“Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, my head! Oooh Lordy! Mercy!” the hamster screamed, with a slight southern accent. The shrill note was already beginning to fade.
I shook myself and tried to gnaw some feeling back into my limb. “Congratulations and welcome to the club. It's not much, but it's gonna be better than living in a fish tank.” She continued to clutch her head as I cleared the three doorstoppers off her cage. They hit the ground with a house-echoing thud. She looked up at me, blinking as though I had been shining a flashlight in her face.
“Who? Why? I'm talking?”
“Quick version. You were very smart for a hamster. You are now a talking hamster, but ya gotta prove to me the smart part. Where's the computer? I really need to send an email.” I lifted the top of the aquarium and jumped down into the cage. Two sets of footsteps pounded up a stairway. I cast a longing look at her food dish, brimming with various pet foodstuffs, but freedom first, belly later. I shoved Coraline towards the water bottle. “Ya want rescue? Get your fuzzy butt out of the tank.”
Glory to walnuts, she started up the water bottle. I slurped up a few swallows of water before the door to the room burst open.
“Coraline!” The girl's eyes became big and round. I kinda hoped she would be the type who stood on tables when a mouse was about, but instead she cast about the room, looking for something to splat me with, as a much larger woman poked her head around the door and hissed with surprise.
One human I can handle. Two at once could get tricky. “Get on the roof!” I instructed the girl's former pet. To buy time for her, I started shoving as much food as I could into my cheek pouches. When I looked up, the girl had pulled a yardstick from somewhere and had started to advance on me as if it were a broadsword.
Well, this had all gone to pot. I still needed a computer!
“Don't touch it, Heather!” The mom commanded as she produced an iPhone.
I prayed to whatever gods service rodents and squirrels that the phone did not have a security code on it. Tensing my leg burned a bit, reminding me that I had a much higher chance of eating stick than usual. I did not want to lose more blood. I could find a different Wi-Fi connection, but not a different life.
“Mr. Squirrel! Where do I go now?” The hamster had paused on the windowsill. I resisted the urge to smack myself again. True facts about hamsters I've learned: first, their eyesight is about on level with moles, and second, they jump worse than humans wearing cement shoes and fall similarly. To get the hamster out of here was gonna be tricky. I've never wished for my stash of smoke bombs harder. There, on the bookshelf, sat a hamster ball. If I could get that, then Miss Coraline's freedom operation was far less likely to end in a hamster pancake.
“You hide there! I gotta get some transportation.”
I climbed up the water bottle and started barking at the girl, waving my tail in a threatening manner. It's tough to look threatening with your cheek pouches stuffed, but I'm sure I managed it. She took a wide swing at me anyway but missed my marvelous muzzle. Faking left, I bounded right onto her bed and dived between it and the wall.
“Shoo! Get out!” she cried. “No!”
Scuttling my fuzzy butt along the wall, I made behind the bookcase. They had it a good two inches away from the wall, which made for easy climbing up its cardboard back. At the top I surveyed the scene. The girl still peered under the bed, the mom looking on, clutching her phone. She looked like she was about to say something.
I didn't give her the chance. She caught sight of my flying form nanoseconds before I landed on her head. The scream of pure blind panic probably stirred up all the birds from their roosts within a mile radius. I raced down her back and to the floor right before she pummeled me with a blur of flailing arms. Dodging around her suddenly stomping feet, I put two paws on the phone that she had dropped and pushed it until I and it were safely under the dresser.
The woman's screams subsided into hysterics, but her body certainly did what mothers do. She was small as humans go and her daughter probably more than half her size, but she dashed forward and scooped her daughter up like she was nothing. The door slammed on her exit.
Darn humans! If luck smiled on me, she'd be going downstairs and looking up the number for animal control, or she could be frantically punching in the combo on a gun safe and would be returning with the intention of blowing my handsome head off. We didn't have much time.
Or maybe we did. The door did have a little button lock.
#
After sending a quick text to some friends, I explained the plan to Coraline. She nodded but looked a bit worried after we filled the hamster ball with bedding and levered it onto the windowsill using the yardstick as a ramp. The mom had not returned with guns blazing, although the doorknob had rattled a few moments ago.
“Are you sure this is safe?” she asked before crawling inside.
I shrugged. “It's probably safer than you taking a flying leap off that window.”
“Is the ground higher than the bookshelf? I fell off the bookshelf once. That hurt.” She squinted against the afternoon sun.
“Hey, if a fall from the bookcase didn't kill ya, this probably won't either.” I placed the cover over her and with a heave locked it in place. There were bushes to the left of the porch. If I could just pitch the ball in there, everything would be easy peasy. “Now hang on.”
It turns out a ball loaded with a hamster is a mite heavier than I had been expecting. The plan had been to gently lower the ball from the window ledge to the sloping roof and then slowly and carefully guide the ball down to the gutter. Once on the gutter I could roll it to a safe drop point. I rotated the ball so I could grasp the handles on the ball's lid.
Physics had other ideas. As soon as the center of gravity passed over the ledge, it spun backwards and slammed on the roof faster than even I can think. I gripped those handles with everything I had, but no thumbs, no glory. I watched the ball roll down the roof like a demented derby car, poor Coraline screaming as it hit the gutter and launched into the backyard. I covered my eyes as the sunlight caught the spinning plastic.
This is only a fourth of Rudy’s Adventure!
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Copyright © 2015 by Daniel Potter
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Copyedited by Marianne Fox
Additional editing help thanks to John Rhoades
Cover by Ebooklaunch.com
Additional illustrations by Sabertooth Ermine