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Printed from https://www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/846494-Calamity-and-New-Beginnings
by Shaara
Rated: ASR · Short Story · Animal · #846494
This is an animal story AND an alien story.
Calamity and New Beginnings



Sawdust covered the floor. Dusty was raking it, leveling it out smooth. He called a greeting to the roosters up in the rafters, but they were too nervous to answer him that day. They kept crowing at odd moments, despite the fact that the sun had been up for hours.

Dusty nickered to his good friend, Dolly the cow, but she didn’t answer him either. She was snoring, sound asleep in her corner of the barn.

A spider had woven its web across the opening of the door. Dusty plodded over to it and exhaled his warm breath on the web to get her attention. “Hey, Mrs. Spider, any chance you could weave that web somewhere else? I’m trying to get the place all spiffed up. Company’s coming, you know.”

Mrs. Spider was busy sucking on a fat, old beetle. She didn’t pay the slightest attention to Dusty, even when his nose knocked the web gently, making it flutter back and forth.

“Phooey,” Dusty said. “I guess Sandy will just have to duck beneath the web. I can’t be rude to Mrs. Spider. She’s always catching those bothersome flies. I couldn’t want for a better friend.”

Mrs. Spider was so engrossed in her dinner, she never heard a single word. She kept right on sucking.

Dusty lumbered over to the inside water trough. He dipped his muzzle down deep into the cool, delicious water and drank a gallon or so. But when he heard an odd noise, he lifted up his huge head. Unaware that water was dripping all over his neat floor, he stared at the open barn door.

In walked the strangest critter that Dusty had ever seen. Its head was on backwards. Or was it that the body was twisted around? Either way, hair streamed down the front of the critter, and its feet faced the back.

“What in the world happened to you?” Dusty cried out.

“It’s not what happened to me, Earth Horse. It’s what happened to my planet. We spoofed.”

“You did what?”

“We blew up. We ended. We ceased to exist.”

“Then what are you doing here?” Dusty asked, trying to ignore the loudness of the roosters who were celebrating the morning again, even though it was approaching noon.

“Why, I used my Super Duper Milkshake Maker to blend together all my breakfasts, lunches, and dinners for a week. Then I drank it down, popped myself into a space capsule, and blasted off into the galaxy. Your planet is where the capsule took me.”

“I’m very sorry to hear your planet blew up,” Dusty told the little critter, wiping a tear from his own eye. “That is so sad! I know you must miss your planet, but I'm very glad you came to live here with us.

"Hey! My friend, Sandy, is coming over to play this afternoon. You want to play with us?”

The critter got very excited. It shot up to the rafters and sped around in circles, looking like a fully blown balloon that someone had let go.

“Whoa,” neighed Dusty. “Come on down, little critter. Tell me about yourself. What’s your name?”

Abruptly, the alien lowered himself, dropping like a falling branch. “My name? I am . . . I’m sorry. My name does not translate into your language. What would you like to call me?”

“Uh,” Dusty said, trying to think of a name, "how about Critter?”

“Oh, yes! That’s a wonderful name. Please, what is yours?”

Dusty, not remembering he'd just raked the sawdust so it was beautifully even, sat down on the barn floor and began a friendship. He forgot about the spider with her web stretched across the barn door. He forgot about the roosters who were still announcing the morning. He even forgot about Sandy who was supposed to be arriving soon.

All Dusty could think about was his new friend and how much fun it was going to be to hear all about Critter's life on another planet.

Thus, the two were talking when Sandy arrived. She walked right into the spider web. “Oh!” she screamed. “Hee ha! Hee ha!”

Then, she stepped on the handle of the rake, and it flew up and poked her in the stomach. “Ouch!” she screamed. “Hee hee HAA!”

Next, she saw Critter, and she screamed again. “Ack! Hee haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa,” and she went running out of the barn, down the road, and clear across the pasture.

However, despite all the noise Sandy made when she came in, Critter and Dusty never even heard her, for the roosters were still crowing that it was morning, and Critter and Dusty were laughing loudly about the Zipple Monster that used to live on Critter’s planet. (You see, the Zipple Monster was a horrible creature. It was, in fact, so mean it used to turn animals into vacuum cleaners, just for the fun of it.)

“That’s the only good thing about my planet blowing up,” said Critter with a laugh that had a tear in it. "No more Zipple Monster!"

Dusty was quick to add, “No, there’s also the fact that you came to Earth and made a friend, and soon you’ll meet Sandy and have another good pal.”

Critter beamed from foot to foot (and maybe on the other side of his head, too, but Dusty couldn’t see because it was on backwards, remember?)

Critter and Dusty sat there on the barn floor all afternoon, swapping stories. When the June bugs came out and began to flitter about, Dusty stood up and said, “Well, I guess Sandy’s not coming after all. Let’s go find her.”

So the two of them set off to find Dusty’s best friend. They walked to her house, but she wasn't there. They looked out in the old corral where she sometimes stood, scratching her itchy neck on the fence posts. Finally they found her hiding under the old apple tree, her tail, legs and stubby mane all ashiver with fear.

Dusty introduced his new friend and apologized for the spider web and the rake when he heard what had happened earlier. Soon the three of them were all hee hawing, neighing, and zeeping (a noise rather like a cricket's chirp). Later, the critter, the horse, and the donkey found a delicious patch of clover and dandelions, and they spent the night munching together happily.

But back at the barn, just minutes after Critter and Dusty left, the roosters started to crow even louder, and suddenly a strange space capsule plummeted down to the Earth. No sooner had it crashed into the side of a nearby hill, than an ugly, green and purple Zipple Monster crawled out.

But you don’t have to worry about being changed into a vacuum cleaner by that mean alien, because a traveling salesman saw the Zipple Monster. First, of course, the salesman meowed in fear, but she was a very brave pussy. She threw her lariat around that Zipple Monster, and then she squeezed and squeezed. Suddenly the Zipple Monster magically changed into a beautiful kitty cat (which is what he really was, but nobody had ever realized it). Almost immediately, the two kitties kissed, fell in love, and, from what I hear, they lived happily ever after.


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© Copyright 2004 Shaara (shaara at Writing.Com). All rights reserved.
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