Packrat (standard:adventure, 1005 words)
Author: GXD	Added: Jul 19 2007	Views/Reads: 3580/2245	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Jeff never went mountain climbing without his alarm clock -- until he met the Packrat. Enjoy the laugh!

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

until its top cracked open. Then he set up the stove and searched in 
his pocket for a match. But he knew at once: the match-canister had 
been in the pack, and was in the packrat's nest right now. The silence 
was deafening. He tugged vainly at his water bottle, left the goulash 
near the hole, and packed things away for the climb down. 

That's when the alarm shattered his nerves for the second time. He was
so furious at that rat! What the hell was it doing!  Right now, squeals 
and squeaks were coming from the nest: they made a chilling 
accompaniment to the shrill alarm. How did that rat get it going after 
ten minutes of quiet -- ten minutes of ... 

The snooze button. Jeff visualized this packrat, trapped in its own den,
with a machine the size of an oil tanker's foghorn bleating a 
tooth-jarring tarantelle, echoing and reverberating off the rock walls, 
fraying its sensitive nerves, shredding up its little eardrums. And he 
could see the rat flailing at it in wild fury and terror until one of 
its paws swatted the snooze button ... 

Two hours later, Jeff rested, still chuckling and giggling. Somewhere up
on that hill -- it was still in sight -- the alarm went off again, for 
maybe the twentieth time.  And a couple of seconds later, the rat hit 
the snooze button. 

Jeff doubled up in another paroxysm of laughter. The new battery would
keep that rat busy day and night for the next three months. He hoped it 
was fond of goulash. 

* * * * 

GXD, Seattle, 1997


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