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--     Is This the Real Life?    --
--       By Lindsay Huf          --
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The wind peacefully sways the branches of leaves on a silent gum tree. The koala leaves no work to its daily routine; with eyes fit to see and ears fit to hear, she ponders the question of her own existence. Swinging in the wind on this luscious tree, she cannot decide where her purpose is in the grand scheme of things.  How such thoughts can be reflected in lower beings, is unknown to the general human population. 

This Koala actually has a name, Sandra. Sandra likes to play with gum leaves, sleep, climb trees, and sleep. Oh did I mention sleep twice? Well anyway, Sandra does lots of sleeping. her lethargic day, she doesn't get much done. However, dreaming is her main form of entertainment. While her other friends also like their sleep, Sandra finds something special inside of it. It gives her time to think about many meaningful things. 

“More than mere coincide...” Sandra thinks. “Life must have more meaning that this.” She has nothing else to think about. Pondering over eating leaves the next day or limited socialization with friends wasn't enough for her. Perhaps she pondered too much.

One day when things were not so fine and dandy, Sandra was getting frustrated as she was not finding answers to her questions. Her friend, Molly, died the previous day. She was attacked by a fox while waiting in Sandra's tree to hang out after a party. Molly was under the influence of alcohol, and did not move a safe distance up the tree away from the incoming fox.

Sandra went through many emotions that day. She was angry at how whoever created her would allow this to happen to her friend, sad at the loss of her friend, and excited for the party that would happen the next day. 

This party was quite the party of the season. There were lots of exciting people and new faces to meet. Sandra was repulsed by a black koala, who had been soaked in oil deliberately. However that is all she remembered from the party, the rest being lost to the alcohol she consumed. She awoke the next day on a bench in the center of town, and she didn't feel quite right. No no, not the hangover, but something else... She identified the feeling to be a feeling of loss, as if a part of her was missing. From that day forward, she searched for something to fill that part, but never found it.

Sandra saw that the parties weren't doing any good for her, so she decided to avoid them. It was hard as first, as she was quite the partying Koala, but she knew it had to be done because of the lack of sleep. When she was a teenager without sleep, the effects were worse than those of the alcohol itself.

A few weeks later, while everything was going fine for Sandra, a war was waged between two of the Koala tribes. An arsenal of weapons was used to fight this war, including political threats and twigs. She was supposed to attend an alcoholics anonymous meeting with the other Koalas, however she didn't. Something wasn't right again. All of the attendees of that meeting were killed, presumably from the effects of the war.

Sandra got an intense feeling of anger, from the events that had occurred in the last few months. However, she could not resort to partying to stop this from happening. As she was deciding what she would do to try and fix this broken world, she was killed by a fox attack at her home. Her life, as she saw it, was quite a waste. She still wondered if she for filled the greater purpose she was created to for fill, but she could never find this, in a new world without Koalas.