Everyone has a favorite animal, but have you ever thought, what makes an animal an animal? Well the animal kingdom consists of many different kinds of groups, such as: mammals (like bears and cows), reptiles (like snakes and turtles), birds (like robins and eagles), amphibians (like frogs and salamanders), fish (like sharks and tuna), insects (like ants and bees), mollusks (like squid and mussels), crustaceans (like crabs and shrimp), arachnids (like scorpions and spiders), and more. You may have heard of a food chain, which is very essential to all living things (animals, plants, bacteria, fungi, and protists). It starts with plants, and next herbivores (plant-eaters) eat the plants, and then carnivores eat the herbivores, and more carnivores eat the other carnivores and so on (this can happen anywhere such as forests, the sea, etc.). There are many (maybe millions) of species of animalia (the scientific name of animal), from german shepherds to emperor scorpions and even to the grass cutter ant, but what makes an animal is, any living organism that actively acquires food, with a well defined shape and has a limited lifetime.

The Fires of Buckingham

One day, I was visiting London. When I was strolling along Baker Street, I bumped into Sherlock Holmes! The real Sherlock Holmes! The detective that solved every case that he had a taste of. Many people call him a maniac, or a psychopath. But he calls himself a high functioning socialpath. I tried not to freak out, and what came out was a stuttering “You’re Sherlock Holmes!”

“Yes,” he replied. “Do you have a problem with that?”

I somehow had talked my way into joining him on a case, a truly farfetched case (not very farfetched for him, though). There’s this person who keeps saying eat. Just eat, eat, and more eats. It was confusing to me, and even Sherlock was stumped. After a couple long, hard days, I asked him, “Can it be an acronym?”. He stared at the sky and slapped himself in the face. We searched “E.A.T.” on the computer and found out it stands for Electronic Advanced Technology. We interrogated the person and found out that he just wanted an E.A.T. computer. “What a bluff.” said Holmes as he sat down on an oakwood chair to wipe some sweat off his face. “Let’s go out for some fish and chips.”

As I closed the 221b door, I saw a man.

“It’s a criminal!” yelled Sherlock. “Get him!” We chased him across a bridge to the Big Ben and by the London Eye. We finally cornered him in a room of the Buckingham Palace.

“I want to go to eat.” he said.

“Eat?” I said confused.

“No,” said Sherlock. “E.A.T! The acronym.”

“5 minutes until detonation,” said the criminal, smiling.

“He’s using E.A.T. to explode this place!” Sherlock yelled. “Let’s go!”

Two of this criminal’s helpers then started to chase us. We ran into a room caught on fire. I jumped over some fire and out of the room. Sherlock took out a squirt gun, shot some water into the fire, and that room burst into smoke.

“Buying us some time.” said Sherlock.

My watch read 5:27. 2 minutes left.

We finally found the computer. “I can hack, a little.” I said.

“Then get hacking.”

I quickly found out that E.A.T. computers were hack proof, so I stood up, and walked around in panic. “What are we going to do!” I said in panic.

“Nothing. I guess.” he replied.

20 seconds left!

He then chuckled. The computer screen went black. He pointed to a switch, similar to one in a sci-fi movie. “There’s always a switch.”

So the criminal got put in jail, and everything was normal again.

“Do you mind joining me for cases, ” he asked me.

“Um, no thank you, ” I said “Gotta get back to my parents.”

“Then von, voyage, Alex!”

And this is an adventure I would never forget.