Hatchet Mini-Essay
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Embedded Files
Boy & Pilot Stranded in Canadian Wilderness
Earlier this morning, a Cessna 406 left the airport and flew off towards a mining well in Canada. On board were two people, 13-year-old Brian Robeson and a 40-year-old pilot. After flying off for a while, a distress call came through the radio. Reports say that Brian Robeson had answered the radio saying, “I hear you! I hear you. This is me!” Apparently, the radio station lost the plane’s signal and then broke up. We did not hear anything about the pilot or if he is okay. Brian doesn’t know how to fly or where he is going so we assume that the plane has crash landed somewhere in the Canadian wilderness. We researched the pilot's medical records and discovered that he had reported chest pain many times. This could mean that the pilot had a heart attack and then the plane crashed because no one was flying it. Searches have already started and the officials say that if the duo are not found in two months, they will have to withdraw the search.
The plane was loaded with enough food to last one person about a month and there was also a rifle, a first aid kit, compass, a knife, and an emergency transmitter. We hope that Brian or the Pilot survived the crash and will flip the switch on the emergency transmitter otherwise, we can only hope that they will be found.
1/26/2024 JW Sevilla Baumer, Capital News, USA
Persuasive Essay
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Finding Planets
Have you ever thought about whether the Earth will last long enough for the human race to invent space travel and be able to leave Earth to live elsewhere in the vast universe? That’s what we all hope, but will it ever happen? There are actually reasons that we should be focused on this. NASA should be focused on finding outer habitable worlds because if not, we will eventually, slowly die out to other things that we are causing. We are setting and making our doom.
One reason why NASA should be focused on finding more planets is global warming. Global warming is caused by pollution like smoke in the air, and waste in the water and inside the Earth. If we don’t stop polluting the Earth, we will soon reach uninhabitable conditions that we can’t get rid of. Because of this, we need to work together to stop global warming, or we need to be focused more on finding other planets to live on and ways to leave Earth.
We will also soon run the Earth bare of its resources. A way we are doing this is by overproducing things that we don’t need, like plastic and glass. These are items that we can live without such a massive amount of. We don’t need that many plastic water bottles or bags when we have reusable ones. Also, some countries are better stocked up on resources than others. For example, the US doesn’t have enough oil, so it depends on the Middle East. Besides, we might want to be saving our resources for space crafts and carriers rather than a fake, ancient vase.
One reason that I know that NASA isn’t focusing enough on finding new habitable planets is because they have only found 54 candidates/planets that might be able to support life. If we strengthen the amount of resources that we put into finding new planets, we could have ourselves a guaranteed 54 planets habitable for life. Plus, we cannot end the start of the search either because if we do, we might not be able to start again along with other reasons.
Now, there is a book that could also help. It is called Allegiant. In this book, the world practically ended because of a “Purity War” between the government and the people. It also says that they made cities such as Chicago into experiments. In those experiments, the people inside had no idea about the outside world because their memory was erased. We don’t know enough because we have never bothered to look. People were not able to leave the city because they were afraid of what was out there. They were also being surveyed by outside forces (the government). This might be happening to us, except the government wouldn’t be the ones watching, aliens or other beings would be.
We don’t have to be in this situation however. If we really do start to stop global warming, start to save resources, and start looking up, we might survive. “I believe alien life is quite common in the universe, although intelligent life is less so. Some say it has yet to appear on planet Earth.” states Stephen Hawkings. We can show intelligence though. In summary, I believe that NASA should be focusing more on finding new planets, and getting the human race there. If we start now, we could be out of this world before you can say “Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis!”
Memoir
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Injury with an extra friend
I’ve met a lot of my friends in a lot of different ways. I transferred schools, moved to new cities, and other bizarre reasons. This one, however, was one of the funniest and definitely the one that hurt the most.
When I was about seven years old, I was going to a school called Steele Montessori Academy. There, I had very long recesses and fun P.E. activities. We also played a lot of different games there at recess time.
One day, a couple of my old friends and I were playing a game of tag. It was the middle of the game when another tall kid came up to us and asked if he could play. Us, not being monsters, said sure (Well actually, I said it, I was like the group speaker). He was soon discovered to be very, Very, Very slow. Now, by slow, I mean that his fast run was equivalent to my slow jogging. He was like a snail on two feet. He also had almost no turning ability. Whenever he was chasing us, we usually were just able to outrun him. But I decided to test something. The next time that he came after me, I started to run at the nearest pole. He didn’t seem to notice, I guess he was too focused on tagging me. Right when I was about to hit the pole, I swerved right. His eyes followed me, but unfortunately, his body didn’t.
“OWWWWWW!!!” I heard him yell. I looked back and saw that, thankfully, he wasn’t hurt, but now he was mad.
Eventually, he got tired of getting tagged and, instead of quitting, decided to make a point. He was going to go after me, even though I was pretty sure that he was a little wary after the pole incident. When I realized what was happening, I hid under the staircase to the play structure and waited for him to realize where I was. After a few minutes, he spotted me and started running towards me. I knew that if I stayed under there, I was dead meat, a fish out of water, spiderman with no webs.
Before he got to me, I crawled out and started to run towards the strip of sidewalk that we used for racing. He did everything to try and catch me. He tried to corner me, straight up chase me, and even asked people to help him and gang up on me.
“I’m good,” they usually said with a little laughter, “you can get him yourself.”
“I’ll catch you soon!” he yelled after me as I evaded him once again.
My friends AJ, Marley, and Nico all started laughing like hyenas when he couldn’t catch me.
After what seemed like an eternity, he finally had his chance to catch me. My back was on the wall that kept us from falling to the ground.
“What are you going to do now, John?!” he taunted as he slowly got closer to me.
I really didn’t want to get tagged by the ruler of slow people, my friends would never let me live it down. I also had a reputation to uphold as the kid with the smallest number of kids tagging me. Getting tagged by the slowest of the slow would not only ruin my reputation, it would also hurt my ego.
‘I’ve got nowhere to go,’ I thought to myself, ‘how will I get out of this one?’
Unfortunately, Mr. Slow and Mighty wouldn’t let me decide. He “charged me” at like, 4 mph. I still regret what I did next.
On a scale of one-ten, how dumb do you think it is to jump off of a ten-foot tall structure, onto small sharp slippery rocks at a forty-five degree angle that led to concrete-covered ground. I rate it eleven. So, of course, me being my dumb, young self, jumped.
I realized that I didn’t take a single moment to consider what I was about to do. So, I had to live with the consequences. After my daredevil jump, I landed on the ground with a loud THUMP! Luckily, I stopped myself before rolling onto the rocks. However, I was still in pretty bad shape.
When I finally opened my eyes, and was not focused on getting the ringing out of my ears, pain started to tear my right leg to shreds. After I looked at it, I was convinced that it wasn’t sprained or broken, but I had heard a muffled POP! upon impact with the ground.
Even though my leg was injured, and my ears were ringing, and my head hurt, and my eyes felt half blind, I looked up after realizing that there was a shadow over me and saw a tall, curly-haired, random kid above me with his hand outstretched asking me, “Are you okay?”
Now, at this point, a few thoughts flooded my mind like, “NO! I just fell ten feet!” and a few other not very nice ones. But then I realized that he was doing this out of generosity.
“Not really.” I ended up saying.
“Can you stand up or do you need me to help you?” he asked.
“A little.” I responded.
After he helped me up, we exchanged names and I found out that his name was Vincent Gray. He had been racing with some tall, much older, fast-looking kids I didn’t know before he saw me jump. I still know him today, three years later.
The Creatures
Hi, my name is Biobat. Yes, I know, this is the first time that you’ve heard such a weird name, but I was named this because it means “Earth Beater.” This describes me perfectly because when I was born, I immediately started hitting the floor of the treehouse in which I live in and wouldn’t stop until my dad pulled me away. I don’t know why I was so angry at the floor, but my parents told me that I had actually ruptured the floor. But this isn’t about my name though, it’s about one of my experiences.
I live on the planet of Biophone, the planet called life of sound, so it can get pretty noisy. When I was about 11, I was hanging out with my friends in the treetops when we heard a barely audible sound coming from about five miles away. It was a sort of howl, roar, and neigh combined. It was night, so we couldn’t see much. However, since my dad is an astronomer, he taught me how to navigate by the stars, and I pretty much had a map of all of the forest in my head, so we decided to go towards it.
“I bet it’s them! " Uniduct, who was basically the leader of our group, said spookily. This got some laughs, but, even though it was dark, I could tell that it had also made some of my friends pale.
“I bet you’re hoping it is!” yelled Tribrach, who, unlike most of us, was born with three arms.
“And if I am?” replied Uniduct smugly.
“Well…” Tribrach thought with one finger scratching his head while his other two arms were swinging with the rest of us, “then I’m leaving!”
This made everyone stop. No one ever was thought to run away from our life-long enemy. They were known to destroy our towns and go on expeditions just to rub it in our faces on their way back. Unfortunately, there are wild packs that live in the shadows and live up to the name that we have for them in secret. We are still having a war with them, but it is mostly throwing food at one another. The reason that nobody has surrendered is because both sides have never lost a war before, and if they lose one now, they would always be the second best kingdom on Biophone.
“I mean,” Tribrach quickly made up a line to save his dignity, “we should get the adults first right? Since we’ve never fought one of them before.”
“Nah,” Uniduct spread his arms and gestured towards us, “we can totally take this guy, it’s probably by itself.”
“I don’t know, maybe we should get the centurions to take care of it.” said Logonore, the smart aleck of our group.
“As long as we don’t die!” wailed Pathocore, Logonore’s very emotional twin brother.
“Man, y’all are being real snores.” Uniduct said with a funny look on his face, “you agree with me right, Graphport?”
Graphport, who, as usual, was carrying a map, looked up with a startled face and said “Huh?”
“Nevermind,” Uniduct told him, frowning, “what about you Biobat?”
I looked at Uniduct, and it looked like he was begging, but the others were begging too, but not for the same reason, in fact, it was for the exact opposite reason. They also knew that if even just one person agreed with Uniduct, he’d talk the rest into joining as well.
Me, not getting to do a lot of exciting things like this since my dad is an astronomer, was super hyped up to do this.
“Of course!” I shouted, “that thing’s going to wish it had never seen us!”
Out of nowhere, the city’s street kid, as we called him, came up to us. His parents were both centurions and were killed by the things while the war was still waging pretty hard. The worst part though, they had done it right in front of his eyes. So he lumbered up to us and said:
“Y’all heard that noise too?” Chronoverse, which was his real name, asked. He was usually able to bend time, but everytime he tried to erase his parent’s death, they died to another one. “I’m going to hunt it and make it pay for what it did for my parents!”
He said this with a fiery look in his eyes that made us all cower a little, even Uniduct.
“This is going to be a very silent mission in the dark,” He said as though he was making a battle strategy with people that would actually understand it, “so I’m only taking two guys with me, the others better stay out of the way.”
We all had silent conversations with ourselves that kind of went like this:
Uniduct: He is totally going to pick me.
Graphport: I must study my map!
Tribrach: I think I should go get the centurions.
Logonore: What is the best way to defeat a thing?
Pathocore: If he picks any of us, he will abolish our long-lasting friendship, NO!
Me: If he picks me that would be so cool!
Then Chronoverse did the exact opposite any logical person would do, he said,
“You!” he shouted pointing at me.
“Me?!?” I yelled back.
“Yeah,” he said this a little softer, “you do want to come right?”
“Of course” I responded so suddenly that I must have startled him a little.
“Okay then, now one more thing.” he stated, “Who…”
We all braced as he was going to ask the question that would solve who else would go with him.
“Was…” more tension.
“Born in September?”
We all glanced at each other to make sure we heard correctly.
“Could you repeat the question?” Logonore asked whilst pushing up some imaginary glasses.
“Who was born in September?” he repeated, sounding kind of impatient.
One person raised their hand, Logonore.
“But I thought Logonore and Pathonore were twins?” Tribrach asked.
“We are twins, but I was born at the last minute of September, while Pathocore came in the first minute of October.” Logonore answered.
“Why do you want someone born in September anyway?” Uniduct said coldly as he looked at Chronoverse with a different look, one of disgust.
“Apparently, they're usually the smartest of the bunch.” said Chronoverse.
“Why do we have to split up?!?” wailed Pathocore as we left.
“Oh, just be quiet already, let’s go back.” I heard Uniduct murmur.
“So, what’s the plan, Logonore, was it?” Chronoverse asked Logonore.
“Yes, and we will first have to find it, and then we will spectate it until it falls asleep.” replied Logonore.
“How long do you think the minimum time to find it will be?” Chronoverse asked.
“About 5-10 minutes,” answered Logonore, “but we have to be very careful!”
“Why?” I asked.
“Well, one of the thing's eyes is open most of the time, so it will spot danger in the thing’s sleep.” said Logonore quietly, as if to make sure no one else heard us, even though I am pretty sure no one is in a 7-mile radius.
“Most of the time?” I asked.
“Well, according to the books from when we actually fought the things, the one eye closes for about 10 seconds during its sleep, but after that, it blinks constantly and its eye can pretty much see the whole time because of how fast it blinks.” Lognore said with a little hint of scare in his voice.
“How fast we talking?” Chronoverse asked without so much of a glance to Logonore.
“Blink as fast as you can,” he said, “then imagine that blink quintillion times faster.”
“So pretty dang fast.” I said
“Yup,” he responded, “the Octoauratricephelonovkeratabidactyloquadstomatotricervicaoctoliguaquintencephaloduouradoalariumoctocyclopod can blink pretty fast.”
That was the only time he wasn’t able to be smart. Saying our enemies name gives them the exact location of the person who said it.
“Shoot!” yelled Chronoverse, “you had to say that!?!”
Logonore knew what he did wrong when he thought back and immediately turned pale. Then, out of nowhere, the thing swooped down and tried to grab Logonore! In fact, if I hadn’t slashed it with my astroknife made of light from the Sun, he might have gotten taken away. When it swooped down again, it didn’t have the scar on the leg that I slashed it on, we all realized at the same time, this wasn’t just one, we had accidentally stumbled upon a whole tribe of them. Before we had time to retreat, the Minidemos came in and basically dragged us out and into their hole that led to their home.
“Y’all must be pretty stupid to take on a whole tribe by y’all’s selves.” squeaked Minidemos #1
“You are lucky we came here when we did!” squeaked Minidemos #2.
“We will take you home immediately so as to not expose that we saved anybody from another tribe.” #1 managed to say while trying not to cower at the height of us.
“We have an autocrat as our leader, and they banned helping other tribes.” #2 explained, “for some bizarre reason, he thinks that Minidemos will rule the world one day! I mean, just look at us!”
It was kind of hard trying to picture the Minidemos ruling the world. When we reached the end of their quadrillion-mile long tunnel, we came out to a clearing only a short distance away from the city. We thanked them and then departed.
When I reached my house, Ruptsound, which means that my house usually breaks the sound barrier (which is common on this planet), I was so excited to just be there that I wish I had never gone on that mission ever, in fact, I wish I hadn’t even heard of it. This fighting thing’s stuff isn’t for me, I’ll probably take my dad’s job as the city astronomer or something easier than fighting them. No more Octoauratricephelonovkeratabidactyloquadstomatotricervicaoctoliguaquintencephaloduouradoalariumoctocyclopod in my life again. Good thing I thought that, and I didn’t say it.
Page updated
Report abuse