It had been that way for a while now - Puffin at the top of the tree, Kon below her, Rosa below him, Leonard below her, and at the bottom was the unlucky skipper of the Lost Safari, Skipper Felix, getting poked in the bum by a rhino and it's horn.

Boats passed by regularly with guests. They didn't help, they only laughed. No boats were passing at the moment though - it was too dark.

'How much longer until we get rescued?' asked Rosa, from the middle of the tree. 'I want to get back to my life.'

'I'm sure Alberta will send a rescue,' said Puffin, looking down at the hungry hyena below.

'You sure about that?' asked Felix from the bottom. 'Because - OW!' he cried out as the rhino's horn poked him again.

'I'm sure what Felix means to say,' said Leonard, 'is that we've been here a long time. Christmas has clearly come and gone. It's almost New Year.'

'Which New Year?' asked Kon. 'We've been stuck up here for a long time now. How do we know it hasn't been for more than one Christmas?'

'Because it hasn't really been that long,' said Puffin. 'And besides, it's not that bad up here.'

'Speak for yourself,' Felix groaned.

'Puffin's right,' said Rosa. 'It probably hasn't been as long as it feels, because for me, it feels like twenty years, yet twenty years has not passed by.'

'What if we never get down?' asked Kon. 'And the hyena eats us.'

'We'll get down,' said Leonard.

'And when we do, promise you'll write,' said Puffin. 'For old time's sake.'

Almost at that moment, they heard the unmistakable sound of fireworks which let them know the time. Also that they were much less "lost" than previously advertised.

None of them reacted well - all of them reacted with irritation and annoyance, the target of their ire, of course, being Puffin, who'd initially wandered off and got them trapped up the tree in the first place.

'It's New Year, isn't it?' asked Rosa. 'We're this close to civilisation and we'll never get down from this tree.'

'This is, without doubt, the worst New Years ever,' said Leonard. 'And there's no contest.'

'You had to drag us all into this, didn't you, Puffin?' asked Kon.

'What a start to 1940,' said Felix, as he was once again prodded in the backside by the rhino.