Runaway Ralph Page 4

  Then one day not long after Ralph had concluded that he was doomed to loneliness, a freckle-faced girl wearing a baggy sweatshirt, shorts, and cowboy boots came into the craft shop carrying a cage at least ten times the size of Ralph’s cage. She set it on the table in the nature corner. “Hi, Aunt Jill. I’m back, and here’s Chum again,” she announced. “I brought his box of food and bag of cedar shavings.”

  Aunt Jill dropped the strands of the lanyard she was demonstrating to hug the girl. “Well, hi, Lana! Welcome back! It’s good to see you again. Chum will have a friend this year. A mouse one of the new boys caught in a butterfly net.” She lifted the big cage onto the shelf beside Ralph’s cage.

  Ralph sat on his wheel to get a better look at the new occupant of the nature corner, a cranky-looking animal with tan and white fur. Ralph, who had never seen such an animal, watched silently while the creature, whatever it was, shoved and pushed and stomped at the cedar shavings in his cage. He seemed to have difficulty arranging them to his satisfaction. Next he went through his food dish, picked out a number of small green pellets, and shoved them outside his cage. The cedar shavings still did not please him, so he went back to shoving, pushing, and stomping. From time to time he paused to gnaw noisily at the bars of his cage with his long curving teeth.

  Finally, when the bell had rung and the campers had gone off for their noon meal, Ralph, in his eagerness for companionship, could no longer remain silent. “What are you anyway?” he asked. “Some kind of fancy gopher?”

  The animal spat a green pellet out of his cage before he shot Ralph a withering look of scorn. “Fancy gopher, indeed!” he sniffed.

  “Well…” Ralph faltered. “I didn’t know. You can’t blame me for asking.”

  “I am a hamster,” said the animal. “A golden hamster. I am clean, odorless, and alert.”

  “You don’t look gold to me,” said Ralph. “You look tan and hairy.”

  At that response the hamster turned his back on the mouse.

  Ralph nibbled a kernel of corn before he made up his mind to try again. “Pretty nice place we have here,” he remarked. “Plenty of food and water. Interesting things to watch.”

  The hamster climbed on his exercise wheel and sat swinging to and fro while he stared at Ralph. When Chum remained silent, Ralph continued, “It’s safe from the cat, too.”

  Chum appeared never to blink his eyes. “Maybe,” he said.

  Ralph’s whiskers trembled. That one word spoken by the hamster hinted at evils unknown to Ralph. Here was an animal who was wise in the ways of the world. Well, go on, thought Ralph impatiently, tell me more. Chum was silent.

  Finally Ralph was forced to say, “How come that girl brought you here to Happy Acres?”

  “It’s a long story,” said Chum.

  “I’m not in any hurry,” said Ralph. “Go on.”

  Chum spat the hull of a sunflower seed into the bottom of his cage. “I was one of thirteen hamsters, six girls and seven boys, born in the back room of a pet store.”

  “Thirteen.” Ralph was awed. “That’s bigger than my litter. What was it like, living in a pet store?”

  “We had a happy, carefree childhood there in the cage in the back room,” Chum continued. “There was plenty of food and water and fresh cedar shavings in the bottom of the cage. We slept all day, all thirteen of us, in a warm and cozy heap. Then at night as we grew older we would play. Oh, the fun we had those nights in the pet shop.” Chum paused, a faraway look in his eyes.

  “Go on,” urged Ralph.

  “Where was I?” asked Chum. “Oh, yes—the frolics we had at night. And then…and then…” Chum’s voice shook with emotion.

  Ralph waited quietly until the hamster was able to continue. “One day I was sound asleep in the corner of the cage. By then we had grown a lot, and I was on the bottom of the heap, but I didn’t feel squashed. I felt safe and cozy there beneath my brothers and sisters, when suddenly—” Chum stopped, unable to go on.

  “Don’t stop now,” pleaded Ralph. “What happened?”

  “—a great human hand, a hand that smelled of dog—”

  Ralph shuddered.

  “—reached in and picked up several of my brothers and sisters. Let me tell you, that woke us all up in a hurry. We were terrified. We scrambled around, trying to hide behind our mother, under the wheel, in some cedar shavings, anyplace. I was slower than the rest, because, you see, I was cramped from being slept on by brothers and sisters, and so the hand, that terribly doggy hand, got me. It didn’t matter. That hand got all us youngsters and turned us upside down in a most undignified fashion, and then we were put into two cages, boys in one and girls in another.”

  “What for?” asked Ralph.

  “Don’t rush me,” said Chum, picking up a sunflower seed in his paws and cracking it with his teeth. When he had eaten the kernels, he continued. “Let me tell you, it was a terrible shock. Shortly after, the doggy hand picked up our cage and loaded it into what is called a station wagon.”

  “I know.” Ralph was eager to show off his knowledge. “I used to see them in the parking lot outside the hotel. They were always full of children and luggage and sometimes a dog or two.”

  Chum ignored the interruption. “We soon found ours was not the only cage to go into the station wagon. Our sisters were loaded in beside us along with a box of turtles, a cage of rather downhearted canaries, and two large cages, one containing puppies and the other some very silly kittens. Oh yes, and a cage of white mice.”

  “White mice,” said Ralph scornfully. “Anybody, not just owls, could see white mice in the dark.”

  “Then the man with the doggy-smelling hands climbed into the front seat along with his wife, and we were off.”

  “Where to?” asked Ralph.

  “The county fair,” answered Chum, “and it was a terrible trip. Kittens mewed, puppies whimpered, turtles scrabbled around in their box—”

  “What’s a county fair?” interrupted Ralph.

  “A noisy place,” said Chum. “It’s full of people yelling, children laughing and shrieking, machinery that whirls and spins and plays music, all sorts of animals that neigh and moo and baa. It was hot and dusty, and our cages were set out in a booth. By that time we hamsters were exhausted. It had been light for several hours, and we hadn’t had a wink of sleep.”

  “I know what you mean,” said Ralph with feeling.

  “That was only the beginning,” continued Chum. “A steady stream of people, mostly children, passed our cages. Big, little, most of them sticky and all of them noisy. ‘Look, Mommy! Look, Daddy! Look at the darling little hamsters. I want one. Daddy, buy me a hamster!’ All morning long. Parents were better. ‘Don’t be silly. Of course you can’t have a hamster. You didn’t take care of the last hamster you had. Come along. We don’t have time to look at hamsters.’ Then a whole busload of children, all of them wearing white T-shirts with letters across the front—”

  “Camp T-shirts,” interrupted Ralph knowledgeably. “From Happy Acres.”

  “—came crowding around the booth. They didn’t have any parents with them so they bought pets.”

  “You?” asked Ralph.

  “Me,” said Chum. “I was bought by that grubby girl with freckles. To make a long story short, the doggy hand stuffed me into a hot little cardboard box with a few so-called air holes poked into it, and I spent the rest of the day being jounced around, peeked at, and fed bits of Karmel-Korn.”

  “Sounds good,” said Ralph.

  “Maybe to a mouse.” There was a touch of scorn in Chum’s voice. “We rode in a bus to this camp, where a counselor put together a makeshift cage out of a bucket with a piece of screen bent over the top. After a few days the girl’s family arrived. There was quite a fuss when the parents saw that their daughter owned a hamster, but her two little brothers set up such a howl that once more I was stuffed into a box with so-called air holes, and after more bouncing and jouncing I arrived at the family’s house, where I was put in
to this cage where I have lived ever since. Poked at with pencils whenever the children’s horrid little friends came over to play. Fed hamster food full of nasty little alfalfa pellets that I keep shoving out of my cage. You’d think they would catch on after a while, but no, they just keep on feeding me food mixed with alfalfa pellets. The worst part of my life is that I never get a full day’s sleep. Someone’s always moving the cage to dust, rattling something against the bars, running the vacuum cleaner, practicing violin lessons. It’s not an easy life, let me tell you.”

  “But how did you get back to camp?” Ralph wanted to know.

  “Last year when Lana was packing her duffle bag for camp, her mother said that since the people who ran the camp had let her buy me, they could put up with me for two weeks. She was tired of reminding Lana to feed me and clean my cage, and she wanted a vacation herself. She said the same thing this year. So here I am at camp for the third time. Oh well, at least it’s a change, and nobody runs a vacuum cleaner or practices the violin near my cage.”

  Ralph was silent. Chum had given him a lot to think about. Like Chum he sat swinging to and fro on his wheel, swinging and thinking. And as he swung and thought, something caught his eye.

  It was the striped forepaw of Catso reaching through the hole in the rusty screen door. Ralph watched in frightened fascination. The screen bulged from the pressure of Catso’s shoulder as the paw groped and searched. The rusted screen stretched, and the evil paw with its claw unsheathed reached farther into the craft shop.

  Where’s Sam? thought Ralph in terror. Why isn’t that watchdog watching? The paw withdrew, and Catso’s face pressed into the hole. His evil green eyes searched the craft shop. Ralph shrank into a ball in the farthest corner of his cage until he heard a short bark from Sam and summoned his courage to look around. Catso was gone, but the hole in the rusty screen remained.

  5

  The Personul Mowse

  Ralph’s life in the cage was never the same after the arrival of the hamster. Chum was picky about his food and fussy about his housekeeping. One corner of his cage had to be his bathroom, another his sleeping quarters, a third the storehouse for the food he liked. He was forever pushing, shoving, and stomping his cedar shavings. His exercise wheel rasped and creaked whenever he ran, usually while Ralph was trying to nap. He had a particularly irritating way of gnawing noisily at the bars of his cage.

  “Why do you do that?” asked Ralph. “You can’t chew through metal.”

  “I’m not trying to chew through the bars,” said Chum. “I’m wearing down my teeth.”

  Ralph was astounded. “Don’t you want teeth?” he asked, thinking how dependent he was upon his own sharp teeth.

  “If I don’t chew something hard, my teeth will grow so long I won’t be able to eat,” Chum explained impatiently. “I chew the bars because Lana is too stupid to give me anything hard to chew.”

  “Oh,” said Ralph, grateful that his teeth did not continue to grow. Chum had another habit that disturbed Ralph. He nipped at Lana whenever she tried to pick him up.

  “That’s not nice,” said Ralph one day, when he had seen Lana hastily withdraw her hand from her pet’s cage. “That’s biting the hand that feeds you.”

  “I have some rights,” said Chum. “If I let Lana pick me up, I never would have any peace. Believe me, I know. I made the mistake of letting her pick me up just once, and when she tried to stuff me into a doll’s sweater, I knew once was enough.”

  Chum also sat for long periods of time swinging gently on his wheel and staring with unblinking eyes at nothing at all.

  “Why do you sit there like that?” asked Ralph, who liked to be busy when he was awake.

  “I’m thinking,” answered Chum.

  “Thinking about what?” Ralph wanted to know.

  “I am a philosopher,” said Chum. “I think about life.”

  “Life?” Ralph was puzzled. “What do you mean?”

  Chum sat staring into space so long that Ralph thought he was never going to answer. Finally the hamster said, “Take you for instance. Just where do you think you’re going on that wheel?”

  “No place, I guess,” admitted Ralph. “I never thought much about it.”

  “See what I mean?” said Chum. “You run and you run and you’re still in the same old cage.”

  Ralph felt suddenly guilty, as if he had done something wrong, but was not sure what it was. “But I like running on my wheel,” he said, feeling that his answer was rather lame.

  Chum did not bother to reply. He continued to sit, swinging, staring, thinking.

  Ralph leaped to his wheel and began to run. His paws flew along the wires of the wheel, pushing it faster and faster until he looped the loop. He ran on and on until he began to tire. His paws touched the wires more and more slowly until Ralph coasted to a stop. Then he, too, sat staring and motionless. Where was he going? No place, that was where he was going. No place at all. With so many people feeding him, he was not even sure who owned him. Perhaps when the camp closed at the end of summer he would be turned out to the mercy of Catso and all those kittens. Drat Chum and his talk about life, thought Ralph crossly. He has spoiled all my fun.

  Chum had still another habit disturbing to Ralph. Whenever his owner approached him with a bag of sunflower seeds, Chum suddenly appeared to change from a grouch into an agreeable pet. He climbed to the top of his cage, accepted sunflower seeds one by one, and stuffed them into his cheek pouches.

  Feeding sunflower seeds to Chum became a daily event in the craft shop. The older campers and some of the counselors gathered around Lana to watch her feed Chum, and as she handed him the seeds they would count. “Fourteen…fifteen…” Ralph watched while Chum’s cheek pouches began to bulge. “Twenty-two…twenty-three…” Still Chum’s face stretched.

  The old show-off, thought Ralph. “Twenty-seven…twenty-eight…” Chum had grown so top-heavy that Ralph was sure he would never make it to thirty.

  “Thirty…thirty-one…” chanted the campers. Chum was having such difficulty hanging on that Ralph scarcely could bear to watch. “Thirty-three…” Those paws were slipping. “Thirty-four…” Chum could no longer support his weight. He fell to the bottom of his cage with a thump that made Ralph cringe.

  “Thirty-four!” shouted Lana, who enjoyed the attention her pet had received from older boys and girls. “That’s Chum’s record!”

  “Maybe he’ll hit thirty-five tomorrow,” someone said, as the campers lost interest in the hamster and went off to their riding lessons or back to their craft work.

  Chum got to his feet rather groggily and went to the storehouse corner of his cage, where by placing his front paws behind his cheek pouches he pushed the seeds out of his mouth until they lay in a heap at his feet.

  Ralph was disapproving of the whole performance. “That’s quite an act,” he remarked. “Doesn’t it hurt when you fall to the bottom of the cage?”

  “Sure it hurts,” said Chum, as he pushed out the last sunflower seed. “But it’s worth it.”

  “Just to show off?” asked Ralph.

  “No, stupid,” said Chum. “For the sunflower seeds. Sunflower seeds that I don’t have to pick out from a lot of alfalfa pellets. I perform; she pays off in sunflower seeds. That’s the way it goes.”

  “Yes, but you get hurt,” said Ralph.

  “I hate alfalfa pellets,” answered Chum simply.

  Ralph’s turn came after lunch when the campers were in the dining hall singing a song that they obviously enjoyed but that Ralph found frightening.

  “Bill Grogan’s goat was feeling fine,

  Ate three shirts right off the line.”

  Garf silently pushed open the screen door, and Ralph leaped from his wheel. Quickly Garf unlatched the door of the cage and extended a sunflower seed with his fingers. This time he was not singing, but Ralph still did not trust him. “Come on, fellow,” coaxed Garf. Ralph retreated to the corner of his cage behind his exercise wheel.

  “Mayb
e next time,” whispered Garf, and hurriedly cleaned the cage and refilled the water bottle while the campers sang on:

  “The whistle blew,

  The train drew nigh.

  Bill Grogan’s goat was soon to die.

  He gave three groans of mortal pain,

  Coughed up the shirts and flagged the train.”

  When the song was finished, the housekeeping for Ralph was completed, and Garf had slipped quickly and silently out of the craft shop without letting the screen door slam or squeak. Ralph stood on his hind legs holding the bars of his cage with his front paws and wishing Garf were a different kind of boy.

  Almost at once the screen door opened again, and Aunt Jill with her arm around Garf’s shoulders brought the boy back inside. “Sit down, Garf,” she said, and sat on a bench beside one of the worktables. Scowling, the boy obeyed.

  “What’s the trouble, Garf?” asked Aunt Jill kindly.

  What does she mean? Ralph wondered.

  Garf stared at the floor.

  “You know you have been breaking one of the camp rules,” said Aunt Jill. “Campers are not supposed to come into the craft shop without permission unless I am here or one of the counselors.”

  So that is why he’s always in a hurry, thought Ralph. He isn’t supposed to be here. He not only likes bloodthirsty songs, he breaks rules.

  Garf continued to stare at the floor.

  “Is there anything we can do to help?” persisted the camp director.

  “No,” said Garf suddenly. “Because I’m going to run away, and nobody is going to stop me!”

  Aunt Jill appeared to take this news calmly, but for some reason Ralph did not. He felt a shock of excitement. Don’t do it, boy, he wanted to squeak. It won’t get you anyplace. At the same time he realized that a boy who wanted to run away was sure to like motorcycles. Maybe he had misunderstood Garf. Maybe Garf liked speed and would know how to make a miniature motorcycle run.

  “Is there someplace you especially want to go?” asked Aunt Jill.