3 A. M. Writer- 𝚁𝚎𝚊𝚍 𝚊𝚝 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚘𝚠𝚗 𝚙𝚎𝚛𝚒𝚕

Achievement Unlocked: Bark-Eating Fungus

I don't like camping that much unless we have a camper. It's the only bearable way to camp because you can have the AC on, the mosquitoes out, and a mattress. It's a perfect recipe for peace, quiet, and memories. This all gets knocked out of the water when four kids of varying personalities attempt to pull an alligator out of a pollen infested swamp.

I'll explain. My family had been in this swampland on the border of Texas and Louisiana for about a day and a half. It was fun and relaxing up until my family's old friends came over for the afternoon. The Weevers are a special family, though nice enough. There are usually six of them, however their dad couldn't make it. This meant that the five of them were a mom, a teenage boi, a sweet young innocent girl, and two more monsters of toddlers. Now picture the teenager, the young girl, my brother, and unfortunately me in a canoe on the bayou.

Mike made us get into his canoe to go fishing. We piled in with more than one quest in mind. The sweet young girl named Aira wanted to take bark off some of the trees that were in the middle of the swamp so that she could test some bark-eating fungus on it. She was very into mushrooms at the time. My brother Micheal tagged along because he wanted some time with his friend. I was forced to get in the middle because they were "off balance" without another person. Aria is a cancer survivor, so she's very light and the canoe was swaying without someone else.

I clambered in and we pushed off. There was a massive power struggle between my brother and I when we were on my dad's homemade canoe thirty minutes before this moment, so we were still having a bit of friction at the time. (He wanted me to steer in certain directions and I had adamantly refused because he was bossing me so much. Of course this made him a bit on edge... *Venti inspired ehe*) We went out into the middle of the lake to see if there were any good fishing spots for us to cast out lines.

The water was very dark and green so you couldn't see if any fish were around unless they jumped. Thankfully we were out on the water at the perfect time of afternoon for the fish to be hungry. We found a good spot and Mike began to prepare the lines. The bait that the Weevers had picked up before they met up with us was pretty much little fishies that had been freeze dried and poked until they had a hole for a hook. We drifted around for a bit until Mike was ready to cast out.

While I was chatting with Aria about the bait I felt a tug in my braid. I stopped talking when I realized that everyone had fallen silent. I didn't look over my shoulder. I didn't gasp or anything. I knew exactly what had happened. The hook and bait had caught in my hair. A very small whimper came from behind my back.

I slowly shifted in my seat. "I swear to you Mike. I'm going to pound you into the ground when we get back to shore." Now why this possible over reaction, you might be asking? I'll tell you. The bait was right above my ear, extremely close to my eye as well. This boy was so blessed to not have caught my eye and pulled it out. I would've been able to do a killer Kaeya cosplay within a few short seconds if that were the unfortunate situation.

Aria got the hook out of my hair while my brother laughed and Mike spouted out apologies.

I'm pretty sure that he went something like this, "I'm sorry AJ, this doesn't happen that often, I swear! I'm so sorry! I still have to cast out the second line! I'll be more careful next time!" etc. I can't blame him for the accident too much, oh wait, yeah I can, he almost took out my eye.

After the second line had been cast we waited for the fish to bite. We could see them jump all around us but they never even pulled on the bait. We started to drift away from our spot and we were getting bored of sitting there. So, naturally, we pulled the lines back in and paddled to the trees to get the bark for Aria.

There was a bit of drama there too as Aria had pulled out her mushrooming knife and Micheal couldn't keep the boat steady for her. She kept almost falling over board and Mike kept laughing at the stupidity of this whole afternoon. We got a few good samples in the end and I was ready to go back to shore. Unfortunately, the majority had other plans.

"Hey, you know what we could do?" My brother said, and this sentence consistently leads to the worst of ideas. Especially if they're my brother's idea.

"What are you thinkin?" Mike smiled.

The only thoughts going through my mind were, 'No no no no please no.'

My brother pointed to the trees that filled the swamp. "Let's go in there! I wanna catch an alligator!" Bear in mind that this swamp looks a lot like the scenes from the Disney movie The Princess and the Frog, so the trees have roots sticking up in weird places. Plus the dense Spanish moss hangs down and drags in the water, which means you can't really tell where a path is unless you Louis and Clark that crap. Which is exactly what my brother wanted to do.

Mike decided that he'd show off his vast wealth of knowledge and exclaimed, "It's not the alligators you have to watch out for, it's the crocodiles!"

"There aren't any crocodiles in this swamp you idiot! We're in Louisiana!" I sneered. (Yeah I'm not ashamed to say that I was getting tired of trading around one brain cell like the Sisters of Fate's eye)

Now I know this may seem completely silly, (note the sarcasm) but I did not think this was a good idea. Finding an alligator with two small knives, four kids, and a metal canoe did not seem to me to be a brainwave. However, despite my pleading and logical comments, we paddled into the quite beautiful, untouched part of the lake.

I didn't think we'd actually find an alligator, and we didn't. But we did get lost. Around halfway in, my brother started getting concerned. Finally, he suggested we turn around and we began the attempt. As I had pointed out earlier, the stumps and roots of the trees were very thick so there wasn't a good opening to go back. We ended up having to go backwards the way we came to get ourselves out of that dreadful mess of moss.

I never did end up pounding Mike into the ground. I wish I had though because we wouldn't have been on the lake for more than an hour if they had listened to me the first time. I can't imagine what would've happened if we had found an alligator and attempted to pull it on board. They thrash real good and I don't think we would've lived with a mushrooming knife and a thin fishing knife as our only weapons.