once the fish had all been eaten up, lots of other water creatures decided to pack their belongings and leave the ‘Nature Garden’ forever before the man and woman also ate them.
When the fish and water creatures had left the stream, there was nobody left to keep it clean and tidy and it quickly stopped being clean water and became dirty water in which nothing wanted to live.
When the greedy man and woman had eaten all the fish in the stream, they then looked around for other food to eat and so they decided to kill some of the animals around them.
They killed all the rabbits first, then all the cows, all the pigs, the sheep and the deer.
As they were killing all the animals, they burnt and used up all the twigs and bracken, so they then began chopping down the woodland trees for firewood, to cook the food, to keep them warm during cold nights and to build themselves a house for proper shelter during all seasons.
They also decided to make their dinner table very pretty, so each day before dinner was cooked, they picked some wild flowers and put them in a vase to look at.
Eventually, all the flowers and the plants had been picked to decorate their surroundings and to fill their stomachs, so all the butterflies, bees, wasps, ladybirds and other insects that usually lived on the plants decided to pack their belongings and leave the ‘Nature Garden’ forever.
Before long, all the trees had been chopped down and burned and the birds had nowhere to build their nests, so all the birds decided to pack their belongings and leave the ‘Nature Garden’ forever.
Winter came to the ‘Nature Garden’ and with it came the frost and snow. The man and woman had killed all the fish, had killed all the friendly animals, had chopped down all the trees and had destroyed all the flowers and plant life.
They now had nothing around them left to protect them and they became very, very cold. They now had nothing around them to kill for food and they became very, very hungry. They got so cold that winter that their skin cracked open and became very sore. They got so hungry that winter that their bodies became so thin.
Spring came, but the man and woman had no way of knowing it was spring as there were now no new flowers to pop their heads up out of the ground, no trees upon which to grow new leaves and no birds in which to build their nests and sing their songs. Because there was now no animals left to kill for food, the man and woman had to eat grass and drink dirty water from the stream. They grew very hungry and very weak and became very dirty and very thin.
When summer came, there were no trees to provide shade, the dirty stream dried up and the waterfall became a trickle. The man and woman became so hot because they had no shade, so thirsty because they had no water to drink, so hungry because they had no food to eat and so tired because the air around them was no longer fresh.
They thought about the ‘long, hot summer’ ahead of them, followed by the ‘long, cold winter’ and they became so unhappy that they packed up their belongings and left the ‘Nature Garden’ forever.
After the man and woman had left the ‘Nature Garden’ they travelled a long way before they found somewhere else to live.
They realised that they had been very selfish by spoiling the ‘Nature Garden’ and they promised that if they were ever lucky enough to find another ‘Nature Garden’, they would love it and look after ‘everyone and everything’ that lived in it.
The man and woman stopped being greedy and selfish and they became kind, gentle and very wise. Instead of picking flowers and chopping down trees, they grew them. Instead of overeating, they began to eat less food and look after the world more. They became kind to all animals, birds and living things.
They tried so hard to look after our special world that as they grew older, their world began to become a new ‘Nature Garden’ once more and they were happy again.
The end
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