Little Red Hoodie Jacket

 Once in a time, there was a little girl who lived in the second growth Douglas fir and Alder forest of the PNW with her mother, Dolores.  I believe the girl's name was Linda, which is a rather old-fashioned name for these days.  The house had been a summer cabin long ago, when people had such things.  It was pretty basic.  Just a wee house in the woods.

Through a little patch of forest and down the side road, lived Linda's grandmother, who was getting a bit frail, as these things go.  She was also a mad gardener and the place was covered in rose bushes and herb beds. As it happens, grandmother was baking today and didn't want to have to run into town to buy eggs and sugar.  So she called her daughter to ask for the items, if she had some in the house.

Mom said sure and called Linda, who was getting to be a big girl of 8  years old.  She took a Safeway bag and put in it a carton of eggs and a Tupperware container of sugar.  She said, "now Linda, I want you to zip through the forest and down the block and take these to your grandmother right now".

So Linda got her little red hoodie off the hook by the door.  She grabbed the Safeway bag and off she went, taking the familiar path through the little section of forest.  Now the sun was very warm and Linda was a kid who fooled around when she was on an errand.  This is how she came to be sleeping in the warm light between the trees on a little patch of grass.  She had sat down for a moment to look at some bugs. Soon her eyelids drooped.        

                                          

When she opened her eyes it was quite a bit later.  Two big hairy brown bare feet stood on the grass before her! There was a terrible stink like an old Tom cat's spray. Two big hairy brown arms reached down for her!  They grabbed her up into the air!  Just like in a terrible dream!  Great big brown eyes looked right at Linda!

Linda wriggled out of her red hoodie, dropped to the ground, grabbed the Safeway bag and lit out running through secret kid-sized burrows in the undergrowth.  She ran as if her heart would burst for her grandmother's house.       

When she got there her red hoodie had been placed carefully over a rose bush in the yard and she was late and no one would ever believe a bit of a story of the big brown hairy feet and the big brown hairy hands that had picked her up!  There was no way the red hoodie could be there, and yet it was. No one seemed to be about. Linda glanced around cautiously.

So Linda put on her red hoodie and knocked on the door to her grandmother's house and went in and they made cookies and Linda never said a word about who went there!

This is where they made the cookies!