Red Dirt Diary 3 Read Free Page B

treat emergencies as well as she does.
    First aid essentials
    Every home should have a first aid kit. First aid kits can be expensive and bothersome to put together, but if they save just one life they are worth it.
    These are the things a good first aid kit needs:
A thermometer — for taking temperatures. If a patient’s temperature is 100°C this means they have reached boiling point and will be very hot. If it is 0°C they will be freezing.
Five bandages — one for each arm and leg and one for the head, just in case of a very exciting accident like somersaulting down the stairs.
A stopwatch — to time how long it takes for the ambulance to arrive.
A snake — many people do not realise that antivenin is made from snake venom. If someone is bitten by a snake you can just get the first aid snake to bite them again and everything will be hunky-dory.
A sharp knife — for amputations.
Little triangle sandwiches — like they give you in hospital. These are for eating when you are hungry.
Clean underwear — for when people get a dreadful fright.
    There are many other useful things you can include in your first aid kit, like sticking plaster, scissors and wound dressings, but these are the main ones.

    I showed Gabby’s article to the Colonel so he could see what a disaster his first outdoor education lesson has been. But he just wriggled his bushy eyebrows up and down like two feral furry caterpillars and said, ‘By gum, that’s a fascinating list of first aid essentials,’ and walked away whistling!
    Maybe he won’t be so excited when it goes in The Bake Tribune and everyone in the community reads it. He won’t seem so clever and charming then, will he?
    Mat has spent hours staring at a blank computer screen today. She is meant to be writing part one of her romance serial. I told her Petal could type faster than her, but she said real romance needs time to blossom.
    Whatever.
    Thursday, 3 May
    Sarah got hysterical this morning just before the school bell rang. Her scissors were jammed open and she was worried about them being dangerous. Sarah’s the Hardbake Plains Scissors Police. She’s always telling kids not to run with scissors and to pass them to someone else handles first.
    The Colonel sat her down on the steps and removed the scissors from her hand. He took a tiny tin from his pocket, removed a blob of butter and rubbed it up and down the blades until they could open and close smoothly.
    Sarah was amazed, although quite concerned at how close the Colonel had come to chopping his fingers off. Some kids are easily impressed, that’s for sure!
    Banjo handed in a poem for the newspaper today:
    Ode to a Complex Accident
    A man fell down the slippery stairs
    And crashed into a pile of chairs.
    So much blood poured from his nose
    It spurted like a garden hose.
    He tried to stand but staggered round
    And landed back onto the ground.
    His lips were bruised, his bones were shattered.
    His guts were torn and totally splattered.
    His spleen exploded, his legs fell off.
    He also had a dreadful cough.
    His eyes rolled back into his head
    And then he was extremely dead.
    The moral of the tale, you see,
    Is walk down steps real carefully.
    Let Mat give me a manicure at lunch time, just to experience something new … and because she nagged the guts out of me. My fingernails arenow slime green (although Mat calls it ‘Meadow Glisten’). It looks like I have gangrene. Hope Gabby doesn’t see or she’ll want to amputate my hands!
    Petal keeps nibbling hungrily at my fingertips. She must think they are pond slime or tiny green froglets.
    Friday, 4 May
    Half the kids brought little jars and plastic containers of butter to school in their pockets today. By recess, every pair of scissors and every zipper in the junior room was smeared with a thick layer of butter. It smelt like a CWA scone baking competition.
    At recess, Worms got his tongue caught in the