Wednesday 24th May 2006

There is so much to write about today that I don’t know where to start. Youth club last night was brilliant. We had all of last week’s animals plus a few new ones. There were a whole family of bunnies that I hadn’t met before. Their mum had decided it was a good idea to get them out of the way to give her a better chance of doing all the mopping up from the rain. Apparently their burrow completely flooded and they had to go and stay with their aunt until it was all dried out again. It was lovely hearing them all calling hedgehog ‘Uncle Harry’ and the great thing with young animals is they don’t yet have any reservations about spending time with Harry because of the things he has done. Half way through the afternoon Harry got everyone together and said he wanted to tell them all a story. So we all gathered round and he began in the traditional fashion. “Once upon a time there was a family of deer living just near here. There was a mummy and a daddy deer and one little fawn. Now the little fawn had not been very strong when it was born and they didn’t know whether it would live or not. Anyway the mummy and daddy deer did everything they could to take care of the fawn through the summer and then in the autumn he became quite poorly. So all through the winter they nursed him, he was their only fawn and they loved him very much. As spring approached he started to get stronger and as his first birthday came round it looked as though he was going to be strong enough to make it, so his mummy and daddy gathered together all his favourite foods to have a little family party. When his birthday arrived mummy and daddy deer went to the pantry to get everything out as a surprise for their little fawn, but what do you think? It had all gone. Someone had stolen the food they had put away specially.” At this point we all gasped in horror before Harry went on to tell us that he had been the one that had taken it. He had been living on the streets then and had no one to look after him. He didn’t realise how much upset he would cause and just how important that day had been to the deer. Having now talked to the deer they had said to him that if only he had told them he was in need, they would willingly have shared some food with him and that he really didn’t need to have resorted to stealing. Then he explained to us all that it is never right just to take things and even if at the time it doesn’t seem very bad you just don’t know how important it was to the person you are taking from and he said how sorry he had been when he found out. Then one of the deer at the back of the room moved forward and hugged Harry and said that the fawn whose birthday it had been was his dad and that they forgave him and all the other animals cheered and Nicole cried. What a day. By the end none of the animals wanted to go home but at 7pm we had to close everything and so they all went on their way, until next week.