Taterskin & The Eco Defenders: Book 2, Chapter 2
Book 2 ("Tell It to Future Generations"), Chapter 2
CHAPTER 2
The past two years seemed to have flown by. It was hard to believe that it was 2527 already. In those two years, my human friend Albert had expanded his orchard, and was growing all sorts of fruits and nuts: apples, peaches, cherries, walnuts, almonds, pistachios, and chestnuts. He was making preserves from some of the fruit, and wine and hard cider and, naturally, pies and crumbles and crisps and cobblers.
None of us — not Alexis, the African Grey Parrot, nor Drako the Bearded Dragon, nor Stripes the Bengal Tiger, nor Rinky the Duck-billed Platypus, nor Ocero Puddleby the Rhinoceros, nor Terri Wingfinger the Pterodactyl were champing at the bit (so to speak) to leave on another trip. Least of all was Marmalade the Orange Tabby eager to depart; as long as her ‘big brother’ Stripes stuck around, she was perfectly content to stay in Zenia forever.
Speaking of Marmalade, she was no longer a kitten. She was going on three years old now. So the youngest among us were the year-old pups. Especially disinclined to pull up stakes just now were Rovette and I, as we were almost completely focused on enjoying our new status and responsibility as parents.
Still, though, it was in the back of all our minds. We had agreed to return to various times and places in the past to remedy bad situations that had occurred, or prevent them from happening in the first place.
We all knew we couldn’t put it off forever. But we needed a catalyst — someone or something to “light a fire under us” to get us motivated to start making preparations for the trip.
We had all been thinking about which events from the past we would most like to change. There were plenty. Albert had raised a whole slew of them when we had talked about it soon after returning from our first trip together, when we had gone to Australia to protect the Aboriginal people and to save the Great Barrier Reef from destruction; on to India to protect people from Thuggee and the animals from being used as deadly weapons against each other in staged fights to the death; and finally to Africa, where we prevented King Leopold of Belgium from colonizing the Congo and also put an end to poaching throughout the entire continent.
We knew that we had rested on our laurels long enough. There was still a lot of progress to be made regarding racism and war and pollution and poverty and so on and so forth.
Albert was the one who approached us about it, coming down to our water hole one brisk morning at the start of winter.
Taterskin & The Eco Defenders (in paperback, kindle, or hardcover) is available here. https://www.amazon.com/Taterskin-Defenders-Blackbird-Crow-Raven/dp/B09PHJVPW4/