Tales from the Wild Side!
I once mentioned using a few chapters of this story to practice different narration styles, didn't I? Well, in case I didn't, I'll do so again. Every now and then, a chapter will pop up that is not in my usual narrative style.
Like this one.
Rattrap and A. A. Milne might not be two names you would have ever associated with one another, but I'm gonna give it a shot.
So yes, I am directly parodyingthe very first Winnie-the-Pooh story, as if I were telling it to my little niece Sparks. (Who is two months old now, and not quite old enough for Beast Wars, but for narration purposes, I'm pretending she's about four).
We're all gonna die...
Once upon a time, about last Thursday, I think, Rattrap the Maximal lived in a base with his friends under the name of Omega IV.
("What does 'under the name of' mean?" asked Sparks.
"It means that the base was called Omega IV, and Rattrap lived under it."
"Oh," said Sparks, "I wasn't sure.")
One day when he was out walking in the desert, he heard a rumbling noise. A great big truck full of chickens went bumping and sputtering down the road, and very nearly hit him! Rattrap sat down by the side of the road, put his head between his paws, and began to think.
First, he said to himself, "That truck is going somewhere. You don't have a truck full of chickens like that just rumbling and bumbling and going nowhere. If there's a chicken-truck, something is going to happen to the chickens. And the only reason I know of for chickens being in a chicken-truck is because they are going to be cooked."
Then he thought a little bit longer, and said, "And the only reason to cook a chicken, I think, is to put it in curry." Then he got up, and he said, "And the only reason to make curry is so I can eat it!" So he followed the truck through the desert.
He walked
and
he
walked
and
he
walked
and as he
walked,
he sang
a little song
to himself.
It
went
like
this:
Isn't it neat
How a rat likes to eat-
Munch munch munch!
I wonder what's for lunch?
Then he walked a little further...and a little further...and then just a little further all the way into the town of Jasper. By that time, he had thought of another song.
It's a very funny thought that, if Rats had wings,
They wouldn't have to walk to so many things.
And that being so, (if wings had rats),
We wouldn't be rats, for then we'd be bats!
He was getting rather tired by this time, so that is why he sang a Complaining Song. He was nearly to the restaurant where the truck had parked now, and if he could just make it to the alley...
Tweeeet!
"Oh rats!" said Rattrap as a policeman pointed frantically at him.
"If only I hadn't—" he said as he dodged the chef who had come outside to see what the matter was.
"You see what I meant to do," he explained, as he turned head over heels to avoid the old woman with the broom, "what I meant to do—"
"Of course, it was rather—" he admitted, as a big white truck with the words Animal Control pulled up to the curb.
"It all comes, I suppose," he decided, as his paws said goodbye to the ground and a great big net swooped him up into the air, "it all comes of liking curry so much. Oh, help!" And then he didn't say much of anything, because then he was in the back of a great big white truck with the words Animal Control on it, and the dogcatcher was driving away.
Rattrap the Maximal was in a Very Difficult Situation, because he was already in enough trouble without transforming to his robot mode. So he decided to call his friend Sparks.
("Was that me?" said Sparks in an awed voice, scarcely daring to believe it.
"Yes, sweetie. That was you."
Sparks said nothing, but her eyes grew rounder and rounder, and her face grew pinker and pinker.)
So Rattrap called his friend Sparks, who lived behind a blue door in another neighborhood.
"Good afternoon, Sparks," he said.
"Good afternoon, Rattrap the Maximal," you said.
"I wonder if you've got such a thing as a rocket about you?"
"A rocket?"
"Yes, I just said to myself this afternoon: 'I wonder if Sparks has such a thing as a rocket about her?' I just said it to myself, thinking of rockets and wondering."
"Well what do you want a rocket for?" you asked.
Rattrap was rather embarrassed to say, because you looked up to him and he didn't want to tell you he'd been caught by the dogcatcher. Besides, he knew you were a smart little girl and would tell your Mama and Papa. And then your Mama and Papa would tell Lio Convoy, and Rattrap didn't want that. So he said in a deep whisper,
"Curry!"
"But you don't get curry with rockets!" you said.
"I do!" said Rattrap.
Well, it just happened that you had been to your Auntie Aspen's house just the day before, and your Uncle Thomas was visiting you both. Uncle Thomas had left some of his many rockets in the house, and Auntie Aspen was very cross with her older brother, but you were very excited. You had the big green rocket, and one of Auntie's little neighbors had had a little blue one and had left it behind, being really too young to appreciate fireworks after all; and so you had brought the green one and the blue one home with you.
"Which one would you like?" you asked Rattrap.
Inside the dogcatcher's truck, he put his head between his paws again and thought very carefully.
"It's like this," he said. "When you try to get curry with a rocket, the great thing is to make a very very big distraction, so the curry doesn't know you're coming. Now, if you have a big green rocket, that would make a lot of noise and they might all go running to see what the matter was and not notice you. And if you have a little blue rocket, it would jump out in all the directions at once and everyone would go running away from the sparks and not notice you. The question is: which is most likely?"
And you thought that perhaps curry wouldn't notice him anyway, because it was food and not people. But then, you can never tell with curry, particularly when rockets are involved.
"Well," you said, "Are you trying to distract people? Will fireworks work?" Because you were suspicious of your friend Rattrap, and wondered whether he hadn't gotten himself into trouble again.
"They might, and they might not. You can never tell with dogcatchers," said Rattrap the Maximal. And then you knew, but you pretended that you didn't, so as not to hurt his feelings.
"Then you had better use the blue rocket," you said; and so it was decided.
Well, Rattrap told you what direction the animal control truck was headed, and you put your blue rocket in your little plastic purse and got on your tricycle. You took your Uncle Thomas with you, since he actually knew how to use the rockets and you didn't, and waited at the corner of the street. Then you saw the truck.
"Oh," you said, and, "My stars!" and "Whatever are you doing in the dogcatcher's truck, Rattrap the Maximal?"
("And what did Uncle Thomas say?" Sparks asked. "I don't think he knows about Maximals, Auntie."
"Oh yes he does!" I said, "And anyway, he had to go. He's the one who told Rattrap where the restaurant with the curry was, after all, so it was really sort of his fault that Rattrap got caught."
"Oh." said Sparks, "I'd forgotten that." And of course she really hadn't known it at all."
"Well, Sparks, may I continue?" I asked."
"Yes, Auntie.")
"I think you had better use the rocket, Sparks," said Rattrap. He stood up in the back of the truck, and gave an anxious sort of look towards the front of the cage. "I think the driver suspects something!"
"What sort of thing?"
"I don't know, but I think he might be suspicious!"
"Well perhaps he heard you talk?" asked your Uncle Thomas.
"Well it may be that. You can never tell with dogcatchers."
Well you laughed to yourself, and you thought "Silly old Bot!" only you didn't say it out loud because you were so very fond of him. So Uncle Thomas set the blue rocket down in the alley near the traffic light and told you to go further down the sidewalk and cover your ears. But Rattrap thought perhaps the driver needed to be distracted so that Uncle Thomas could make the distraction.
"Sparks," he said, "I think this operation might be more successful if you were to walk back and forth near the stop-sign saying, "Tut tut, it looks like rain. Do you hear thunder?" and then when the rocket goes off, he might think lightning is about to strike his truck."
Luckily, it was a little cloudy that day, and so you walked back and forth near the stop-sign and sighed, "Tut tut, it looks like rain. Do you hear thunder?"
The dogcatcher thought that was a very strange thing to say, and stared out the window. And that was when Uncle Thomas set off the rocket. It scattered through the alley with a loud Kaboom!
And the sparks went here
and there and
Everywhere!
And you danced all about in a circle, calling, "Lightning! Lightning! O, I shall be hit!" in a very high squeak, and the dogcatcher thought he'd better make sure you were alright. When he got out of the truck, Uncle Thomas undid the latch at the back of the truck and let Rattrap out. And of course, then Lio Convoy had to be called to fetch him home and O what a scolding he got! Then Uncle Thomas took you home and Mama and Papa were rather cross at you for not telling them where you'd gone, but Uncle Thomas was with you, so they weren't too unhappy.
"Is that the end of the story?" asked Sparks.
"Well, that's the end of that particular one. There are others."
"About Rattrap and me?"
"And Stampy and Airazor and Waspinator and all your friends. Don't you remember?"
"Oh," said Sparks. "That's right, I remember. Except when I do, I don't."
"Well," I said, "There was the time Waspinator and Buzz Saw tried to catch a Gremlin—"
"Only they didn't, did they?"
"No."
"Waspinator couldn't, because he hasn't any brain. Did Icatch it?"
"Perhaps." I said, "But we haven't time to tell that story now, because it's high time you were in bed."
She nodded and went out, and in a moment I heard Rattrap-the-Maximal—bump bump bump—going up the staircase behind her.
"Curry with rockets indeed!" I said, and that was the end of that.