© Claudia J. Schulze

Herstellung und Verlag: BOD- Books-on Demand GmbH, Norderstedt

ISBN: 9783744826655

Tanner was almost 10 years old. He had brown hair and blue eyes.

Actually, he was like most kids at his age except perhaps that he always seemed to be surrounded by animals.

It had started almost as soon as he could walk. Beginning at a very early age, he was always in the forest watching the animals. Not even the shy animals, like the deer, ran away when Tanner appeared.

Sometimes they stood right in front of him and looked at him calmly.

They were beautiful and so majestic that they almost took Tanner’s breath away.

These moments were very special to him.

Although they were so powerful with their antlers and hooves, Tanner never ever felt threatened by them. When he looked into the deers’ dark eyes he felt protected - as if no one could possibly harm him. In the forest Tanner felt the safest.

He loved everything that he could see and experience there.

It wasn’t only what he could see, however.

You could take in the forest with all of the senses. It could be smelled, heard, felt and even tasted.

The forest was transformed into something new as the seasons changed. Tanner found this exciting as well. There was nothing in the forest that didn’t excite him. In the forest there was nothing that could not have possibly happened. The entire forest with all of its animals appeared to him as one great miracle composed of many small ones - whether it was Roy, the tame rabbit, with the short ears, or Horst, the curious boar. Life was everywhere. Especially in the summer, everything there shimmered, sparkled and rustled through the trees in the most miraculous way.

When the boar raced through the underbrush they make quite a rumble, but the deer could hardly be heard.

All of the variety and all of the nuances that he found contained in the small realm of his beloved forest fascinated him. Most of all, he had literally lived in that forest.

Indeed if it weren’t for his mother, he would have lived in the forest.

At one time he had a sister and a father, but they were no longer there.

Tanner hardly spoke about it, but the fact was that he was the only one left for his mother now. Therefore Tanner had abandoned his plan to live in the woods. Actually it was much more pleasant to live in a house - especially at night and during the winter.

Of course he couldn’t imagine life without his mother, and he also had a cat that lived exclusively in the house.

Tanner would have to do without his cat, too, if he chose to live in the forest, so he stayed home instead. And so he had just stayed home. But that took none of the forest‘s magic.

He loved how the squirrels jumped from tree to tree. He wished that he could do that. They appeared to fly as the color of their fur warmed the forest for a brief moment. While hiding their nuts for the winter they paid no attention to whether or not Tanner was actually watching them.

They must have known that they could trust him. Tanner would never have done anything to harm an animal in the forest. It would have been unthinkable.

Such a thing was unthinkable. He couldn’t even begin to say what he liked most in the woods, for there were so many things. He liked the otters and he admired the elegance of the owls as they glided silently through the night sky.

There was an owl named Gerda. Tanner could have sworn that she made her evening flights around his house especially artful because she secretly knew that Tanner was watching.

He watched every night. Tanner was lucky to live so close to the forest that he could watch some of the animals from his window.

Nothing calmed him better after a hard day than his evening hours spent by the window.

Sometimes they came up very close to his house and slept near him.

Not many children could say that.

After a difficult day nothing would calm him better down than his nocturnal hours at the window when he looked at the animals.