36 Trapped!

[Stephen Whiteside]

36 Trapped!

© Stephen Whiteside 17.11.2011

Horatio woke in a cold sweat. He couldn’t breathe. Something was pressing against him. He was used to the light weight of Magnifico’s little body pressing against him sometimes while he slept. It was warm and reassuring. And slight. Very slight. This was something quite different.

It was hot and hairy. That much he could tell. And it was crushing him up against the side of the tunnel. And where was Magnifico?

Horatio wriggled. And twisted. He squirmed. He wriggled some more. It was no use. He was stuck fast. And running out of air. Soon he would begin to lose consciousness. Then he would die. There was only one thing for it now. With one mighty heave of his neck, Horatio turned his head, and sank his teeth as deeply as he possibly could into the hide of whatever it was that was killing him.

It worked. As if bitten by a snake, or struck by lightning, the enormous creature convulsively wrenched itself away from Horatio. Now he could see what it was. A wombat! No wonder this tunnel had seemed so large. They had stumbled into a wombat burrow!

Horatio had heard about wombats, how they kill by crushing their victims against the earthen walls of their homes. Not that wombats were carnivores. They weren’t. This wombat didn’t want to eat Horatio, it just wanted him dead. Dead and out of the way. He didn’t want to have to share his burrow with anybody.

All of this raced through Horatio’s mind in the blink of an eye as he gulped greedily at the sweet air all around him. Once again, it would appear that death had been averted - at least for the time being.

Horatio stared at the wombat, and the wombat stared back. Where was Magnifico? Horatio could not match this wombat for long. It could kill him with a single sweep of its claw, or break his neck with a flash of its teeth. It towered above him. He stood no chance against it. But he refused to leave without Magnifico. If Magnifico would simply present himself and run out towards the mouth of the tunnel, Horatio would quite happily follow, but he wasn’t about to abandon his little buddy, even in an extreme situation like this. No way. Horatio would rather die than betray his little friend.

But where was he?

Suddenly, Horatio spotted Magnifico our of the corner of his eye. He was still sleeping, pressed up against the wall of the tunnel. Presumably, he was too small for the wombat to be able to crush. Perhaps his position next to Horatio had saved him, with Horatio soaking up all the impact, and Magnifico protected in a corner of sorts. No matter. He had escaped somehow. Escaped all the drama, only to happily continue with his sweet dreams.

Well, it was time to wake now. The wombat seemed unsure of what its next move should be. It threw its head back and forth in a show of aggression. It didn’t seem too bright. Maintaining firm eye contact with the wombat, Horatio began to edge closer to Magnifico. He now became aware, also, of the stabbing pain in his left shoulder. It was all he could do to move his left foreleg at all.

Wake up Magnifico! Out of the corner of his mouth. Half whispered. Wake up!

Nothing. He edged closer. His foreleg was too painful so, rather awkwardly, he kicked Magnifico with his back leg. It was harder than he intended. Which was probably just as well.

Magnifico woke with a start. What the…?



But Magnifico was a smart mouse. He sized up the situation immediately, and began to run out of the tunnel.

With his friend now safely behind him, Horatio began to back away also, still keeping his teeth bared in as frightening a way as possible. The wombat didn’t follow. It was not an aggressive creature, really, and only wanted to be left alone. It had no interest in hunting Horatio down and killing him. It just wanted him to go away.

And Horatio did go away. Faced with something of that bulk, it didn’t really matter whether it was aggressive or not. A creature that big could easily kill a rat, simply by sitting on it. You couldn’t take any chances with a beast that size.

Magnifico was waiting for Horatio at the mouth of the tunnel. Quickly and quietly, without any fuss, the two little rodents slipped away, and disappeared once more under the leaf litter.