An Exercise in Story Telling

As Carolyn, Ethan, and I were riding back from the Hoyt reunion in Jason's car, I decided to do an activity with them that involved writing a story together. Starting it out, I wrote one paragraph and then handed it to Carolyn, who wrote another. She passed it to Ethan, and then he, in turn, passed it my way and we made another round. This was the result:

Mousas was a Villanese rat, simple, yet clever. He lived under the wooden floor of a house set on a hill. The life he led was not very complicated. His main occupations were finding his daily food, avoiding the pathetic attempts of his human neighbors to trap and poison him, and leaving a confusing trail for his only real predator, the people's dog.

One of his favorite pastimes was to use his spare time to take long walks. These walks took him down the hill into the fields below, crisscrossed by occasional irrigation ditches. Mousas did not always return from these strolls with something worth saving, but when he did, his talents enabled him to make useful inventions and contraptions, which saved him from some of his daily efforts.

One day, when he was walking along, he saw an animal by one of the irrigation ditches. It was a snake. It saw him before he saw it. It rushed over at him at top speed.

To his horror, Mousas was watching a vicious reptile come at him. Although the scaly beast was only about twice his size, the large rat was nevertheless truly surprised at this new enemy. Not only did he have to mentally add to his list of roving threats, but also he had to develop and implement a defense strategy in a matter of a second or two. Quickly noting the features of the snake so that he could avoid such a creature in the future, Mousas simultaneously developed a plan to defend himself, carefully noting the snake's approach velocity, the wind speed, and the air's humidity.

He pulled from the pack on his back a rope, something which he was, luckily, never without. Even more luckily, the rope had a slip-knot in it already. Using his rapidly made calculations, he lassoed shut the snake's comparatively large jaws. Pulling with the strength that a life-threatening situation can give, Mousas leaped into the flowing current of the ditch, pulling the creature in after. Unfortunately, this sudden strength took little time to be spent, and Mousas found himself in a worse predicament than before, now being in danger of drowning as well.

He was switching gears to swimming when he saw a four-foot pike rushing at him. Quickly, he pulled out his fully automatic assault rifle with water-vision goggles and scope. He stitched the pike across the stomach and swam ashore.

The danger past, our hero dragged his soaked body out of the water and up onto the ditch's muddy bank. He sighed a great sigh, mentally running through the particulars of his fearful adventure. Yes, songs would be sung about this one day. “But, in the meantime”, thought the rat, “it was all in a day's work, and life must go on.” Using his assault rifle as a crutch, he hauled himself upright, unaware that the ribbon hanging down from his neck was stuck under the butt of his firearm. Pulled tight, the ribbon loosened and came off his neck, causing his head to drop to the ground. In this manner, the life of Mousas the Villanese rat ended.