Burst of Adrenaline (a guest post by Heather Borden)

As I nervously climbed over the cracking dead log, Dad looked through the binoculars and stared death in the eye. Only twenty feet away was an enormous hippopotamus, staring right at us from the shallow pond. Because hippos kill more people annually than any other African animal, we were certainly frightened. Slowly and timidly, the six of us scrambled over the fallen tree, one by one, to catch a glimpse of those threatening pupils.



Crawling carefully back out of the hippo's view, I suddenly heard splashing water and crashing bushes behind me. Turning around I saw Colin, Dad and Trevor panicking to rush out of there. When realizing what was happening, I dashed through the trees, sprinting for my life! The bunch of us fled in seconds. My heart pounded and my lips spoke prayers that we would come out alive.

Finally, at a safe distance away, we came to a stop. With stunned, pale faces we looked into each other's eyes with astonishment to find that we weren't dead. The hippo hadn't trompled us! In fact, it hadn't even chased us. Instead, it was merely swimming away from us. Beginning to giggle at ourselves, the adrenalin in our bloodstreams faded back to normal.