landscape. The pure white snow was accented by the
blue winter sky and the bright sun. Cardinals called
their clear call and flashed red in winter-sleeping
berry bushes; squirels hopped about searching for
long-buried treasures making fluffs in the dry snow.
The child emerged from the cabin rubbing sleep from
his eyes and shielding them from the unexpected
brightness. what a glorious day!!
"Mom, can I play outside?? Please??" were the
first words the child uttered that morning. "Sure,
after you've done your duties for the day," was her
sympathetic reply. Well, you can imagine that the
duties were performed in record time - and the child
went out to play. Since the child had slept late, and
the duties did take a while, lunch was gulped down
before he was allowed to play. But, the mother was
wise - she knew how difficult it would be to get her
child back in, even to eat, on such an exquisite day.
Snow barriers and intricate paths were woven around
the cabin (some squirels were pleased with shallower
snow to dig in.) Snow-angels dotted the snow scape
and tiny butt-prints were left where the child just sat
and rested while admiring the beauty of the
surroundings.
And then the child saw the bunny.
Now the child had chased bunnies before - never
successfully - but after all, there is a first time. And
besides, how fast can bunnies run in the snow? The
child found out!
Straight ahead the bunny leapt, causing guysers of
fluffy snow. Bounding through the trees and around
bushes the bunny bounced with the laughing child close behind - fresh from a recent rest. And then
another bunny leapt sideways in surprise, leading off
in another direction.
Tired of chasing impossible bunnies, the child rested,
the lowering sun warming flushed cheeks. New areas
without paths or snow-angels just had to be explored
and marked with the child's trademarks - and so the
task was undertaken as the sun rapidly began to
disappear below the horizon.
"Huh?" wondered the child, suddenly realizing it had
gotten dark, and the way back to the warm cabin was
unknown. Calls produced no help as the sound was
smothered by the soft snow. A sliver of moon barely
lent a light glow to the scenery as the child, now sitting
in the snow and softly crying, detected glowing eyes at
the edge of the clearing the child claimed as his own.
A wolf.
The child, having been taught well, sat still, hoping the
wolf would lose interest. Hours passed. The cold
began to penetrate the little one's body, eyelids became
heavy and closed.
The still watching wolf began to move in ...
The following morning, the child's frantic parents had
gathered neighbors to aid in a search for the child they
had sought in vain to find the previous night. As the
father approached a clearing, he held the neighbor
back with a signal with his hand.
What he had seen raised the hair on the back of his
neck. He saw the tracks of a child and - horrors of
horrors - a wolf, resting in the clearing in the midst
of those precious tracks. They both watched without
breathing and the father decided to try to sneak closer
to see if he could see tracks leaving the clearing - little
tracks belonging to a little one. As he got closer to the
reclining wolf, he broke into a dead run!! - for as he
got closer, he realized the wolf was surrounding his
child with it's body.
Prepared to take on death itself to save his child, he
ran right up to the pair of bodies in the snow.
"Daddy!!" exclaimed the child as it bounded into
familiar arms, leaving behind the frozen body of the
wolf that had given up it's heat to save the little one
in the night.
