I Think There’s a Panda in My Back Garden

“I think there’s a panda in my back garden,” I said to Mummy yesterday when I found bamboo on the grass.

“I think there’s a panda in my back garden,” I said again, because bamboo definitely does not grow here on our farm. We have grass, and one football permanently stuck in the hedge…but no bamboo!

On the way to school that morning I saw something strange.

There was a poster stuck to a tree. It said:

BEWARE – PANDA ON THE LOOSE.

I stared at it for a long time.

“I think there’s a panda in my back garden,” I said quietly.

But nobody else seemed worried.

When I got home from school and we were having tea, something strange happened.

I heard a loud CRUNCH outside.

Then another CRUNCH, CRUNCH.

I looked out of the window but couldn’t see anything, just a few bamboo sticks on the grass.

I think there’s a panda in my back garden,” I said.

Mummy said it was probably the wind.

But the wind doesn’t eat bamboo.

“I think there’s a panda in my back garden,” I whispered later that night when I heard CRUNCH, CRUNCH, CRUNCH outside of my window.

So I peeked out.

And there it was…

A panda sitting in the middle of my garden eating bamboo like it owned the place.

“I think there’s a panda in my back garden,” I said quietly… but something was different.

This panda wasn’t black and white. It was GOLD.

Its fur shimmered in the moonlight like treasure. It looked exactly like the panda on the gold panda coins my bampi once showed me in a book.

“I think there’s a panda in my back garden,” I said as it dropped something shiny on the grass. The panda bowed politely (which I think is very good manners in China), finished its bamboo, and rolled quietly away. In the morning the panda was gone.

But the bamboo was still there.

And the gold coin.

I picked it up.

A beautiful gold coin with a panda on it glowing like a tiny sun.

“I think there’s a panda in my back garden,” I told Mummy.

And this time…

I know I’m right.

Braxton Kelsey, 7.