Bug Juice

Last summer my parents sent me to camp and I went with my best friend. After we got settled in, we decided to go for a walk in the woods to explore. We saw a lake with a dock that we could go swimming in and the cabins that the other campers would be sleeping in. These cabins had six sets of bunk beds so twelve people could sleep in one cabin. During our exploration of the camp, we somehow got in some poision ivy. That night both of us were scratching like mad. It wasn't going to be a fun two weeks unless we did something. We decided to go visit the camp doctor. Now this doctor wasn't like any other doctor that we had seen before. His cabin was filled with jars of strange colored liquid. These jars of colored liquid smelled funky too. We almost turned back but the itching was just too much. 

We told the doctor our problems. He told us that he had just the thing to cure us. He went to his shelf and looked around. He pulled out several jars and looked at them. These jars were filled with the stinky liquid and they were all different colors. They were red, blue, orange, pink, and many other colors under the rainbow. He told us that he must be out of the ingredients that he needed to make our remedy. If we wanted to be cured, then we would have to go and get the things he needed. 

He wrote out a list and told us not to come back without all of them. The cure wouldn't work if it didn't have all of the ingredients. We took the list and started on our way. When we got outside, we looked closer at the list. We read it twice and still couldn't beleive what was on it. 

                             1. Two Jumbo earth worms

                             2. Three large black beetles

                             3. One green grasshopper

                             4. Three black crickets

We couldn't take a chance on not getting a cure. So, we decided that we would get everything regardless of how crazy it sounded. We went into the woods and found the beetles right away. They were around a tall, old tree that had been eaten away by termites. Too bad we didn't need termites because the tree was full of them. We borrowed a shovel from the tool shed and went digging for worms. We found a lot of small worms, but the jumbo ones were hard to find. Now all we had left were the crickets and the grasshopper. We heard some crickets chirping down by the pond, so we headed in that direction. It didn't take long to find the crickets. Catching them was another story. It took a whole hour. The grasshopper was a little easier. We caught him up by our cabin hiding in the weeds. 

We gathered up all of the bugs and hurried bac to the doctor. We had to wake him up since it was only three o'clock in the morning. He didn't seem too pleased, but he remembered what he told us. He went into his back room. We heard a lot of muttering and a couple of jars crashed to the floor. After about a half hour he came back into the main room. He was holding a quart size jar in each hand. He told us to drin every drop or the medicine wouldn't work. He had a strange smile on his face. The itching was getting worse, so we really didn't see where we had any choice. We took the jars and smelled the green liquid. It smelled terrible. We held our noses and gulped down the stuff. It had a slimy feel as it went down out throats. 

The doctor told us to give the stuff time to work. It would take about thirty minutes then the itching should stop. Hopefully there wouldn't be any side effects. We left his office wondering what he meant by his last words. We finally got to bed and slept for about two hours before the wake-up call. We compared our poison ivy with each other. Neither one of us had anymore red bumps and the itching was gone!!

I didn't really notice anything strange until I got home from camp. I went to my ball game on my second night home. It was dark when I left but I could see just fine. There was a strange green glow that was coming from my body that was lighting my way. I am not too worried about it because it goes away in the daytime. I can go anywhere in the dark and I don't even have to take a flashlight!