Bitten by a Snake

 

Author unknown.

Bitten by a Snake is a true story about a nine-year-old boy called Hector who lives on a farm 14 miles from town. This story is set in the past, in 1921 to be exact! In the story, Hector gets bitten by a black snake. He knows he has to get the poison out straight away or he will die. Because he can't suck the poison out he uses his knife to cut it out of his leg. It was gross but cool.

We really liked this short story. It was interesting to see how different life was back in 1921. For example, if someone got bitten by a snake today you would just call an ambulance but in this story, there were no ambulances. Hector had to treat the wound himself and then ride a horse to the doctor. We couldn't believe someone would have to cut the poison out of their body and we would never try to suck the poison out either. It was also interesting to see how different kids were back then - Hector was only nine years old and he was allowed to have a knife. He was pretty tough and a very quick thinker!

We were wondering if this was really a true story. It also made us wonder about why people would ever treat snake bites this way and if it actually worked. We decided to look this up after we finished reading to see if it was true!

 ‘The Goat in the Room’ by Tim Lehnert

Aiden walks into the kitchen and he finds a goat in the house. But the weird thing was, that the goat could talk.  Aiden said, “What are you doing here?” The goat said, “Do you know how to use the coffee maker?” Aiden said, “No”. “Don’t you have a menu”, said the goat. “Yes we do, but I’m not making a cup of coffee for a goat,'' said Aiden. “Why not said the goat?” “Because animals don’t drink coffee”, said Aiden. Then Dad walked in and Aiden hid the goat under the table with a blanket.  Dad said, “Why is there a goat in the house? Aiden responded, “No there’s not”. “I can see the hooves under the table”.  The goat then tries to convince Aiden and his Dad at the end of the story to buy him a phone, so that the goat could tell them what was going on outside in the animal pen.

The writer captured our attention because they used a lot of humour in the story and one of the parts of the story that was funny was when the goat saw a coffee maker and asked, “What is that thing on the shelf?” Aiden replied, “It’s a coffee maker’’. “Give me a cup” the goat responded bossly and poor Aiden said, “I don’t even know how to make a cup of coffee from the coffee machine”.  Also the goat told them that he wanted a special kind of phone, that does talk to text, where you talk on the phone and it sends text messages straight away.

At the end of the day, the goat had to go back to his pen, but Aiden didn't want the goat to go because they were having so much fun together. One of the reasons why the goat needed to go back to his pen was because he had a routine that involved looking after the chickens because they were careless. Before the goat left, Aiden decided to give a little treat to the goat. Aiden gave the goat a carrot because Aiden loved spending time with him, well actually, his goat that was part human!

The writer also used some expressions like when the goat said, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do”.  The goat says this because he wants to drink coffee like humans.  The other example that captured our attention is the use of an idiom.  Aiden’s father says, “But back to the elephant in the room”.  Aiden and his Dad needed to address the problem, which was the goat in the house and the fact that they had a talking goat that was cheeky and very demanding.

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