Treasures in the Garden

A Story by Derek Thiem

A story for my daughter and my mom.

Little Silvia was laying on the bed next to her mama Lucia. “Vamos a tomar una siesta” she said, it was time for a nap. But little Silvia wasn’t sleepy. She wanted to go explore her favorite place--out in the yard around their house. Their home was in the countryside near Buenos Aires in Argentina.

She closed her eyes and pretended to be asleep, leaving one eye just a teeny bit open so she could see her mama. She watched her mama’s eyes close and listened to her breathing, waiting until it was steady and easy. When she knew her mama had been asleep for a few minutes she carefully slid out of the bed and tip-toed outside.

“Hi Obstinada!” she said to her pet goat, who was named Obstinada because she was so stubborn. Little Silvia said that’s why they got along so well with each other. She petted Obstinada on the long fur that hung from her chin. “Don’t worry, we’ll find you some good stuff to eat,” she said, and Obstinada softly nudged her with her forehead. “Let’s go dig!” she said.

Little Silvia turned up handfulls of dirt while Obstinada munched on the grass happily. “Let’s see what’s underneath” said Silvia. The first thing that came up were two earthworms. They were long and pink, soft and a little squishy. “Worms are good for the earth and the earth is good for worms,” Silvia explained to her goat. “I’ll put them near our tomatoes so they can help them grow. I love tomatoes!

She put them in the ground near the tomatoes, then inspected the tomato plants. There were quite a few caterpillars climbing on the tomato plants. “Yay!” Silvia said to Obstinada. “We’re going to have lots of pretty butterflies when these guys grow up Obstinada. We just don’t want them to eat all of the tomatoes. So we are going to move some of them over to the squash leaves, since those are so big. We’ll leave two caterpillars on the tomatoes, but we’ll give them special instructions that they can only eat the leaves, not the flowers or fruit.” Silvia talked to the caterpillars and explained to them very carefully what they could and could not do.

Little Silvia dug up some grass. “Look Obstinada,” she said, “you can eat the roots right here. They’ll be good for you.” And while Obstinada munched on the roots, Silvia played with two potato bugs she found under the grass. She watched them walk along her hand. They had grey bodies and many many legs. Silvia couldn’t even count them all. She touched their backs and they would roll up into little balls to protect themselves, then slowly unroll and start walking again. After she watched them roll and stretch out a few times she let them go back under the ground. “Go do what you need to do for the potatoes little potato bugs” she told them. “I’m going out to the tall grass to look for treasure Obstinada” Silvia told the goat. “Baaa” said Obstinada, busy munching up grass and roots.

There were two kinds of treasure Silvia was hunting for in the tall grass. The first was kind of like an Easter egg hunt. Silvia’s family had some chickens who had escaped the coop and now lived wild out in the tall grass. Sometimes Silvia could find their nests and get an egg or two from them. The other thing she looked for was dandelions. She liked them for the pretty yellow flowers they had, but also for the greens. When she went out and picked them her mom could mix them with egg and flour and make fresh dandelion fritters from them. They were one of Silvia’s favorite treats.

Silvia found a couple of eggs and a couple of dandelions that weren’t too big or too small. She was ready to go inside and show mama Lucia what she had found, but Obstinada was still busy munching on something. “What’d you find, Obstinada?” Silvia asked, and she saw Obstinada had found a long running root, like that of a a blackberry. She followed the root until it ran into something hard. Obstinada was trying to eat around it. It wasn’t a rock, but it kind of looked like one. Silvia helped Obstinada dig around it. It wasn’t a tool, but it kind of looked like a long handle. Finally, Silvia and Obstinada got the whole thing dug out and pulled it from the ground. It was a bone. A very large bone.

She came inside and woke up her mom, shaking her and yelling “Mama! Mama! Come see what we found!” Mama Lucia was not particularly pleased to be awoken this way, and didn’t think anything her daughter could have found outside would be worth this much commotion. But when Silvia held up the bone, Mama Lucia’s jaw dropped. “We need to call your Tia. She’ll know what to do” she said.

Two days later there was a whole team of scientists in the field near their house. Little Silvia had found part of a dinosaur fossil. And not just any fossil, but a new kind of dinosaur, which they decided to call “Argentinosaurus”. The model of the first one they put up in the big museum in Buenos Aires would affectionately become known as “Silviasaurus”, all thanks to the curiosity and hunger of Little Silvia and her hungry goat Obstinada.