Robin Robinson

Nobody to be seen

Early one particular morning, Robinson decided to travel to his favourite nature reserve. Sara and her parents were still sleeping. But they were well aware of his love of travelling and wouldn't worry if they woke and he wasn't in his tree. In fact the little bird had been doing so much travelling in the previous couple of weeks he had hardly seen his human family.

When he finally arrived at the reserve he loved so much, he was so tired he decided to spend two whole days there.

And so the two days passed. But Robinson decided to stay for another night and depart in the morning. It was a rainy night, and it got worse as the dawn arrived. The little robin hadn't seen such heavy rain for a long time, and so, naturally, he decided to wait until the weather got better.

By 11 a.m. the rain had eased, and Robinson felt he could finally return to the farm.

Upon his arrival he went directly to the kitchen window to see his friends. As it happened he was right on time for lunch. But to his amazement, there was nobody to be seen. "Strange," Robinson thought. "They nearly always have lunch at home. I can only remember just one occasion when they went to a restaurant. Oh yes, and then there were those two times when they went to a relative's house."

But he didn't worry overly much because surely they would return later.

Unfortunately, they didn't.

And not even the day after.

He had already asked the entire neighbourhood of birds, but nobody had a clue of what might have happened.

Day three and still no sign of his beloved human family. By this time Robinson was becoming a bit impatient and so decided to try and sneak into the house in order to find a possible clue as to their whereabouts. But there was no way to get in. All he could do was see through the windows. Everything was very tidy. Later that day, the little bird decided the best thing he could do was search for them. So he headed for Bournemouth and spent the next week faithfully searching not only the entire city but surrounding towns and villages, too. He went everywhere he could, but they were nowhere to be seen.

In fact he flew so much he started to lose weight.

At the beginning of the second week of the family's disappearance, little Robinson had a rather unwelcome surprise. Returning to the farm exhausted after his fruitless, he spotted a light shining from the farm where he lived. As he got nearer, he realised it was coming from the kitchen, and excited to think they had finally returned, he started singing from sheer happiness. His tiredness forgotten, he flew faster than ever before, and excitedly peered through the window. But instead of the farmer and his family all he could see was a strange old man. First he felt a crushing sadness, but within seconds it had been replaced with an anger he had never before felt. The robin started to twitter angrily, but the old man never noticed him. That just made Robinson even more angry. But it didn't take long for him to realise his anger wasn't going to solve anything and realised he would have to accept the old man was there to stay.