“Anthony,” calls his mother from the kitchen, “Time to get up and have breakfast. I made strawberry pancakes with bacon.”
“Oh, oh,” Anthony thinks to himself, “I better get up before my father eats all the breakfast.” Anthony slides off his bed and shuffles into the kitchen. He sits down in his usual spot at the table in between his mother and father. He turns and smiles at them as he picks up his fork.
Both parents drop their utensils at the same time and gasp as they look at Anthony. “Why are they looking at me like that?” wonders Anthony. “Why is my mother’s mouth hanging wide open and my father’s brows and eyes twitching in disbelief?” “What happened to you?” Mom asks Anthony in a quiet but very shaky voice. “Go look in the mirror at yourself,” she tells him. “Is that a costume you’re wearing, young man because I don’t think it’s funny at all,” Dad says in an angry tone.
Anthony slithers from his chair and quickly goes to the full length mirror in the hallway. “What the…? What happened to me?” There is a bear cub reflection staring back at Anthony in the mirror. Anthony sees a small head with rounded ears, small black, beady eyes and a black nose with fine curves in the shape of a mouth. His head, arms and legs are covered with a very soft brown fur. His chest and stomach area have turned into a big, very delicious-looking bright red strawberry. “How is this possible?” Anthony wonders.
“Mom, Dad, what happened to me?” I know I ate too many strawberries yesterday at Big Hank’s but I never thought something like this could happen,” Anthony stutters.
“Well,” says his father, I’m going to get the car and bring it out around front. We need to speak to Big Hank and find out if he has any idea how something like this could possibly happen just from eating a bushel of strawberries.”
When they catch up to Big Hank at the farm, Big Hank can’t believe what he sees. There are Anthony’s parents holding onto him but he doesn’t look like Anthony anymore, nope, he looks like a strawbear. Big Hank will have to tell the story once again, this time to Anthony and his parents, explaining how someone can go strawberry picking at his farm and wind up turning into a strawbear.
They all sit down together in the grass near the strawberry patches and listen to what Big Hank has to say.
“Around one hundred years ago, a mother bear and her four cubs lived at the back of the farm in a small cave. Mother bear would warn the cubs over and over not to go to the strawberry patches as this was too dangerous for baby bears. Mother bear was not able to tell if the cubs were listening to her or not so she came up with an idea. She would cast a spell that if any of her cubs ate a strawberry they would turn into a strawbear. There were only certain strawberry bushes that Mother bear put the spell on and these were ones that were very remote and far away from the rows of other safer strawberry bushes. If the Mother bear saw that any of her cubs turned into a strawbear, then she would know that she was being disobeyed. The only way her cub could turn back would be when the next Full Strawberry Moon appeared in the sky.”
Big Hank looked at Anthony and said, “You must have wandered off pretty far when you were picking strawberries and, by mistake, you picked and ate from the ones that still had the Mother Bear’s spell on them. Unfortunately for you, now you have to wait for the next Full Strawberry Moon to change back to your old self. Anthony and his parents were not happy at all upon hearing this but there was nothing else they could do. Now it was just a matter of time and getting used to Anthony being a strawbear. “Well, said Big Hank with a twinkle in his eyes, “Maybe you should make sure you hide all the honey in the house until your cute little strawbear turns back into your son.”
Ellen G.
June 2020
