How To Train Your Pet Rocks
by Lisa Post and Isaac Post
Chapter 1
One
sunny summer, the Post family were all working outside. Mom was working in the flower beds, pulling
pesky weeds that insisted on coming up through the thick-layered mulch she had
laid that spring.
The
other children, along with Dad, were landscaping for the new pool. The whole family was very excited. Isaac, the youngest, had the job of picking
rocks. This way, the bottom of the pool
would be nice and smooth.
As he
bent over to uncover more rocks, he suddenly heard:
“Hey! Over here!
In the wheelbarrow!”
Isaac
went over to the blue wheel barrel, and looked in. Inside was a mouse. Pumpkin stalked around the work area suspiciously, sniffing towards the wheelbarrow.
“Did
you say something?” Isaac asked.
But the
mouse just twitched his whiskers, jumped out, then ran off. Pumpkin ran off after it.
Isaac scratched
his head, then turned to leave.
“Hey! Hey!
Down here!” he heard again. This time he saw a rock in the wheelbarrow wiggling around in its spot. “Can you
get me out of here?”
“Sure!”
Isaac said, and picked it up.
“My
name is Terrence. Thank you for picking
me up!”
“My
name is Isaac, and you’re welcome.”
“Can
you help me with something?” Terrence asked.
“Yes. What do you need help with?”
“Well,
my brother Clarence is still in the wheelbarrow. Can you help me find him?”
“I
guess so. What does he look like?” Isaac
asked, scratching his head.
“He’s a
little bigger than me, and he looks like, well, a rock.”
Isaac
began moving rocks around in the wheelbarrow, but ran into a problem. When he piled the rocks out of the way, they
would avalanche back down. Finally, he
decided to just toss the rocks out onto the ground. After a while, Isaac felt Terrence wiggle
with delight.
“There
he is! Clarence! Clarence!
Wake up!”
Another
rock in the wheelbarrow wiggled sleepily.
Isaac heard it yawn.
“What? I was napping!”
“You
are always napping. Come on, Isaac is
going to get us out of the wheelbarrow!” Terrence exclaimed.
“That’s
great! Are we going to be his pets?”
Clarence asked.
There was
an expectant pause. Isaac realized they
were waiting for him to answer.
“Of
course, I’ll keep you. But, you are
awfully dirty. You both need a bath.”
“Isaac! What are you doing? Those rocks need to be in the wheelbarrow. Looks like you dumped half of them in the
grass. You can’t leave them there because
the mower will hit them later,” Isaac’s older brother, Caleb pointed to the
pile of rocks near Isaac, Clarence, and Terrence.
“I
guess I had better clean this up first,” Isaac shrugged.
The job
didn’t take long, and then Isaac took Terrence and Clarence to the house. Terrence told Isaac about how they lived in
the dirt where the pool was being dug, but got put in the wheelbarrow while
they were clearing the land. As Terrence
talked, Pumpkin, who had given up on chasing the mouse, was waiting at the door to go in out of the
heat. He heard Terrence talking, and
didn’t recognize the voice. He was
startled because he saw Isaac, the youngest of all his slaves, but knew it wasn’t
Isaac’s voice talking. His ears twitched
as he tried to solve this small feline mystery.
Inside
the house, Isaac, ignoring the pile of dirty dishes in one side of the sink,
put Terrence and Clarence in the other side.
He squirted them with dish detergent, then scrubbed the dirt off of
them.
“That
feels sooooo good!” Clarence said.
“Yes,
it does! Thank you, Isaac!” Terrence
agreed.
Then
Isaac put them on the window sill over the sink to dry.
Clarence
yawned. “I’m going to take a nap.”
"Of course you are," Terrence said. "It's a day that ends in y."
