The Trap is Sprung

The next morning Mac, Mica and King meet by the door that goes under the fence behind King’s house and slip through. As they approach Tommy’s enclosure, they hear the footsteps and voice of Mr. Heetderks, “That should be plenty of lettuce for you Tommy, you sure seem to go through it quickly. You must have help with your lettuce to eat it so fast. But don’t worry about that, I have more lettuce than you and a host of creatures could ever eat, and I’ll make sure you have everything you need.”

Mac, Mica, and King wait quietly as they hear Mr. Heetderks’ footsteps retreat. Then, when they’re sure he’s gone, they make their way around and into the enclosure. Meeting up with Tommy, they review their plans and go to their assigned places to wait.

They don’t have to wait long, because almost immediately after Tommy begins eating his lettuce, they all hear the quiet, tell-tale sound of small, swift feet scratching along the ground just outside of the tortoise enclosure.

“Stanley!” Mac thinks to himself.

Being drawn by the delicious smell of fresh lettuce, Stanley leaps to the top of the enclosure walland sees, just as he expects, Tommy, with his back to him, chomping away on his lettuce.

“It is so funny,” Stanley thinks, “pulling the lettuce right out of his mouth.” As he’s thinking about it and chuckling to himself, he sees what he’s waiting for. Tommy has just bitten into a huge leaf of lettuce and is slowly chomping his way through it. Stanley screws himself up to leap from the wall and rush across the enclosure to steal Tommy’s lettuce. But just then, Stanley sees something move out of the corner of his eye behind the rock just to the left of where Tommy is standing.

King, who is hiding behind the rock waits as long as he can, then decides it’s safe to look. He leans out slowly from his hiding place to take a look at what’s going on and sees Stanley on the wall about to leap down. He quickly jerks back into his hiding place hoping Stanley didn’t see him. He hears Stanley land on the dirt and scuttle across the ground toward them.

Moments later King hears Mica yell, “NOW!!” and he jumps out from behind the rock in time to see Mac landing on the ground right behind Stanley who has a huge leaf of lettuce in his mouth. Stanley, startled by the arrival of this unfamiliar creature, stumbles back into the hole that had been prepared for him. And, just at that moment, Mica and Mac kick up the leaf that is buried at the entrance of the hole and pin it against the rock with their feet. King rushes over and begins kicking dirt against the leaf to keep it in place, just like they’d planned.

Clouds of dust are billowing around covering everyone and everything in a layer of brown dirt. Mica and Mac are panting, Tommy has knocked over his bowl in the excitement and King is laying in the dirt exhausted from his effort, but the plan worked perfectly.

A few seconds later Mac asks, “Did we get him?”

From inside the trap, they hear scuffling and scratching. King, who had the best view of the whole thing, says triumphantly, “Yep, we got him!” and they all erupt into a raucous celebration.

Mac gets up and moves to the door of their trap to gloat and taunt Stanley, but just then they hear a high-pitched, mocking laugh. All four of them turn their heads in the direction of the sound and see Stanley on the wall on the other side of the enclosure with a huge piece of lettuce in his mouth. Before any of them can do or say anything, Stanley waves at them mockingly, leaps down onto the path and runs off, laughing the whole way.

Paralyzed with confusion, the four of them stand dumbfounded, staring at the spot Stanley has just vacated with gaping mouths. They listen as Stanley’s laughter fades and eventually dies out with his disappearance over the exterior wall off in the distance. No one knows what to do or say until, from behind them, they hear a scuffling scratching sound coming from inside their trap. In unison, they all wheel around not sure what they’ll find.

“If Stanley is out here,” Mica finally says, “then who is in there?”

And from inside the trap, the captive responds to Mica’s question, “It’s to be expected,” the voice complains in a thin, sad way, “If there’s a hole to be trapped in, of course it would be me who’s trapped in it!”

And all four of the conspirators’ protest in unison, “LIZZY?!”

The End of the Matter

You can only imagine the surprise and confusion Mac, Mica, King, and Tommy experience as they remove the door to their sprung trap and find Lizzy inside.

They discuss this mystery for several minutes, recounting all that they had seen and done multiple times. And Lizzy, who is standing nearby feeling quite sorry for herself for having been trapped in a trap, finally starts to grumble about all the injustices.

“I should have expected that my day was going to go like this. This is always the way it is with me. If there’s a trap to be caught in, I’ll be in it for sure,” she says to no one in particular. “I have been coming in through that entrance every day and there’s never been a squirrel before. But today as soon as I got in a squirrel came out. ‘Great’ I thought, now my private way has become a highway. But since the squirrel stopped up my way with dirt and rocks, now there’s no way through. But how am I going to get lettuce now? I guess I’ll have to go all the way around. But that is always the way it is with me; my shortcut ends up being the longest way. No doubt when I go the long way, I’ll find my trip cut short too…”

The group is all standing by listening as Lizzy goes through this monologue. Finally, King, who knows that Lizzy will go on like this indefinitely, interrupts her and asks, “Lizzy, are you saying that you had some other way of getting into our hole?”

Lizzy is confused by the question, because to her it is not a hole at all, it is a tunnel. She comes in from one end between two rocks and then around the corner and up a little to a bowl of lettuce. She has been coming in this way regularly, though not usually this early, and she’s never really thought of it as a hole. Finally, she says, “I didn’t know that it was your hole, but then that’s not surprising at all. I knew it must be too good to be true to stumble on to a path that leads straight to a bowl of lettuce. I’ve been coming here regularly, and it’s been nice, but I knew the day was bound to come that something bad would happen, it always does with me.”

Tommy says, “I have noticed you coming in to get lettuce, Lizzy. And I’ve never really minded because I always have more than I need. Mr. Heetderks always brings more than I need every morning. It’s never bothered me that you eat this lettuce, I think I might be overreacting to Stanley eating it. The next time Stanley comes to take lettuce, I think I might just give it to him. He can’t steal something that I give away freely,” he says very wisely.

They all decide Tommy is right. Mac is not completely convinced they shouldn’t try a different trap, but after some discussion he agrees with the group.

The next morning, Stanley jumps onto the ledge with a cunning plan to steal his lettuce. But he is surprised to see Mac, Mica, Tommy, King and even Lizzy all standing near two bowls filled with lettuce. When they see him jump onto the wall, they all cheer and wave calling him over. He’s a little suspicious after yesterday’s experience but decides to check it out anyway; trusting his speed and cunning to help him spring the trap if there is one waiting for him.

As he gets closer, however, he hears Tommy say, “Hey Stanley. Sorry about trying to trap you yesterday. We have plenty of lettuce for everyone and you don’t need to steal it. We put a second bowl here and you can come anytime you want to get as much as you need. Lizzy even dug the tunnel back out again so you can come in that way too.”

Stanley stands stunned like his feet are cemented to the dirt staring at the group not sure what to do. Tommy laughs out loud and says, “We went to all that trouble to trap you and we barely slowed you down, now we’re giving you what you want, and you can’t move.”

They all laugh together, including Stanley, and everyone eats as much lettuce as they want with quite a bit left over. When their feast is finished, Mac, Mica, and King head back to their homes. As they are walking away, Mica hears Tommy talking with Stanley and it seems to her that they are friends once again.

Mica glances back with a smile on her face and just as she does, Lizzy, who had fallen asleep in the sun on top of the rock, rolls and fall straight off the edge of the rock. She hears a splash and then Tommy yelling, “Lizzy!”

Seconds later, Stanley leaps up on top of the wall with a huge leaf of lettuce hanging from his mouth. He and the lettuce are soaking wet. He bursts into laughter and bounds off the wall, running toward her. When he gets close, she asks, “What happened to Lizzy?”

“She fell into Tommy’s water bowl,” he says through a mouth full of lettuce and a muffled laugh. Then, he bounced away disappearing under the foliage on his way to the exterior wall.

From Tommy’s enclosure, Mica hears Lizzy’s voice, “Of course, that’s the way it is with me, if there’s a bowl of water to fall in, I’m going to end up in it eventually…”

Mica turns and catches up with Mac and King, chuckling to herself and filled with gratitude over having made so many new friends.

Chapter 10 A Close Call

And that is how Mac and Mica’s adventures began in WorldWonder. For several months, things unfolded in a comfortable way. They got together with their new friends as often as they could. They explored every corner of their new home and got into fun little adventures like the time King got his hoof stuck in the tree roots and had to stay out all night until Mr. Heetderks got back in the morning. There was also the time that it rained so hard and so long that the pond overflowed, and Mr. Heetderks had to rescue two small fish who were found swimming in a pool of water by the turtles. Lizzy was the heroine of that story, and she loved to retell about the time she nearly drowned.

Mac and Mica started going to Lighthouse in Chap Hall and would come back and talk with Tommy about all the things they were learning. They were growing fast and learning a lot and WorldWonder started to feel very much like home to them.

Even Stanley spent more time in WorldWonder. He and Tommy had rekindled their old friendship, leading to Stanley moving into the tree that overhung Tommy’s enclosure. Everyone, especially Tommy, loved having Stanley around more. He was very funny and was occasionally kind and helpful. He could still be annoying sometimes, especially to the peacocks who often perched in the tree he took up residence in. He liked to sneak up on them while they were resting in the tree and scare them.

Peacocks think very highly of themselves and do not like being treated in this way and the whole thing created quite the controversy.

And then there was Cane, just as toad-like as always and constantly in everyone’s business. Mica and Mac had not spent much time around him since their first day in WorldWonder, but they had seen him around and were always annoyed by how he would lecture them on the things he felt they were doing poorly.

Each time they did see Cane, Mac thought about the conversations he had with Doc in The Nature Center. He had tried to make good on his promise to Doc on several occasions, but something always seemed to keep him from following through. Mac had almost forgotten all about it, in part, because he had a hard time imagining how Doc and Cane could be friends. Cane didn’t really seem to have any friends in WorldWonder.

But it just so happened one day that a string of circumstances unfolded, and everything became perfectly aligned to bring Cane very close to a very deadly situation. And this is how Mac learned a very valuable lesson about not trusting a snake.

It is one of those perfect days in WorldWonder where Mr. Heetderks prefers to have the garage doors open. He had arrived early that morning and thrown them up with the plan to leave them up that morning.

There is a light breeze and it’s not too hot. And it’s early in the morning when Mac stirs, feeling full of energy and ready to tackle the day. Mica isn’t up yet, but that’s nothing new, she likes to sleep in. Momma and Dad see Mac get up and say good morning, but they are busy with their own things and soon Mac is on his own again. He walks quietly around to see if King is already up, but he is still snuggled up beside Samuel and they’re both sleeping soundly.

So, like he has done many times before, Mac walks quietly to the opening in the gate and slips through with some struggle, given that he is so much bigger than he was when they first arrived several months earlier. Before long, however, he is wandering around WorldWonder and finds himself in front of the pond near the path that leads into the Nature Center.

Caught by Cane

He sees that the garage doors are wide open and is about to start up the path toward the open doors when he hears a now familiar voice, causing him to droop his shoulders in startled disappointment, “WWWWelllllll, it’s no surprise to find you out wandering around alone. I’ve been doing my morning inspections and half expected to find you out here. I told Mr. Heetderks that we needed to do something about the lawlessness of you lot who seem to come and go as you please, but I see nothing has been done yet. WWWWelllllll, I told him to plug up that hole you guys keep slipping through behind Samuel’s place, but I see that hasn’t been done yet either. I would do it myself,” he continues breathlessly, drawing himself up to his full height of four inches, as he often does when he is feeling full of self-importance, “but with all the other responsibilities I carry to keep this place running, I just haven’t gotten to it yet.”

“Good morning, Cane,” Mac says, reluctantly. “It’s good to see you this morning.” Mac does not actually feel that it’s good to see Cane, but he’s endured so many lectures from Cane on the “importance of being polite to his elders” that he is in the habit of addressing him this way.

Cane, noticing that his “pupil” has provided the correct greeting comments on it, “And, WWWWelllllll, it is good to see you this fine morning as well, though I would think that it would be much better to see you in your enclosure where you are supposed to be rather than wandering around WorldWonder alone. However, I see that you are teachable and that is one positive influence I’ve had on you in your short stay here. Why, I think that there may be hope for you after all. WWWWelllllll, I guess I will let you off this time, seeing as how you have been so polite, but you need to hurry right back to your enclosure immediately.”

Mac realizes with disappointment that with Cane around nothing interesting will be likely to occur and is about to go back to wait on Mica and King to get up when he suddenly remembers his promise to Doc. And, almost like the words come from somewhere else, Mac says, “Actually Cane, Mr. Heetderks was looking for help and he asked me to come find you. See he left the garage doors open so that we could go in together, I’m so glad I found you.”

Cane, who is not used to being ‘looked for’ by others pauses to consider this invitation. “Mr. Heetderks requested my help, you say?” he asks skeptically.

Mac feels a flush of guilt hearing his lie spoken back to him so directly, but he ignores the check on his conscience because, “after all,” he thinks, “I’m only tricking him so that he can see his friend, it will be a nice surprise in the end…” In this way Mac dives fully into his little fib and says, “Yes, he said he wants your advice on something very important and asked me to come find you. I told him I thought you might be here and came looking for you, but you need to come with me now because I think Mr. Heetderks is about to leave.”

Cane is very much taken in by this story and does not hesitate to say, “WWWWelllllll, we do not want to keep Mr. Heetderks waiting, hop to it young man. There are quite a few things I need to talk with him about as well, so we should need as much time as possible to discuss these matters in addition to whatever advice he should like from me.”

Cane hops off in the direction of open garage doors with Mac following just behind him.

In Danger in the Nature Center

The parrot is sitting on his perch dreamily looking out from under his half-raised wing when he sees a strange sight. Cane, the toad that is often looking in at the windows croaking on and on, is hopping into the Nature Center at the far end of the room. He is being followed by the kangaroo who was brought here a few months back.

The parrot remembers having a conversation with this kangaroo’s sister but hasn’t spoken with this kangaroo at all. The only thing he remembers about this kangaroo is how he spent a few days in the crate over by Doc’s tank. He is about to fly over to see what Cane and this kangaroo are doing. “Mate, no Mike! No, her name is Mica, I think…Oh yes, Mac, that’s it, Mac…” he is thinking when his eyes lazily drift over to where Mac’s crate had been. Like he’s done a thousand times before he instinctively investigates Doc’s tank (he often feels a certain responsibility to keep an eye on that snake.)

The parrot suddenly jolts fully awake. A gripping fear causes him to flatten his wings sharply against his sides as he franticly searches the room, sweeping his head from side to side preparing to leap into flight the moment he finds what he’s seeking.

Mac and Cane are halfway across the room with Cane blabbering on and on about all the things he is going to tell Mr. Heetderks. Mac is pretending to listen but not doing a good job of it. Instead, he is looking around at all the interesting things in the room. He had spent three days here before, but he’d been in the crate the whole time. Other than Doc’s tank and a few things on the walls and shelves near his crate, he hadn’t seen much of the inside of The Nature Center.

So, while Cane is focused on his monologue and feeling very important for having been summoned by Mr. Heetderks, Mac is distractedly looking around the room at all the interesting artifacts. Neither one of them is aware that they are walking rapidly toward imminent danger.

The parrot tenses with every step Cane and Mac take and is nearly in a panic as he notices that they are heading straight for Doc’s tank. His eyes dart quickly back to the thing that caused his initial fear as if hoping that he had just been imagining things a moment ago. His heart sinks and his fears are redoubled as he confirms that the lid of Doc’s tank is open, and the snake is not in his tank.

While Mac is absent-mindedly looking around the room, he remembers how boring it was being stuck here for three days. There was nothing to do but listen to Doc. He never really liked talking with him, there was always something that left him feeling a little uncomfortable. But, he thought, “I’m new and I don’t want to offend him.” So, he would listen politely. “Make sure you talk with Cane about coming to visit. Tell him Mr. Heetderks needs his help with something important…” he heard Doc’s smooth voice say in his head.

Mac’s eyes drifted back to Cane who was hopping along just in front of him. As they rounded the corner, Mac was able to see Doc’s tank above them and a couple yards ahead. He tuned back into Cane’s monologue.

“…WWWWelllllll, and I should like to warn him about letting just any old creatures into WorldWonder. like you, for instance,” he said, gesturing toward Mac with his bulbous head, “You’re not a dangerous creature, but you’re young and you make mistakes. But I’ve heard rumors that Mr. Heetderks has a big snake in here. Of course, I don’t believe everything I hear and since I’ve never been inside before now to confirm it, I don’t believe it. But if I find out that Mr. Heetderks has let snakes into WorldWonder…”

“WAIT,” Mac yells, much louder than he means to, startling himself and Cane, “you’ve never been in here before?” he says, feeling suddenly very uneasy. Mac sees, or rather feels something moving under a cart off to his right.

The parrot, who has been searching around the room, sees a huge shadow shift under the cart a few feet away from Cane. Leaping into the air, the parrot dives toward the helpless toad hoping against hope that he can get there in time.

Cane, oblivious to the danger, in mid-sentence answers, “Only because I’ve been too busy…” when out-of-nowhere, “SQUAWK…SWOOSH…SNAP!”

Mac sees a huge bird swoop down out of the air and grip Cane around his fleshy shoulders and yank him into the air with its talons.

Cane shouts in protest at this treatment and looks up to see the underside of a bird. Then the movement of some huge shadow draws his attention downward. He looks just as the open mouth of a massive snake snaps closed inches from his dangling toes.

Mac is paralyzed by the commotion. Doc is gathering himself up in a tight knot of coils a mere yard away, staring up at the toad as it is carried out the raised garage door by the Parrot. Then, aware that he is being watched, Doc turns his head slowly toward Mac and moves to speak. But before he can say anything at all Mac’s paralysis is broken and he yells, “YOU’RE A LIAR!” and turns and rushes out the garage door.

Doc takes a deep breath and smiles broadly and is about to slither out into WorldWonder with an ere of delayed satisfaction when he hears the very last, and very worst thing he could ever hope to hear, Mr. Heetderks’ voice.

“Doc, what are you doing out of your tank?” A few short seconds later, Mr. Heetderks is bending down to catch Doc and put him away. “Someone must have forgotten to seal the lid yesterday; I’ll need to address this. We can’t have you wandering around WorldWonder, now, can we?”

Mr. Heetderks places Doc back in his tank and closes and secures the lid.

With that, he walks toward the garage doors saying to himself, “Let me go find out where Mac has gotten off to and how he came to be in here to begin with.”

Doc looks on as Mr. Heetderks walks out the doors. He’s disappointed to be sure, but all he needs to do is wait. He thinks, “There will be another naïve creature placed within my influence and I’ll catch my prey soon enough.” Then he slithers back into his log.

— The End — he parrot flies back into the room and finds its perch. It looks over at Doc’s tank and is relieved to see the lid returned to its appropriate position. He scans the inside of the tank and sees the quick motion of Doc’s forked tongue flicking in and out of the shadow of the hollowed-out log. He’s relieved but resolves to keep a much closer eye on that snake from now on.

It was some weeks before the parrot relaxed its sentinel-like watch over Doc’s tank. The close call had left him on edge, and he marked every move of that slippery snake. About a month later, for reasons that Mr. Heetderks did not disclose, he replaced Doc with a much smaller Boa. The danger from snakes was not eliminated entirely, as Boa’s can still be very dangerous, especially if you are a mouse or small frog, but it was significantly lessened.

The parrot was not the only one who was shaken up by the incident with Doc. Cane, for one, was different after that day. You certainly wouldn’t call him humbler, as he is still the same old toad, but perhaps you might call him a little more tolerable. Even Mac, who never liked talking with Cane before the event with Doc, found himself drawn to him in some way. Going through difficult things tends to do that for creatures, it gives them a common story to share. So, Mica and King were surprised occasionally, to see Mac sitting with Cane by the pond listening to his stories.

“You have to filter most of what he says, and he still thinks that I’m some kind of species of toad, but I don’t know, he’s alright, I guess,” Mac said when Mica questioned him about it one day while they lay awake talking.

Seeing this kind of transformation in her brother reminded Mica of something she’d heard Mr. Heetderks say on her first day in WorldWonder to a smart little girl who wanted to know about mosquitos, “Many of the things we don’t understand or even like have important purposes to play in WorldWonder.”

She had never considered this thought before, but as she lay there thinking about what Mac had told her about all Doc had said and of the parrot saving Cane’s life, she concluded (and she was right) that Doc was the evilest creature in WorldWonder. And yet, somehow, without Doc, Cane would be just as intolerable as ever. And her brother, well, maybe he is somehow just a little wiser too. There is certainly nothing good about Doc, but in WorldWonder, even the bad things Doc tried to do somehow produced good things when Mr. Heetderks got involved.

Mica is lying in the straw at the dead end of 152nd street and 67th avenue, feeling very much alive. Just then, a peacock squawks above her, and she hears King stir somewhere over in his area. She feels an overwhelming sense of being at home. She turns to her brother and says, “Mac, this is a really special place.”

“Huh?” he grunts, having already drifted off to sleep. She turns to her side and smiles, deciding she doesn’t need to say it again. WorldWonder is a very special place, and she knows it! A few moments later she is sound asleep.