HOPE

PART ONE

This story was told to me a long time ago, by a very good source. Still, after all these years, I find it very hard to believe that not too many people have ever heard about it!

It all started about one hundred and forty one years ago and it was about three hundred miles north of Montreal, Canada. The date was August 4^th, and in case you didn’t know, it never gets too warm up there, but now it was turning cold, very cold.

You see, Mother Nature, in a lot of cases, will have animals wait until warmer weather to have their offspring so they might have an easier time of growing up.

Hope was a fawn born to Hazel and Emmett Pricket. She is exactly eighty-eight days old.

The proud parents marveled at how smart she was at such a young age. She had a knack for learning, and she only had to see things once before learning how do them, like running and jumping and even knowing which vine berries were the sweetest.

But the most important lesson she ever learned was about wolves. Her father, Emmett, told her how cunning they were. He told her once, "If you see one, you can bet there are many more you don’t see.

"Wolves hunt and live in packs like we live in herds, and they encircle their victims and try to confuse them," Emmett said.

Hope listened carefully to her father and he believed that she understood.

Hazel, Hope’s mother, was a beautiful doe with a light brown coat with highlights of orange, red and gold throughout. She was also very gentle and loving and had taught Hope how to ward off an enemy by kicking them with her back legs.