Three Minutes around the Campfire

Normanday #35: Pass the marshmallows, please.

It’s your turn to tell a story around the campfire tonight. Write for three minutes…

…about something that’ll scare the socks off your fellow campers.

Email what you wrote to woof at bright dot net by the end of the day July 8 (put “Norman is Incredibly Talented” in the subject line). I’ll post as many of my favorite entries as I want next Monday. Include your first name (or, even better, use a pen name) and age (unless you’re tortoise-old). If you’re a published children’s or young adult writer, include a biography to be posted with your entry.

Here are the entries from last week when I asked you to write for three minutes…

…explaining how you absolutely positively are not up to mischief.

Cranberly

Oh! Hello, human friend. Boy, you look confused. Or it is angry. You kind of smell angry. I hope you are not angry at me. I am not doing anything at all. You see, I was sleeping in the sun that comes in through the window when I smelled something. I thought maybe it was a mouse. I smelled it coming from the kitchen. So, I followed the smell and came to this cabinet. I heard a noise. I thought maybe it was the mouse. I would have barked and alerted you, but I didn’t want to scare it away. I thought if I slowly opened the door to this cabinet, I would catch the mouse. I tried scratching it open, but it didn’t work and it was making too much noise, so I used my mouth on the handle and pulled very quietly. You know, so I wouldn’t scare the mouse. When the door opened, this big bag of dog food fell over. Fortunately, it was closed. But then I had a worrying thought. What if the mouse had already crawled in and closed the bag behind it? Mice can be very clever. So I chewed a hole near the top of the bag and started sniffing for the mouse. Not eating! Just sniffing. And that’s when you came in.

BURP!

Um…I’ll just be in my bed if you need me.

Norman the Incredibly Talented Half-Invisible Turtle

Officer, how can you accuse me of such a thing? A turtle committing acts of vandalism? Never! See, I was walking by when this crazy alien from the planet Zeenton told me that the library had hired him to paint this side of the building. I’m a trusting turtle, and a nice one, so I offered to help him. Where is he? You just missed the spaceship that came and took him away. The eggs? That’s my lunch of course. A carton of raw eggs is a turtle’s favorite lunchtime snack. So, you see? Everything is perfectly normal. I’ll just get back to painting this wall. Yes, it’s a mural. Why yes, I suppose this picture I painted does look a little bit like you with antlers and silly shoes. If you’ll excuse me, I just remembered I’m supposed to be someplace else right about now.