Digging began at four in the morning to avoid the heat of the day. The Chief and Zippy were placed in a group with the other smaller creatures (Vicky and Mack) to dig a hole together. Everyone was given a canteen and a cap, the small creatures sharing a canteen. Finny tore out the lining of his hat to shade Rodey, who was placed on his chest with the zipper of his jumpsuit holding her in place. Every half hour or so one of the guards would come by in the water truck to refill the canteens. Lunch was served at 12. By around 1 o'clock Stefania had finished her hole. The new prisoners learned that if they found anything interesting while digging, something that the Warden deemed interesting, they could have the rest of the day off. Unfortunately, no one had ever found anything interesting. And Blackout had warned them if they did find something to give it to Vicky, since she had been there the longest.
At the end of the first week, Snaptrap found something. "Hey, what is this?" The other prisoners quickly gathered around his hole.
Ollie took it first, "It looks almost like a bullet, Boss." He passed the object to Blackout.
"Naw, it's goldy-lookin'. No one makes gold bullets."
Chameleon took it, holding it very close to his eye, "It's hollow at this end."
It was passed to Vicky, who noticed the other end was engraved with the letters SS, "Guess I'll show, no, our hole's almost done. I'll show it to the first guard tomorrow, get the whole day off!"
The next day Vicky indeed showed the object to the first guard, who called someone on his walkie-talkie. Within ten minutes a Rolls-Royce pulled up close to the digging site and out stepped a female barn owl. Everyone was taken by surprise when Owl suddenly blurted, "WOOO-HOO!" and fell onto his back, smiling.
"So you do say something else," BirdBrain muttered sarcastically. The barn owl paid no attention as she took the object from the guard and walked over to the hole where Vicky and her friends were digging.
"This where you found it?" she asked in a southern American accent.
"Yes, ma'am," answered Vicky.
"Mister Ghigno (A.N. pronounced "Jeen-yo") take the small critters back to camp and give them a snack. But first fill everyone's canteens!"
Everyone was ordered to start digging out the rest of the hole, to examine the dirt and rocks carefully, to avoid rushing. Finny had been smart enough to give Rodey to Vicky and the Chief to take her back to camp.
After a week of expanding the hole and finding nothing, everyone returned to digging individual holes. That first day, Lucia stole a bag of trail mix from the water truck while everyone else had their canteens refilled. "Shouldn't a done that," Summer piped up, "He's stopped smokin' and eats the trail mix to give 'im somethin' else to do!" As soon as she said it, the water truck spun around. Lucia had passed the bag around, and now it was tossed to Owl. He didn't catch it, and didn't bother hiding it. The guard took him back to camp.
The guard knocked on the door of the Warden's cabin. "Found a little somethin' in his hole," he started. Excitedly she let them in.
Owl smiled at the Warden, not caring about any punishments. He had just wanted to see her again. "While he was filling our canteens, I snuck into the truck and stole his trail mix."
The Warden's face fell, darkening, as she pointed towards the bathroom, "On that shelf there's a little pink make-up case, would you bring it over here?"
Owl did not pay much attention to the guard bragging about his vigilance, partly because he noticed some posters all around the cabin, depicting a lady in long robes riding horseback, with the words "WANTED" and "Smooching Safi" printed across the tops. Owl brought the case to Warden Owlson, who took out a bottle of nail polish. "This here I make myself," she told him as she painted the nails of her right hand."My special ingredient for this color...is rattlesnake venom. Perfectly harmless," she continued as she passed her finger tips across Owl's cheek, "when it's dry."
Suddenly she stood up and scratched the guard across his face. He reeled back onto the floor, screaming and holding both hands over the wound. "I suggest you go back to your hole now," the Warden told Owl. He obliged, terrified.
Owl reported everything to the others, thanking Lucia for taking over his hole while he was gone. "Who's 'Smooching Safi'?" asked the Chief, wiping the sweat off his brow.
"She was supposed to of lived a long time ago around here," Stefania threw a shovelful of dirt towards BirdBrain, "She was a crook. She had a boyfriend who was killed for some reason and she began terrorizing the people who killed him."
At that moment, Philip clapped a hand to his chest and fell over. "DAD!" yelled Finny as he leapt to the older rat's side. When Philip never moved or breathed or spoke for the next 30 seconds, and Keswick could detect no pulse or heartbeat and Finny's CPR had no effect, they realized Philip Rodentius was dead.