Animal Hunt

December 25th 2019

Dear diary,

It’s Christmas today but Santa didn’t arrive. 

Mummy gave you to me so that I could write down my sad thoughts. 

She said that it helps. 

I asked her if she had one to write in too and she just smiled and wiped a tear from her eye.

I don’t know where she found you. Ben said she nicked you from another family who are staying in this horrible place too.

I don’t think she did though. Mummy wouldn’t do that.

I’m sad because our house is gone. The big fire burnt it down.

That’s why we’re here in this place where I can’t sleep because everyone’s voices are too loud and that annoying baby keeps crying.

The fire is scary. We got out in time. But Mummy said we couldn’t take the cows with us. 

I cried when Mummy said we had to leave them behind.

I’m crying now thinking about all the cows being scared from the fire.

I hope they somehow stayed safe.

Ben saw me crying just now and patted my head.

He’s never nice to me. He must be sad too.

I miss home. I miss the cows. I miss daddy.

I’m going to try to sleep now. The baby has stopped crying.

Love, Lucy.

March 15th 2020

Dear diary,

Mummy is sad today and it makes me sad too.

She said she got fired from her new job at the cafe down the road from the house we live in with Aunty Kelly and Uncle Shaun.

I asked her why and she said it’s because of the virus.

The one that’s making people dress up like doctors when they go outside.

Mummy said it’s dangerous and people can’t go near each other anymore.

I have to stay home from school now because of it too.

I kind of like it but Ben hates it.

He got angry at me when I said I hope we get to stay home for a long time.

He called me selfish.

I just like the quiet.

I asked Mummy where the virus came from and she said China.

I asked her how and she said from animals.

I asked her how again and she said it comes from people eating animals and being too close to them.

People shouldn’t eat animals. Bad things happen when they do.

Now I’m thinking about the cows again. I know they died that day in the fire and it still makes me so sad.

We were going to eat them though. Just like the Chinese people.

Isn’t that strange?

Love, Lucy.

August 17th 2024

Dear diary,

I know I’m a little old now to write to you.

It’s been a while and I’m sorry.

I just needed a place to vent and I thought about the times it made me feel slightly better so here I am.

I’m angry mostly. 

I got in a fight with a girl at school who chewed her ham sandwich right in my face on purpose.

She knows I’m a vegetarian and that’s why she did it.

I asked her if she enjoyed eating members of her own species.

She spat the sandwich on my shoes.

I don’t know why people always seem to get so mean when I say I’m a vegetarian. 

It’s like some part of them feels guilty which then makes them angry.

I tried for a while to convince Mum to be vegetarian with me but she got angry too. 

She says we need meat to live. But I can’t stomach the idea of eating an animal anymore.

Maybe I’ll die and my flesh will be eaten by someone out there with a taste for human being.

Love, Lucy.

November 27th 2028

Dear diary,

It’s a week before I officially graduate high school and I’ve never been more scared in my life.

The world is going crazy.

The climate scientist who has been on the news lately says that we now have one year left before the damage to Earth has reached a point where we can’t recover.

She’s normally a very serious woman with a stern face but today she looks genuinely frightened. Like a tiny baby gazelle cowering behind a lion’s shadow.

She knows what’s coming, that’s why. She can see it. It’s already begun.

The world has just staggered into recovery against the wake of another deadly pandemic. We should have learnt from the last one but of course we didn’t.

We continued to eat the animals and destroy their homes and share their diseases around.

The bushfires that burnt down my home all those years ago now seem dismal in comparison to the fires that rage here every summer now.

I’m scared for my country and I’m scared for the world.

I’ve been researching what career path I should take post-school but everything seems pointless and uncertain.

My friend Jess says I should be a climate scientist like Jackie Thompson (the one from TV).

I thought about that for a while after she said it.

But all I can ever think is what’s the point? 

Yours, Lucy.

February 3rd 2042

Hi there old friend.

Miss me?

I was allowed one possession to take with me and I thought of you.

I don’t own much else and I thought it would do me some good to write things down again.

Guess where I am?

In prison.

It’s funny reading my old diary entries.

I’ve changed a lot since then.

I never became a climate scientist like Jess said I should.

I became a climate activist.

I was so tired of seeing my country continue to burn and the animals continue to be slaughtered and the people continue to get sick.

I wanted to make a change. Not observe it.

So I started a war.

I screamed at those in navy suits with neatly pressed ties and spotted socks peeking out from under their tailored pants on the way to their corporate jobs in city skyscrapers.

I marched until my feet were covered in blisters and my hands were cramped from holding the picket sign.

I chanted “Four legs good, two legs bad” with the masses.

They didn’t like it.

They didn’t like me.

So they threw me in a cell with a few of my other activist friends.

We’ll be facing court in a couple of weeks they said.

Oh, remember that climate scientist I saw on TV that time?

She disappeared under mysterious circumstances like so many others who have dared to speak up.

Maybe I’ll be next.

This place reminds me of that hall I slept in as a kid with Mum and Ben when the house burnt down.

Except instead of a baby crying there’s a grown man weeping.

Yours, Lucy.

March 28th 2050

Here we are again, old friend.

What a time it’s been since I last wrote to you.

So much has happened since then I can see.

Things got a lot worse for me before they got better.

I was in jail for a couple of years. Climate activists were considered on the same level as terrorists back then.

Now we’re a little more revered since the elite class is also suffering the consequences of inaction.

The air is heavy. You can’t breathe anymore without a filter. 

Those doctor’s masks that had once seemed so strange to me are now as normal to put on as underwear.

They’re a necessity now if you want to live.

I was freed by a well-known man with a lot of money. He saw footage of the protest and found me.

He wanted me to be the face behind his efforts to save the planet from destruction.

I had told him it was too late. He might as well put that money towards a nice headstone.

He just laughed. 

People like him make me so mad. I can’t stand people with money anymore because they had the power to prevent this and they didn’t.

He told me he is involved in a project with NASA to transport rich people to Mars.

It made me sad to think that people would just move from one planet to another because they had completely pillaged and destroyed the last one.

I politely told him where he could stick his offer.

He laughed like a hyena and then told me to watch my back.

I walked away from my rescuer more angry and determined than ever.

I plotted for a short while with a small group of others and laid low. I shook the hounds off my trail a few times.

Now I’m sitting here and my skin is red and hot from the short walk from my home to the city centre. The sun has become a petulant child reminding us all of our failures.

I’m about to enter the largest media corporation in the country.

I remember the time I saw the climate scientist on TV as a kid and how frightened she looked at the prospect of today’s reality.

I’m that woman now. Except instead of a terrified gazelle in a lion’s shadow, I’m the lion this time and there will be bloodshed.