Too Small
When I was little, I wanted to be a Titchie at Rethy Academy, a boarding school for missionary kids in the Belgian Congo. The school was at Rethy, the same place we lived when my mom and dad first went to Africa to be missionaries. My mom and dad worked at the hospital to learn more about the weird diseases that exist in Africa. Since the school was a long ways away, on top of the next hill more than a mile away, I had to stay at home.
At a boarding school you get to go away from home to live with the other kids all the time. You get to eat there too. You even get to sleep there. You don't have to come home at night. I think you have to go to school, but you don't have to ask your mom for permission to go to the dorm to play.
My mom later told me that I was so eager to go that I even packed my cardboard suitcase and told her that I was all ready.
She said, "I don't think so. You are just five years old and too small to go away from home."
I wasn't so small. I was big enough to go hunting for birds with my bow and arrow. I had a special arrow. On the four-pointed tip of the arrow there was sticky gray stuff from the sap of the big old rubber tree behind the hospital. My little friend told me it was the very best arrow for shooting birds. The man who made it for me wrapped the split head with sisal string covered with sticky, cooked sap from that tree to make it strong and four times as good at getting birds. It would stick to the bird, and I might even get a pet bird. I might hit a bird in the tail making it unable to fly away carrying that heavy arrow. It would grow new tail feathers and be my very own pet.
I don't think I ever did hit a bird, but I did lots of sneaking around, half crouched, my arrow ready on the string of my little bow. Black and white birds, called Wagtails, would keep running ahead of me then fly a little way, land, and bob their tails up and down. I don't think my mom would be happy to know that I was hunting Wagtails. She said, "They are such friendly birds. Don't bother them." Because they were the easiest ones to sneak up on, I spent hours trying to shoot one. My arrow lost all its stickiness since it hit the dirt so often, but I didn't lose it for a long time. I never did get a Wagtail that I can remember.
I do remember that I was able to find chameleons. I would look for a long time on the hedge that had the fuzzy leaves, the tiny bunches of colored flowers, and the little clumps of green berries. The green berries would grow as big as BBs and eventually turn black. Some of the kids ate them, but I didn't. When the berries were black, I think the chameleons found more insects on those Lantana hedges. Chameleons were hard to find since they would stay completely still and make themselves the same shade of green as the hedge. The patterns on their backs and the patterns made by the twigs and leaves looked just the same. The hedge was the best place to look for chameleons.
I would stand very still for a long time, and sometimes a chameleon would move; then I would finally see him. They have skinny legs and feet sort of like mittens with no separate toes. The tiny claws, two on one side and three on the other side, help them clamp onto the branch they are climbing. Chameleons move the front foot on one side and the back foot on the other side at the same time, little by little, until each foot reaches the new place on which to hold. They feel around with their foot for the best spot and don't even look. Then, they move the other two feet.
When chameleons sneak up on a fly, their tails stick out straight behind them, not touching anything. They advance bit by bit, maybe when they think the fly isn't looking. Their eyes bulge way out on both sides of their head. Wrinkly skin covers the entire eye except the tiny hole in the center where they can see. Their eyes roll around and around to look in front, in back, sideways, and up and down. Each one goes a different way, until they are ready to catch a fly.
The chameleon I had been watching stopped. Both eyes checked all around again, but then they came together, almost cross-eyed, both focusing directly on a small fly. The layered skin under the chameleon's chin started bulging out bigger and bigger. His mouth turned up almost like a smile opening just a little crack.