Thank you very much to Eszter Szatmári for this great composition about Jack the bear, a bridge in the mountains and some troublesome ‘fur-stealers’. She wrote this in response to the Blob on the Bridge activity. And thank you to teacher Kati Elekes for sending it my way.

Jack was wandering at his favourite place in the mountain range of Sierra Nevada, California. He was heading towards the bridge – that huge, oddly smelling thing. There was something fascinating about it that he couldn’t quite put his finger (paws) on. It was such an amazing masterpiece of architecture that made even him admit that those noisy fur-stealers, as he always called humans, were actually good at something.

When he got to the bridge he took a deep breath, letting the odd scent of the place get to his lungs, his head and every part of his body. That scent! Oh, he loved it! The smell of the woods, the river and the bridge itself mixed in the air calmed him down even on his worst days and he felt like he couldn’t get enough of it.

He wandered on with his eyes half closed, sometimes taking a quick look at the alley under the bridge and he couldn’t help but smile and thought: ‘Yes, I love life.’

As he got to the middle of the bridge with this tiny but strong thought in his head he heard something. Something was buzzing but he didn’t care enough to open his eyes. A few minutes passed and the buzzing started to get stronger and stronger – it was so disturbing after a while that he couldn’t enjoy his Sunday afternoon walk.

He opened his eyes.

Something was coming towards him. It was quite fast and it didn’t seem to slow down. He had never seen anything like that before but as an eternal optimist he thought he could just wait for it to slow down and then they might get to know each other.

That never happened. Whatever it was it didn’t stop and it almost crashed into him but luckily Jack was able jump out of its way and he landed on the ledge of the bridge. He was so shocked by whatever it was that he lost his balance and fell off the ledge.

For a second he thought he would die but suddenly an inner, instinctive self of him took over his muscles and made him catch the ledge with his paws. After a few minutes of hanging there he finally managed pull himself up so he was safe.

For now, he added in his thoughts.

Jack watched as the Sun went down and once again let the scent of the bridge embrace him. It made his shock pass and he fell asleep with a smile on his face (chops).

What Jack couldn’t know was that his next day would be very busy.

A bunch of noisy fur-stealers came as soon as they heard what had happened to Jack. They seemed to be quite concerned about him so they decided to help him. However, they knew that Jack was afraid of a single ‘whatever it was’ so they didn’t want him to see all those machines that they brought in order to get him off the bridge.

So on the very next day when Jack was just about to open his eyes and get up (and figure his way down) something really strange happened. He was just stretching when he felt something itchy in his back. He wanted to turn and see what it was but suddenly he felt tired again and fell asleep.

The noisy fur-stealers waited exactly for that. They put a huge net under the bridge and tried to push Jack into it with a pole. It took them some time but in the end he landed in the net completely safe and sound.

The next thing he knew was that about ten noisy fur-stealers were standing around him, all watching him carefully and glancing at each other with suspicious smiles on their faces. They probably thought he wouldn’t notice it but no one can fool a bear!

He stretched again and as he stood up and was about to leave the noisy fur-stealers leaned back while one of them gently showed him the way back to the woods. And as Jack was a very polite bear he gave the noisy fur-stealer a smile and nodded in a friendly manner.

A week later he went down to the bridge to have his usual Sunday walk and tried to remember the happenings of last Sunday. He smiled as he took a deep breath of the cool, oddly smelling air. Maybe those noisy fur-stealers aren’t so bad after all, he thought to himself. They gave him the bridge and they managed to take him down as well. He murmured something and nodded – that case was officially closed.

He then wandered on, humming his favourite song.