Dear Reader,
This week's guest author Andrew Peterson is visiting the book club today. Be sure to enter the giveaway after his column...
Last week I walked seventy-one miles across Britain, from the east side of the island all the way to the Irish Sea in the west. A friend and I followed Hadrian's Wall, a two-thousand-year-old wall that used to protect the Romans in the south from the Picts in the north. I'm happy to report that we needed no protection from dangerous hordes, but as it turned out I was attacked nonetheless.
We had just entered a woodland and I was admiring a tree when something landed on my neck, stung me, and then died when I panicked and smacked it. It hurt, and I was sorely confused because I was nowhere near a nest and was doing nothing to provoke such aggression. My neck throbbing, we pushed on. Minutes later I was attacked again--this time by something much larger.
When you're walking the footpaths of England, you often climb an old stone wall and drop into a field of sheep, cows, horses. If the path leads through the field you have to take your chances. Well, just a few minutes after the sting we passed into a field of horses. One of them trotted over to me and I considered petting its snout but kept walking because the beast made me nervous. My friend stopped to pet another horse and that was when I realized the first horse was following me. It nosed at my backpack, then bit my backpack. It pushed me a few times and I staggered forward, then it yanked at my backpack again. I was scared but I kept walking and (maybe because my friend was laughing so hard) it gave up. My backpack was covered with horse drool and I was covered with sweat.
The next field was full of sheep. Sheep are so skittish that even if you tried to pet one you couldn't.
But--I kid you not--there I was with a throbbing sting on my neck and a horse-chewed backpack when a sheep came straight for me. I yelped and climbed the stile before it could maul me, and my friend found that humorous for some reason.
I still don't know what to make of it. None of those things had ever happened to me, then they happened all at once. Maybe everybody has an hour in their lives when the animal kingdom wants to gobble them. I'm just glad it was England and not where I grew up in Florida or this would be a story about a scorpion, an alligator, and a rattlesnake.
-- Andrew Peterson
More About Today's Guest Author: his new book, Pembrick's Creaturepedia is a companion to the (bestselling) Wingfeather Saga. A new boxed set of four Wingfeather Saga books will be released in late October. Andrew is a singer/songwriter, and the founder of The Rabbit Room, which fosters community through story, art, and music. He and his wife, Jamie, live in Nashville.
Email: [email protected] to enter to win one of three copies of Pembrick’s Creaturepedia.
* If you haven't started writing your entry for this year's Write a DearReader Contest, I'm suggesting you begin with the simple sentence, "Once upon a time..." For all the info about the Write a DearReader Contest, click here. http://www.dearreader.com/contest2021/index.html
Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.
Suzanne Beecher
[email protected]
AUTHORBUZZ: Discover new books, "meet" the authors and enter to win.
This month's Penguin Classics book is THE TALE OF PRINCESS FATIMA, WARRIOR WOMAN: The Arabic Epic of Dhat al-Himma, translated and edited by Melanie Magidow. I have a copy of the book to share with a lucky reader, so start reading and enter for your chance to win.
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