By 3rd Grade Students at Bubb Elementary
November 2016
The dragon guarded her cave. Joseph the fox watched. He wondered what the dragon guarded.
She was huge, at least ten times as big as he was. She was a neon green, a far cry from his own beautiful red coat. She had spikes all over her body. The spikes looked as sharp as knives and her skin seemed rough and bumpy. She looked like a humongous porcupine. Freaky! She also had very sharp teeth. Her wings were big and the only part of her body that didn’t have spikes. She had a very long tail.
Though Joseph hid behind a rock, he had a feeling that she could sense him because she was breathing orange and red fire.
She smelled like cactus. Ah! The smell of home. Cacti smelled like sand and sand smelled like the desert, and he was a desert fox. He was far from home so he felt surprisingly happy smelling her scent.
Birds chirped in the trees, but they were hard to hear over the sound of the dragon’s snorts and grunts.
Hmm. She must be snorting and grunting and breathing flame at him.
Joseph really wanted to see what the dragon guarded, but first he needed to eat. He was hungry and he didn’t like to do scary things on an empty stomach. He took a bite out of the raw hunk of deer. Yum. It was like bacon and eggs—the best.
Once his belly was full, he set to work. He began to dig and dig and dig. It took a very long time, but he dug a tunnel all the way into the cave. When he finally emerged on the cave floor he saw a chunk of gold, bright and shiny, but he also saw the huge porcupine-like dragon sleeping right next to it. Clearly this was what she guarded.
Wow! he thought. A chunk of gold. I could be rich with a chunk of gold. I must steal it!
He sneaked up behind her and up to the gold. He began to push it with his nose and paws. It made a loud, rolling noise and …
The Dragon Woke Up!
She immediately searched for her gold chunk. When she didn’t see it she looked wildly around.
She saw Joseph and breathed fire at him. He dodged and dodged again. He kept pushing the gold. He had to have it. All of the sudden it began to roll on its own because the ground was slanted.
Joseph ran after it, but it was rolling very fast. The dragon stomped after Joseph and the gold. Joseph ran even faster and then jumped over the rolling gold.
That was when he decided it was time for magic. He flung out his paw, and with a flick and a poof, a net appeared. He cast it over the gold and caught the chunk.
He sprinted for the entrance. Just as he lunged for the outside, the dragon caught him with her huge talons.
Uh oh! he thought.
He had only one weapon left, his horrible singing voice. He began to wail opera. It was so high-pitched, it made the dragon scream and scream and scream.
She began to run in crazy circles and then there was a huge explosion.
It rained gold and that dragon exploded into a tiny, squishy dragon.
Wow, thought the fox.
That was a tough consequence for guarding gold. He realized as it rained gold all over him that gold and riches were not worth it. He decided he didn’t need wealth to be happy.
He ran home to his desert, sparkling with tiny pieces of gold all the way.
The End.