Yesterday was an extremely exciting day. I woke up early and went downstairs to the kitchen and poured myself a glass of milk and made myself some buttered toast. When I sat at the dining room table, clutching my milk and looked out the window into the back garden, I saw what I thought was a unicorn. My eyes went wide and I blinked once and then blinked again. I rubbed my eyes and shook my head as I thought I was dreaming. I looked and then looked again and saw a white animal, with a long, hairy mane and tail and four legs standing in the middle of the flower bed. It was a gleaming white animal with a majestic, pointy horn. I looked at it and it looked at me. A unicorn I thought. I whispered “unicorn!” I dropped my toast that was butter side down. I bolted upstairs to get Olly to confirm what was in our garden.

I went upstairs and gave my brother a shake to wake him up. I told him that we had a unicorn in the garden. He told me that I was being silly and that I was just hoping there was one. Olly then said, “Verity you know that unicorns aren’t real, everyone knows that they live in space!” “Look out of your bedroom window and see for yourself,” I said. He reluctantly got out of bed and saw the white animal in the garden. He did not know what it was and wondered if it was a unicorn. We decided to get Mummy and Daddy. 

Mummy was in the shower, singing loudly, so she could not hear us. Daddy was out for a run and would be home soon. We sat on the stairs near the front door and waited for him. When he arrived, he was panting and sweaty. “Daddy, we have a unicorn in our garden!” I said. Daddy looked and then laughed. “That is wonderful!” he said. Olly said, “No really, you need to come and see.” Daddy took off his running shoes and walked with us to the dining room. He rubbed his eyes and blinked and dropped his water bottle as he was in shock. Daddy looked out the window and said, “Oh my!” What did he mean by that?

Daddy then called Mummy. Mummy came running to look out the window. When she looked, she said, “Where did that come from?” followed by “How did that get there?” We all looked at one another confused but also excited. I said, “What do we do next?”

We all decided we would go outside to see the animal. Daddy took some carrots from the fridge. I did not know if unicorns ate carrots but knew that Daddy knows more things than me. We put on our wellington boots and slowly went close to the animal. The wet grass squelched under the wellington boots. We tip-toed towards the animal. Daddy offered a carrot and the animal lifted its head, twitched its ears, and looked a little startled before smelling the carrot. The animal then took one large bite of the carrot. There were snorts and then loud crunching noises as the carrot was being chomped on and then a whinny noise. We all looked in disbelief.

As we moved even closer to the animal, we could see that some cardboard had got trapped in the matted mane. It was this that looked like a horn. The cardboard was a pointy piece of a delivery box that had wedged itself perfectly upright between the ears of the animal. The mud and rain had acted like glue to fix the horn exactly between its ears. Daddy spoke gently to the animal and managed to remove the cardboard. “There you go girl, that must feel much better!” said Daddy. The animal gave a massive shake from its head to its toes. I said, “It is a unicorn, but it has now lost its horn!”  We all laughed.

Mummy suggested we needed to give the animal some water. We found a bucket and filled it with water from the garden tap. The animal drank the water slowly. She lapped up the water happily, her big pink tongue splashing the sides of the bucket. We all stood and looked at one another and back at the animal. Olly said, “What do we do now?” Daddy said that he would make some phone calls as we needed help. We waited to find out what we should do next.