Scrat Strikes Again!
Title: Scrat Strikes Again!
Author: Aquaseamage
Rating: PG
Pairing: James/Elizabeth
Characters: James Norrington, Lord Beckett, Davy Jones, Maccus, Clanker, Koleniko, Bootstrap, Elizabeth, Scrat
Genre: Comedy
Word Count: About 10,300 words
Status: Complete
Teaser: Set during AWE, Norrington must deal with gambling fishmen who laugh at him, rodents that steal his wig, a ship in horrible condition and Elizabeth.
Disclaimer: The characters are not mine. They belong to whoever owns the rights to Pirates of the Caribbean and Ice Age. This is just for fun.
Author's Note: Please read "Just One Scrat" to better understand this story.
Admiral Norrington stared in dismay at the Flying Dutchman, which was to be his new assignment. When he had stolen the heart of Davy Jones and ran off with it to Lord Beckett, to get his old life back, this was not what he had expected. Perhaps he had been naïve to think things would go back to the way they had been before, with him in charge of Fort Charles as if nothing had ever happened. Still, it's what he had hoped. Instead Beckett had given him the title of Admiral and had pushed this junk assignment onto him. The Dutchman was in horrible condition and crewed by supernatural monsters that had once been men. He had no idea as to the morale on board or if the crew obeyed orders. By the state of the ship and the way it was literally covered in barnacles, mussels and all sorts of shelled creatures and the way long strips of seaweed hung from the sails and yardarms, it was clear none of them ever cleaned. Swabbing the deck should be done daily, so it was a serious dereliction of duty.
Worst, Jones and his crew were well known as bloodthirsty creatures. They loved killing. They had disobeyed Lord Beckett's strict orders to capture pirate ships. Beckett needed to question the captains and crew. Instead every ship was blown to smithereens until only broken bits of timber bobbed on the ocean. Would they follow his orders? He would have the heart with him, but doubt still lingered in his mind. None of this showed on his face, as he was quite skilled at hiding his emotions.
The Endeavor soon was alongside the Dutchman so he transferred over along with several marines. The first thing he noticed was that the Dutchman smelled exactly like the Endeavor: like cat. Beckett had been furious when he had awoken one morning to find hundreds of yowling cats on his ship. No one had known where the felines had come from, either. The night guards had seen nothing, it was as if they had just appeared out of thin air or had fallen out of the sky itself. Although the ship had sailed towards land as quickly as possible, it hadn't been fast enough. The ship ended up stinking something awful from lack of litter boxes. Beckett, however, had made a tidy profit from selling the many felines in port. Cats were highly prized for their rodent killing skills, especially in the colonies. Still, Beckett hated the smell, as he couldn't get it to go away.
Lord Beckett and his evil henchman followed him onto the cursed Dutchman. Norrington could see Beckett sniffing at the air, his nostrils flaring. Then his eyes narrowed suspiciously as he looked about, noticing several suspicious stains on vertical surfaces. Jones was coming now, his peg thumping loudly on the wooden deck.
"Get that off my ship!" Davy Jones commanded as he spied the elaborate chest that contained his still beating heart. Two marines carried it, one man gripping each end. Upon seeing Jones and his waving beard of tentacles, both marines gulped nervously. More horrible fishmen were gathering around behind their captain, each more awful looking than the next. Norrington was shocked by their appearance, even though he had seen them before on that island.
"Did you put those cats on my ship?" Lord Beckett asked Jones.
"What cats?" Jones replied. "I don't know what yer talking about. I don't have any cats."
"Well, it's clear you had them in the past as I can clearly smell them…" Beckett wrinkled his nose unhappily.
"That's mutant rat ye smell, not cat." Jones countered angrily, his head banging from the cat smell. Secretly Jones was pleased he had stunk up Lord Beckett's fancy ship, especially after the greedy man had stolen his heart and was using it to hold him hostage. Still, he didn't want to admit it. "Why would I have cats on board for?"
"Why do you have barnacles and all this other stuff on your ship?" Beckett waved a hand about; indicating the state the ship was in. "Who knows what goes on in that octopus head of yours? You may have hundreds of cats for your own reasons, but it's very rude to dump them all off onto my fine ship during the middle of the night! You shall owe me a great sum for the damage your creatures did to my ship, as I just cannot get that horrid smell out of the timbers…"
"SPARROW! It was Sparrow that gave them to me!" Jones shouted, his tentacles waving furiously and his lobster claw flexing as spit flew out of his mouth to strike Beckett on the face. "Darn that Jack Sparrow!"
"Well, that still doesn't change the facts it was you that gave them to me…" Beckett replied as he calmly wiped his face with a white hankie. "You had best do what I wish or pay the price. I need those pirates alive so I can question them."
000
Norrington stood on the deck of the Dutchman as he started surveying the ship itself. If this was to be his new command, he needed to get familiar with the ship and its layout, its capabilities. The Endevour had sailed away several hours ago so now it was just he and the small handful of marines that had accompanied him. The ship seemed to be solid enough under all the various layers of sea gunk, which relieved him greatly. At least he need not worry about drowning at sea. The ship was also considerably older in design than the ones he had sailed on before. As he strolled along the deck examining things, he could feel the eyes of Jones' fishcrew following him. A few in particular appeared to be following him. One had a hammerhead, one a face covered in thick mussels and the third looked like a blowfish with sharp spines. Steeling his nerves, Norrington was determined to not let them spook him. The Dutchman was his now and its crew his to command.
And then he came upon a strange site. Someone had left a coconut inside a coil of rope. Why in the world anyone would do that he just couldn't fathom. Food belonged either in the galley or down in the hold, safely locked up with keys less dishonest crewmen steal some of it. Turning on his heel smartly, Norrington faced the three fishmen that had been trailing him. "Why isn't that coconut down with the other supplies, crewman? Food shouldn't be lying about loose on deck."
"That area be out of bounds, Sir." Maccus replied as he nervously eyed the rigging overhead with a few of his extra fish eyes. "The Admiral put that nut there and there be orders from the Captain not to touch it ever."
Norrington stared at the hamerheaded man for a few seconds, clearly confused. "I'm the Admiral and I gave no such order."
"We don't mean you, we mean that mutant rat!" Clanker replied as he rubbed at his large red nose, remembering how it had been bitten once. "He's the Admiral. We needed a name for him, see?"
"You take orders from a mutant rat?" Norrington asked, shocked. Things aboard the Dutchman were worst than he had feared. Not only were the crew deformed and bloodthirsty, they were all mad as well! Nor had he ever heard of a rat that ate coconuts. They preferred grain.
"He could be anywhere, watching us…." Koleniko added as his large fisheye peered this way and that fearfully. "He beat the Captain in a fight, knocked him right down the stairs. I saw it with my own eye!"
"He kicked me in the eye…." Maccus pointed to the faint traces of scratches on his pinkish-gray face. "And bit Clanker on his nose!"
Clanker nodded his agreement. "The Captain said to leave him alone. And that's what we've been doing. You touch that nut and you're asking fer trouble."
Norrington stared at the three men as he pondered if they were pulling some sort of joke on him, but they seemed serious. The blowfish man especially seemed fearful, but he found that hard to accept. Jones' crew had a reputation for being bloodthirsty, so why should a little rat scare them? It made no sense whatsoever. As experienced sailors, they should be used to seeing rats onboard a ship. "From now on I'm giving the orders on this ship and you'll obey them. We will not fear rats and bow to their whim, as their just rodents. Rats don't even eat coconuts."
"But this be a mutant rat!" Maccus insisted as he wrung his human hand and his crab-legged hand together. "It be leaving us alone at the moment! If ye go touch its nut, it'll start acting up again!"
Koleniko and Clanker nodded in agreement, worried expressions clear in their fish eyes.
"We will not cater to vermin." Norrington said as he walked over to the coil of rope and bent to pick up the coconut. As he did so, his heart thudded faster than normal and a bead of sweat ran down his back. He half expected some giant rat to jump out of the shadows and bite his hand as he touched the nut, and he hated that he felt that way. He shouldn't feel that way at all, but the environment of the Dutchman was working on his brain. The ship looked haunted; with weird shadows and green slime everywhere. The appearance of the crew didn't help any. It would have been better of they had been all fish. That would be easier to accept - but his mind saw the human bits of them and focused on those, so their fish-like deformities seemed all the worst. It was like working in a nightmare and now some part of him was reacting to their wild tale. Norrington's hand paused for a few scant seconds and then he touched the coconut. Its hairy shell was rough against his hand, the nut warm from the tropical Caribbean sun. His fingers closed around it and he straightened up, standing straight once more with the nut firmly grasped in his hand. His heart beat quickly as a moment passed and then another. Still, nothing happened. "You see? Nothing happened. Rats do not eat coconuts. Now there will be no more of this nonsense about mutant rats and areas being reserved for this rat. This ship needs to operate smoothly and for that we need all the deck and supplies, including this coil of rope."
Maccus, Clanker and Koleniko gawked at him with open mouths and frightened eyes. Then they exchanged glances.
"You best remember we warned you." Maccus added as backed away from the ship's new boss.
000
Scrat was struggling up the mast, a heavy nut balanced on top of his tiny head. It had been very difficult moving the bad nut out of the giant, unattended nut pile, but he had done so. It had crashed to the deck and then had rolled a way off, Scrat scampering after it. Pushing with all of his strength, he had managed to get it to roll towards the trunk of the weird tree; the tree that didn't have any leaves. The next part had been much harder. He had managed with great difficulty to get underneath the incredibly heavy nut and then had started climbing up the tree's massive trunk. The perfectly round nut balanced on top of his head precariously and Scrat feared it might fall. His limbs aching and pain shooting up his arms from his fingers, he freed a single paw and reached up a bit higher, digging his claws again into the tree's wood. He tested his grip and it felt secure, so he moved his right leg up a bit higher.
The giant nut wobbled unsteadily, Scrat's large egg eyes filling with fear. He was already more than halfway to the place he had claimed as his nut storage area, a place high above the human's heads. Scrat knew very little about humans but he knew they didn't climb trees very often. This tree in particular was barren with no ripe fruit they might desire. That made it safe. The little saber-toothed squirrel moved his head this way and that, trying to stop the black nut from falling. It started to roll off his forehead and in desperation he opened his mouth, catching it in his jaws. His neck started to disappear into his shoulders, the weight of the black nut pushing on him relentlessly. His jaws aching from being pushed open too widely, he tried in vain to see the tree he was clinging to, but the round nut blocked his vision.
It was a bad nut, Scrat feared, but perhaps it was still usable if he could open its hard shell somehow. Maybe they were not bad at all but just a new type he had never encountered before. With no mammoths handy to step on it for him, Scrat had been forced to think and to think hard. There were only a few ways to open nuts. The easiest and most common way was to bite it open, but these black nuts were just too hard. The second way was to have a mammoth step on the nut, the animal's large weight cracking it easily. The third way was to drop the nut off a glacier or from the top of a tree, the fall breaking the shell open when it landed. The danger with this method is that another hungry creature might steal the nut's meat before Scrat could get down safely to claim it as his meal. It had certainly happened to him before, but he felt he had little choice.
He also felt compelled to move all the nuts to safety. All those piles of nuts sitting on the strange wooden ground with humans walking past them! The humans could reach down and take one of the nuts at any moment, one of his nuts! It was too much for him to stand! So Scrat had started to move the big black nuts to safety high up in the tree where he had found a strange nest way up near the very top. It wasn't exactly a hollow tree, but something he had never seen before. It had walls of a sort, but the walls had gaps where the nuts could slip out. Still, it was better than nothing.
Whining to himself, Scrat struggled higher and higher, his aching paws forcing himself up and up. Finally the weird nest was just above him, his black nose striking its bottom side painfully. This was the most difficult part and Scrat didn't know if he had enough energy to go through with it. He had already rescued so many nuts from the human's neat little piles.
Humans were so stupid! Didn't they know one couldn't store nuts on the ground? They'd go bad! There had been some loud commotion earlier, all the weird-looking humans rushing off to one side to talk to some other humans. The senseless sounds they made grew in volume and they waved their paws in the air. Seeing as no one was watching him, Scrat started taking his nuts to safety.
And here he was now, another nut almost in his nut-storage area. Bravely he picked up another paw and moved it to the bottom of the nut storage that stuck outward from the tree. Normally climbing out over this overhang was not a problem at all, but the black nut in his jaws seemed to weigh as much as a mammoth by now. He was weak and tired, his muscles shaking with weariness. He needed to keep his head up, the nut pressed to the bottom of the overhang. If his neck muscles failed and his head tilted backward, the nut would roll right out of his jaws to fall all the way to the distant ground. The nut didn't fit into his jaws properly anyway as it was too large.
Slowly he inched out onto the bottom of the overhang, the immense weight trying to tear him free. Determined, Scrat made it to the edge and started pulling his body up over the precipice into one of the gaps that lined his nut storage area. More and more of his body was in the safe area, firm footing underneath, and then he collapsed with relief, all the air huffing out of his thin body. He lay there for long moments, the big black nut still partly in his jaws. His eyes closed and he rested, even his bushy tail was limp and lifeless.
After he had rested, Scrat pushed the black nut towards the others. His nut storage area was round with the tree's trunk smack dab in the middle. It seemed to be made of the same stuff as the odd ground down below, stuff that looked like wood. He would have to find something to fill up the open gaps in his storage area so the nuts wouldn't roll out. The tree itself continued up a bit higher and then it just stopped, the top perfectly flat like a piece of floating river ice. It was without doubt the weirdest tree he had ever seen! There were other trees, too, two more to be exact. The tree in the center was the tallest and the fattest around. Scrat hadn't explored that one yet as he had this one.
Rested somewhat, Scrat sat up on his haunches, his tail quivering. He needed to check on the humans. Scampering out, he ran down the tree with ease until he was once again on the weird circular platform that was about halfway up the tree. From here he could see almost everything on the ground. He peered over the edge and looked downward, his sharp eyes focusing automatically on his coil of rope nest. The old humans hadn't dared to touch his hairy nut, but new humans had arrived.
NO! One of them had his nut!
Taking careful aim, Scrat leaped off the edge of the platform and fell through the air towards the thief.
Scrat Strikes Again Part 2
Author: Aquaseamage
Rating: PG
Pairing: James/Elizabeth
Characters: James Norrington, Lord Beckett, Davy Jones, Maccus, Clanker, Koleniko, Bootstrap, Elizabeth, Scrat
Genre: Comedy
Word Count: About 10,300 words
Status: Complete
Teaser: Set during AWE, Norrington must deal with gambling fishmen who laugh at him, rodents that steal his wig, a ship in horrible condition and Elizabeth.
Disclaimer: The characters are not mine. They belong to whoever owns the rights to Pirates of the Caribbean and Ice Age. This is just for fun.
Author's Note: Please read "Just One Scrat" to better understand this story.
Admiral Norrington stared in dismay at the Flying Dutchman, which was to be his new assignment. When he had stolen the heart of Davy Jones and ran off with it to Lord Beckett, to get his old life back, this was not what he had expected. Perhaps he had been naïve to think things would go back to the way they had been before, with him in charge of Fort Charles as if nothing had ever happened. Still, it's what he had hoped. Instead Beckett had given him the title of Admiral and had pushed this junk assignment onto him. The Dutchman was in horrible condition and crewed by supernatural monsters that had once been men. He had no idea as to the morale on board or if the crew obeyed orders. By the state of the ship and the way it was literally covered in barnacles, mussels and all sorts of shelled creatures and the way long strips of seaweed hung from the sails and yardarms, it was clear none of them ever cleaned. Swabbing the deck should be done daily, so it was a serious dereliction of duty.
Worst, Jones and his crew were well known as bloodthirsty creatures. They loved killing. They had disobeyed Lord Beckett's strict orders to capture pirate ships. Beckett needed to question the captains and crew. Instead every ship was blown to smithereens until only broken bits of timber bobbed on the ocean. Would they follow his orders? He would have the heart with him, but doubt still lingered in his mind. None of this showed on his face, as he was quite skilled at hiding his emotions.
The Endeavor soon was alongside the Dutchman so he transferred over along with several marines. The first thing he noticed was that the Dutchman smelled exactly like the Endeavor: like cat. Beckett had been furious when he had awoken one morning to find hundreds of yowling cats on his ship. No one had known where the felines had come from, either. The night guards had seen nothing, it was as if they had just appeared out of thin air or had fallen out of the sky itself. Although the ship had sailed towards land as quickly as possible, it hadn't been fast enough. The ship ended up stinking something awful from lack of litter boxes. Beckett, however, had made a tidy profit from selling the many felines in port. Cats were highly prized for their rodent killing skills, especially in the colonies. Still, Beckett hated the smell, as he couldn't get it to go away.
Lord Beckett and his evil henchman followed him onto the cursed Dutchman. Norrington could see Beckett sniffing at the air, his nostrils flaring. Then his eyes narrowed suspiciously as he looked about, noticing several suspicious stains on vertical surfaces. Jones was coming now, his peg thumping loudly on the wooden deck.
"Get that off my ship!" Davy Jones commanded as he spied the elaborate chest that contained his still beating heart. Two marines carried it, one man gripping each end. Upon seeing Jones and his waving beard of tentacles, both marines gulped nervously. More horrible fishmen were gathering around behind their captain, each more awful looking than the next. Norrington was shocked by their appearance, even though he had seen them before on that island.
"Did you put those cats on my ship?" Lord Beckett asked Jones.
"What cats?" Jones replied. "I don't know what yer talking about. I don't have any cats."
"Well, it's clear you had them in the past as I can clearly smell them…" Beckett wrinkled his nose unhappily.
"That's mutant rat ye smell, not cat." Jones countered angrily, his head banging from the cat smell. Secretly Jones was pleased he had stunk up Lord Beckett's fancy ship, especially after the greedy man had stolen his heart and was using it to hold him hostage. Still, he didn't want to admit it. "Why would I have cats on board for?"
"Why do you have barnacles and all this other stuff on your ship?" Beckett waved a hand about; indicating the state the ship was in. "Who knows what goes on in that octopus head of yours? You may have hundreds of cats for your own reasons, but it's very rude to dump them all off onto my fine ship during the middle of the night! You shall owe me a great sum for the damage your creatures did to my ship, as I just cannot get that horrid smell out of the timbers…"
"SPARROW! It was Sparrow that gave them to me!" Jones shouted, his tentacles waving furiously and his lobster claw flexing as spit flew out of his mouth to strike Beckett on the face. "Darn that Jack Sparrow!"
"Well, that still doesn't change the facts it was you that gave them to me…" Beckett replied as he calmly wiped his face with a white hankie. "You had best do what I wish or pay the price. I need those pirates alive so I can question them."
000
Norrington stood on the deck of the Dutchman as he started surveying the ship itself. If this was to be his new command, he needed to get familiar with the ship and its layout, its capabilities. The Endevour had sailed away several hours ago so now it was just he and the small handful of marines that had accompanied him. The ship seemed to be solid enough under all the various layers of sea gunk, which relieved him greatly. At least he need not worry about drowning at sea. The ship was also considerably older in design than the ones he had sailed on before. As he strolled along the deck examining things, he could feel the eyes of Jones' fishcrew following him. A few in particular appeared to be following him. One had a hammerhead, one a face covered in thick mussels and the third looked like a blowfish with sharp spines. Steeling his nerves, Norrington was determined to not let them spook him. The Dutchman was his now and its crew his to command.
And then he came upon a strange site. Someone had left a coconut inside a coil of rope. Why in the world anyone would do that he just couldn't fathom. Food belonged either in the galley or down in the hold, safely locked up with keys less dishonest crewmen steal some of it. Turning on his heel smartly, Norrington faced the three fishmen that had been trailing him. "Why isn't that coconut down with the other supplies, crewman? Food shouldn't be lying about loose on deck."
"That area be out of bounds, Sir." Maccus replied as he nervously eyed the rigging overhead with a few of his extra fish eyes. "The Admiral put that nut there and there be orders from the Captain not to touch it ever."
Norrington stared at the hamerheaded man for a few seconds, clearly confused. "I'm the Admiral and I gave no such order."
"We don't mean you, we mean that mutant rat!" Clanker replied as he rubbed at his large red nose, remembering how it had been bitten once. "He's the Admiral. We needed a name for him, see?"
"You take orders from a mutant rat?" Norrington asked, shocked. Things aboard the Dutchman were worst than he had feared. Not only were the crew deformed and bloodthirsty, they were all mad as well! Nor had he ever heard of a rat that ate coconuts. They preferred grain.
"He could be anywhere, watching us…." Koleniko added as his large fisheye peered this way and that fearfully. "He beat the Captain in a fight, knocked him right down the stairs. I saw it with my own eye!"
"He kicked me in the eye…." Maccus pointed to the faint traces of scratches on his pinkish-gray face. "And bit Clanker on his nose!"
Clanker nodded his agreement. "The Captain said to leave him alone. And that's what we've been doing. You touch that nut and you're asking fer trouble."
Norrington stared at the three men as he pondered if they were pulling some sort of joke on him, but they seemed serious. The blowfish man especially seemed fearful, but he found that hard to accept. Jones' crew had a reputation for being bloodthirsty, so why should a little rat scare them? It made no sense whatsoever. As experienced sailors, they should be used to seeing rats onboard a ship. "From now on I'm giving the orders on this ship and you'll obey them. We will not fear rats and bow to their whim, as their just rodents. Rats don't even eat coconuts."
"But this be a mutant rat!" Maccus insisted as he wrung his human hand and his crab-legged hand together. "It be leaving us alone at the moment! If ye go touch its nut, it'll start acting up again!"
Koleniko and Clanker nodded in agreement, worried expressions clear in their fish eyes.
"We will not cater to vermin." Norrington said as he walked over to the coil of rope and bent to pick up the coconut. As he did so, his heart thudded faster than normal and a bead of sweat ran down his back. He half expected some giant rat to jump out of the shadows and bite his hand as he touched the nut, and he hated that he felt that way. He shouldn't feel that way at all, but the environment of the Dutchman was working on his brain. The ship looked haunted; with weird shadows and green slime everywhere. The appearance of the crew didn't help any. It would have been better of they had been all fish. That would be easier to accept - but his mind saw the human bits of them and focused on those, so their fish-like deformities seemed all the worst. It was like working in a nightmare and now some part of him was reacting to their wild tale. Norrington's hand paused for a few scant seconds and then he touched the coconut. Its hairy shell was rough against his hand, the nut warm from the tropical Caribbean sun. His fingers closed around it and he straightened up, standing straight once more with the nut firmly grasped in his hand. His heart beat quickly as a moment passed and then another. Still, nothing happened. "You see? Nothing happened. Rats do not eat coconuts. Now there will be no more of this nonsense about mutant rats and areas being reserved for this rat. This ship needs to operate smoothly and for that we need all the deck and supplies, including this coil of rope."
Maccus, Clanker and Koleniko gawked at him with open mouths and frightened eyes. Then they exchanged glances.
"You best remember we warned you." Maccus added as backed away from the ship's new boss.
000
Scrat was struggling up the mast, a heavy nut balanced on top of his tiny head. It had been very difficult moving the bad nut out of the giant, unattended nut pile, but he had done so. It had crashed to the deck and then had rolled a way off, Scrat scampering after it. Pushing with all of his strength, he had managed to get it to roll towards the trunk of the weird tree; the tree that didn't have any leaves. The next part had been much harder. He had managed with great difficulty to get underneath the incredibly heavy nut and then had started climbing up the tree's massive trunk. The perfectly round nut balanced on top of his head precariously and Scrat feared it might fall. His limbs aching and pain shooting up his arms from his fingers, he freed a single paw and reached up a bit higher, digging his claws again into the tree's wood. He tested his grip and it felt secure, so he moved his right leg up a bit higher.
The giant nut wobbled unsteadily, Scrat's large egg eyes filling with fear. He was already more than halfway to the place he had claimed as his nut storage area, a place high above the human's heads. Scrat knew very little about humans but he knew they didn't climb trees very often. This tree in particular was barren with no ripe fruit they might desire. That made it safe. The little saber-toothed squirrel moved his head this way and that, trying to stop the black nut from falling. It started to roll off his forehead and in desperation he opened his mouth, catching it in his jaws. His neck started to disappear into his shoulders, the weight of the black nut pushing on him relentlessly. His jaws aching from being pushed open too widely, he tried in vain to see the tree he was clinging to, but the round nut blocked his vision.
It was a bad nut, Scrat feared, but perhaps it was still usable if he could open its hard shell somehow. Maybe they were not bad at all but just a new type he had never encountered before. With no mammoths handy to step on it for him, Scrat had been forced to think and to think hard. There were only a few ways to open nuts. The easiest and most common way was to bite it open, but these black nuts were just too hard. The second way was to have a mammoth step on the nut, the animal's large weight cracking it easily. The third way was to drop the nut off a glacier or from the top of a tree, the fall breaking the shell open when it landed. The danger with this method is that another hungry creature might steal the nut's meat before Scrat could get down safely to claim it as his meal. It had certainly happened to him before, but he felt he had little choice.
He also felt compelled to move all the nuts to safety. All those piles of nuts sitting on the strange wooden ground with humans walking past them! The humans could reach down and take one of the nuts at any moment, one of his nuts! It was too much for him to stand! So Scrat had started to move the big black nuts to safety high up in the tree where he had found a strange nest way up near the very top. It wasn't exactly a hollow tree, but something he had never seen before. It had walls of a sort, but the walls had gaps where the nuts could slip out. Still, it was better than nothing.
Whining to himself, Scrat struggled higher and higher, his aching paws forcing himself up and up. Finally the weird nest was just above him, his black nose striking its bottom side painfully. This was the most difficult part and Scrat didn't know if he had enough energy to go through with it. He had already rescued so many nuts from the human's neat little piles.
Humans were so stupid! Didn't they know one couldn't store nuts on the ground? They'd go bad! There had been some loud commotion earlier, all the weird-looking humans rushing off to one side to talk to some other humans. The senseless sounds they made grew in volume and they waved their paws in the air. Seeing as no one was watching him, Scrat started taking his nuts to safety.
And here he was now, another nut almost in his nut-storage area. Bravely he picked up another paw and moved it to the bottom of the nut storage that stuck outward from the tree. Normally climbing out over this overhang was not a problem at all, but the black nut in his jaws seemed to weigh as much as a mammoth by now. He was weak and tired, his muscles shaking with weariness. He needed to keep his head up, the nut pressed to the bottom of the overhang. If his neck muscles failed and his head tilted backward, the nut would roll right out of his jaws to fall all the way to the distant ground. The nut didn't fit into his jaws properly anyway as it was too large.
Slowly he inched out onto the bottom of the overhang, the immense weight trying to tear him free. Determined, Scrat made it to the edge and started pulling his body up over the precipice into one of the gaps that lined his nut storage area. More and more of his body was in the safe area, firm footing underneath, and then he collapsed with relief, all the air huffing out of his thin body. He lay there for long moments, the big black nut still partly in his jaws. His eyes closed and he rested, even his bushy tail was limp and lifeless.
After he had rested, Scrat pushed the black nut towards the others. His nut storage area was round with the tree's trunk smack dab in the middle. It seemed to be made of the same stuff as the odd ground down below, stuff that looked like wood. He would have to find something to fill up the open gaps in his storage area so the nuts wouldn't roll out. The tree itself continued up a bit higher and then it just stopped, the top perfectly flat like a piece of floating river ice. It was without doubt the weirdest tree he had ever seen! There were other trees, too, two more to be exact. The tree in the center was the tallest and the fattest around. Scrat hadn't explored that one yet as he had this one.
Rested somewhat, Scrat sat up on his haunches, his tail quivering. He needed to check on the humans. Scampering out, he ran down the tree with ease until he was once again on the weird circular platform that was about halfway up the tree. From here he could see almost everything on the ground. He peered over the edge and looked downward, his sharp eyes focusing automatically on his coil of rope nest. The old humans hadn't dared to touch his hairy nut, but new humans had arrived.
NO! One of them had his nut!
Taking careful aim, Scrat leaped off the edge of the platform and fell through the air towards the thief.
Scrat Strikes Again Part 2