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Survival of The Fittest 2
Survival of The Fittest 2
It was the last day of 5th grade for me and the last day of 4th grade
for Jenny, my sister. Our final school day was a half day. After school,
we would be heading home to begin packing for our summer trip to an island
My sister has never been a fan of being late. She has brown hair and
blue eyes. Although we have the same color hair and eyes, we do not share
the same attitude toward being late. Honestly, I could care less if I am
late to anything.
The only thing that got me through the last three and days of school
was the thought of getting away from home and sitting on an exotic, white,
When the final school bell of the final class rang, my mom took my
sister and I to buy us new suit cases. After an hour of looking at suit
cases, my mom was getting annoyed with me and I ended up getting a navy
blue and black one, though I later regretted that decision because there
was a royal blue and red one I really wanted that was too expensive. My
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sister, of course, got a pink and purple one. Pink and purple are her
My dad told us not to get him another suit case because there was
nothing wrong with the ones we had and that he would just used one of
those. He never buys new suit cases for himself and hates when my mom buys
anything new. He thinks it's stupid to spend money on things that you
don't really need. Though I agree with him, I pick a suit case anyway
because if I didn't, my mom would have told my sister to pick one out for
and purple girl bag. I don't want my "man" clothes having the essence of a
tried my best to fall asleep since the flight was at 2:00 in the morning.
But I just couldn't fall asleep, I was way too excited. I was so excited
that I decided to do something that would kill some time. The funny thing
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and get ready so the taxi cab that was coming to pick us up wouldn't have
to wait.
bags of snacks, and some water bottles. Little did I know these items
would save my life in a couple of days. When I was ready to hobble my half
asleep self down the stairs, I slipped on my vans, which were torn and
late night talk shows that make you want to jump out of the nearest window
was on. I never really liked those shows. As an eleven year old boy I
don't really care about Kim Kardashian's latest hair style. I didn't watch
long. I shut the T.V. off because the show annoyed me.
Right after that, the worst part of waiting to drive to the airport
set in. It was that 45 minutes of anticipation before you get into the
taxi. You see, this is the time frame in between when you're ready to go
and the taxi is scheduled to show up. It's that time when you're sitting
down waiting and watching your mom going back up and down the stairs to
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grab that "one last thing" she forgot and then coming back down with
basically everything else she owns except that one last thing, which she
then goes back upstairs to get. The "one last thing" for this trip was her
phone charger.
Finally, after her 15th try, she came back with the charger cord.
But this "one last thing" ordeal was far from over. She had to run back
upstairs fifteen more times to get the little plug-y in-y thingy for the
wall outlet.
We finally loaded our things and ourselves into the taxi and drove to
the airport. After we got to the airport and checked in, we experienced
that other 45 minute period of anticipation, which is the most evil of them
all. You're at the airport sitting and waiting for your flight at your
gate for 15 to 20 minutes when you think, "Hey, I'm kind of hungry." But
you then realize that you waited too long and, guess what, you don't have
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"Would the ruby emerald diamond all inclusive members please board
"Would all of the sapphire gold one world alliance members please
Eventually she got to zone 4ZZZZZ, which was our zone. We boarded
the plane and took our seats in the back by the bathrooms. Needless to
My mom barley even knows how to turn on a computer and neither does
we would settle in for three or four hours and then maybe explore the area
around our hotel. We heard that Costa Rica has a lot of good fishing
spots, so we went to the front desk and asked if they knew anything about
that.
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"I was wondering if you know of any fishing trips in the area," my
dad replied.
"Yes, there are a couple of pamphlets on the front of the desk to the
pamphlets.
person boat that left at 7:30 a.m. then next morning. My dad had packed
the spray bottle in his luggage and woke me up with it once again.
"Alright, I'm getting up. Please stop spraying me," I said. "I'll
I got up, got dressed, and grabbed my carry on. Grabbing my carry on
would be one of the very acts that would eventually save my life.
My whole family went fishing. The first fishing spot was fun, but
the second one was really bad. The Captain told us to reel in our lines at
the first spot and then motored off toward the second spot. He told us the
second spot we were headed to was brand new to the boat and that we were
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going to be the first group to fish there. He said "This should be good
too because it is out in the middle of nowhere and that is especially good
because other boats rarely pass through those waters so the fish shouldn't
be scared away." Just as the Captain was finishing, we heard a very loud
everything was fine. Just after that announcement, our boat split in half.
Half of the boat sank to the bottom of a trench like drop off. The
other half rested safely on top of a shallow reef. We figured out that the
reason the boat had split was that it had been scraping against the bottom
of the reef. The scraping withered down the middle of the boat's bottom to
just a thin piece of metal. Then, when the other half didn't have the reef
When it broke off, it flooded very fast since the sides were no
longer there. I looked around. I was reassured when I saw my mom, my dad,
and my sister alive. My sister and my mom weren't really much help though.
They were both breaking down. They were alternating between crying, and
enough to pull herself together. But my sister, that was another story.
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She pretty much just cried and screamed hysterically throughout the whole
ordeal.
the Captain's the radio and most of the bait were on the side of the boat
make-shift side for our side of the boat, which was the half resting on the
reef.
from the south. We knew the storm would blow us off the reef to the same
watery death that the other half of the boat suffered. The good thing
about this was we had the life jackets on our side in the downstairs level
of the boat. We also realized the downstairs level had floor boards. We
figured we could pull them up to make our wall. Since we would be here a
while, my dad decided to just kind of elect himself the leader of our
Two guys, Jason and Dan, were supposed to rip up the floor boards and
put them in a pile. Two other guys, James and Ethan, were supposed to find
a hammer and take the nails out of the boards and put the nails in one of
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Some kid named Jack and I were supposed to look for food, water, and
supplies in general, but food and water mainly. We took two of the unused
fishing bags to put whatever we found in. I remembered my carry on and that
I had stocked it with some food and water for the flight, which I didn't
Jack and I took the food and water from my carry on first and then
went to the downstairs part where there was a little food place. We split
up and looked. I searched for drinks and the cups, and Jack searched for
food.
putting cups on the tables and filling them with water. When the water ran
out, I would start filling the cups with ice, which would eventually melt
into water. When the ice ran out, I would resort to the bottles of Doctor
Pepper and other soda I had found. I told Jack my plan and that planned to
so.
look for food. We found some Baked Lay's potato chips, some Doritos, some
Skittles, some M&M'S, some Chex Mix, some Goldfish, some Twix, and a bunch
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more stuff. It seemed like we were set for a pretty long time. The next
order of business was see if we could catch any fish. We couldn't ration
Since we had more important things to do then sit and fish for nine
hours, we put a one hour limit on the fishing idea with the understanding
If the two hours were successful then we would make it three. But three
hours was the max time we were giving it, no more than three hours.
Turns out we caught one hundred fish within those three hours. We
had a lot of fish. In fact, a lot of the fish went to the bait bucket to
the boat and waited out the storm. The storm wasn't actually that bad. It
just rained a little bit and there was some thunder. It wasn't exactly
what you would call a class five hurricane. The details of the storm
didn't really matter though. The important thing was that our little half
boat survived.
We needed to get the boat, or what was left of it, to land. We could
saw a little piece of land that was about six miles away. So we put life
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jackets on the bottom of the boat, found some emergency paddles, and did
some final maintenance checks on the boat. We pushed the boat off from the
reef into the deep water once my dad determined it was, under the
circumstances, "okay."
The boat began to take on water about two minutes into our journey.
It didn't really matter though. We had extra bait buckets which the other
people used bail out the water. We made all the way to the island in about
thirty minutes. It shocked all of us because, when you think about it, how
does half of a boat that is taking on water, which weighs it down, that is
paddling its way across a six mile stretch of ocean make it to its
thankful we were at the island and not at the bottom of the ocean. The
first thing we needed to do was get a head count, which we probably should
have done when we started to ration out food. so my dad told everybody to
line up shoulder to shoulder. Then he asked each person to tell him their
name. He also asked if they could tell him any specific skills they had.
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There were ten people lined up. We already knew all of them except
one. We knew the other nine because they had helped us when the boat first
broke in half. Dan and Jason ripped up the boards. James and Ethan took
nails out of the boards. and then there was me, my mom, my sister, my dad,
But there was also one other guy who was really old. He said his
name was Charles and he was 96. This whole thing was getting way to hard.
Now we had a 96 year old man to take care of. You have to give him his
Also, I'm pretty sure a 96 year old man probably has the immune
be it. My dad called everyone, except Charles, into a huddle. Charles was
"We are going to have to assign someone to watch this here old
feller."
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While Jack and I were having the time of our lives babysitting
Charles, all the other available men were helping build a shelter that
would be big enough for ten people. Jack and I knew this was going to take
pretty unproductive, so we each took turns doing something. Jack would stay
with Charles, while l would make a rain catch. Then I would trade places
with Jack and he would gather branches and leaves for our camp fire.
was sure a signal fire could end this experience for all of us. Though,
when I stopped to think about it, aside from my mom and my sister, who were
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hysterical when our ordeal began, I had not seen anyone frown or complain
Jack returned from gathering branches and leaves. It was time for me
to build a signal fire. I collected some oily kelp that has washed up on
shore and been dried out by the sun and some weird type of clam that looked
oily and I put them all in a pile. I then took some of the branches and
leaves that Jack has collected and put them in the pile too.
But I needed a large signal fire. So I found some decent sized dead
trees that had fallen over and pullled them to the pile. I arranged them
like I was building a tepee. I used a fire starting method I had seen on
the Survivor Man T.V. show. To my amazement, it worked. Once the signal
fire was roaring, I went back to where Jack and Charles were to relieve
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Then, while I was admiring the signal fire, out of nowhere a bear
attacked me. I didn't see or hear the bear coming. It knocked me to the
ground with its paw. The next thing I knew, Jack came running out of the
forest with a pointy stick. He threw it at the bear's leg. The bear
"Ahhhhh!" I screamed.
"Where did that bear come from?" I asked. "Can you believe that?"
numbers.
When the others got back from collecting materials to build our camp,
Dan volunteered to watch Charles for a while. It was a good change for all
of us. Dan wanted to rest and Jack and I wanted to do something productive
to feel like a part of the group. Gathering fire wood and building signal
four person hut and two three person huts. My family would stay together
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in one hut and the six other people would divide in half and stay in the
It took us about an hour to build the two three person huts and
building our huts, we decided to have a snack. We each had a Twix and a
bottle of water. We talked and just generally lounged around for about
After the break, it was about 6:00 p.m. from what we could tell. We
had another bottle of water and a bag of potato chips to rehydrate and
replenish our salt levels. We had been sweating so much during the say.
Once we finished, we hit the hay. Little did we know, it was crucial we
went to bed early tonight so we could wake up early the next morning.
We all woke up at about the same time. From what we could tell, it
was 6:30 or 7:30 in the morning. The sun was up, but something seemed
weird. The birds weren't chirping. The tropical birds chirped all the
time. Jenny then heard a plane. She looked up and the next thing we
heard was Jenny screaming "Plane!" at the top of her lungs. We looked at
her. She was pointing towards the sky. We all looked up. We saw a big
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could over to my signal fire. It has gone out. I began trying to relight
it with the same technique I use before. It worked! I got the signal fire
going. But I didn't think about the possibility that the smoke would block
the pilots vision or that the ash from the fire would rise and get into the
plane's engines. We watched the plane hit the water. The ash had sparked
a fire in the plane's engine and killed the plane's thrust. We all watched
in horror.
"All those poor people," I stuttered. "I brought down that plane."
I felt so guilty. I couldn't stand it. But every survival show I've
acted cheerful on the outside and told some of my world class knock knock
let this one take its course. I felt horrible inside, but I tried not to
let it show.
We all thought about the plane, which made us realize that we might
be here a while. So we all started to make our huts a little nicer and
better. Jack and I helped each other create our own rooms in our huts so
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we could each have some privacy. We helped the others too. We put more
sticks and branches on the top all the huts so they would be a little more
protected. We also gathered leaves and put them on the floor and used them
as a bed. There wasn't really much else we could do, so we all decided to
just sit in our huts and relax to stay out of the sun.
When I woke up in the middle of the night. Everybody else was still
sleeping. I grabbed a fishing pole to see if I could catch any fish for
I fished for a while, maybe two hours. I got a bite, but it got
took my bait. I quit fishing because I didn't want to waste anymore bait.
I ended up just going back to sleep because I was tired and board, and I
heard the adults talking about something, but I was in the place between
being asleep and being awake so I didn't really care or listen. I figured
they were just talking about banks, money, schools, bake sales, or whatever
else adults talk, about I don't know. I'm a kid. I wouldn't expect to
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know about what grownups talk about and I'm not interested in those
I stayed in bed for about ten minutes so I could get adjusted to the
light. I didn't want to step straight out into the sunlight and burn my
retinas. After my eye adjusted, I stepped out of the hut and asked my mom
Well, we don't know just yet, but we think we are going to fish all
I grabbed the fishing pole I used the last night, I sat down and I
casted off. I felt a bite and hopped it didn't turn out like last night.
Not only did I hook it, but it was a massive fish. It looked like it could
weight 100 pound or more. I wanted to show my mom, but there were two
problems. First, I can't lift 100 pounds. Second, my mom was talking.
I reeled the fish in, tied it to some line and attached the line to a
nearby tree so the fish would be able to get away. I then kept fishing,
but I didn't catch anything else. It didn't matter though. The fish I did
catch looked like it could feed all of us until we got rescued. I saw my
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"Look at this big fish I caught, it looks like it could last us until
we get rescued."
Just then, a rescue boat pulled up to the island. Before the plane
went down, it radioed for help. So when the Costa Rican Coast Guard came,
they went to the island because they thought they might find some survivors
there. They thought we were passengers from the plane. We told them we
weren't. They looked puzzled, but we just told them to sit down. We would
explain it all over a fish diner. They ate with us. After the diner we all
would board the boat and leave the awful island. I vowed to never step
THE END
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