* this is a story that my friends Rachel and Annalee and I wrote in 5th grade.
Rebekah, Rachel, and Annalee aren’t your ordinary vets. Instead of having an office where animals came to them, they travel around the world and help animals. They also love animals so much that they’ll risk their own lives for them. Annalee has a baby pink flamingo named Pinky, Rachel has a tiny hamster named Sunflower, and Rebekah has a calico cat named Speckles. Luckily for Sunflower and Pinky, Speckles doesn’t see the point of chasing birds or hamsters. But their real adventure started when they found a raccoon caught in a trap, still alive. They were concentrating so hard on getting the raccoon out of the trap that they didn’t notice eyes peering out at them from the bushes. That is, they didn’t notice until they were surrounded by poachers. They screamed and jumped up, but it was too late. One of the men had already thrown a net around them… except for Pinky.
Pinky was a brave flamingo. She started to run as fast as she could to get help. Pinky didn’t notice how fast she was running until she looked at the ground. She remembered something her mom had told her, you have a superpower. Pinky didn’t realize what it was until now-- Super Speed! Pinky noticed something behind her, it was Sunflower. Sunflower was small enough to fit through the net. Pinky waited until Sunflower had caught up. Together they ran for help. Pinky wondered if Sunflower had powers.
Soon they got to the closest town. The town was Plainsville. It was a surprise that Plainsville was the closest place because Pinky had a cousin there. Pinky ran inside the building that her cousin was in. She came out very fast. Sunflower noticed that Pinky’s cousin could run as fast as Pinky.
“Sorry, I haven’t introduced myself. My name is Cheetah,” said Pinky’s cousin said. Sunflower wondered why his name was Cheetah, but Pinky answered that.
“He is called Cheetah because he can run fast too,” Pinky explained. Then suddenly two poachers jumped out of the bushes in front of them. They didn’t see Sunflower so they both tried to catch the two flamingos. Pinky tried to escape through some bushes while Cheetah still fought. Then the poacher that tried to catch Pinky spotted Sunflower, but then Sunflower disappeared! While the poacher looked for Sunflower, Pinky came out of nowhere and rammed into the poacher and knocked him out. After that one poacher was out of the fight, Pinky and Sunflower went to Cheetah’s aid. This poacher was harder to get down than the other poacher, but after another ten minutes work, they were able to run away with both poachers on the ground. With help of the flamingos and Sunflower, Rebekah, Annalee, and Rachel were able to get out of the net. After a few minutes, they were ready to go.
They started running. Then out of nowhere, more poachers sprang out and tied blind folds around the girls’ eyes and ropes around their wrists. They caught Pinky, and scooped up Sunflower, but they had never seen Speckles before so she remained hidden in Rebekah’s backpack. As for Cheetah, he had already vanished from the scene.
Rebekah, Rachel, and Annalee were shoved forward. After they had walked a long ways, they were led up a ramp and pushed into a little room… on a ship! When they got the blind folds off, they realized the ship was sinking! Pinky and Sunflower were in cages.
“There’s a little hole around where the mast goes through,” Rachel pointed out. Just then, Sunflower squeezed out of the cage. She scrambled up the pole, through the hole, and started nibbling away. Finally the hole was big enough for Speckles to get through. Luckily, unlike most cats, Speckles did not get scared and stuck in trees, or in this case, sails. She picked up Sunflower in her mouth and jumped down. (Cats always land on their feet!) They dashed over to the little room the girls were trapped in. Using their teeth and claws, they picked the lock and got the door open. By now the ship was filling up with water. How were they going to survive? They were far from land… or wait, was that an island? Yes, it was! They would have to swim. Quickly Annalee dashed into the office and snatched the first key she could find. It wasn’t the right one, but it worked to pick the lock. Rachel put Sunflower in Pinky’s beak, just as the ship went completely underwater. Pinky started flying, Speckles did the dog paddle, (she’s not scared of water either,) and Rebekah, Rachel, and Annalee swam whatever stroke they wanted. Finally they felt sand under their feet, and pulled themselves up onto what they thought was a deserted island.
They all collapsed onto the sand because they were all exhausted from swimming that much. Speckles was the first one to feel better so she looked for a tree with coconuts in it. About four yards away she saw a tall tree with at least ten coconuts in it. She climbed up the tree in a flash. She cracked open the coconut with her claws. Then, all of a sudden, a little monkey thing came shooting out. This monkey was weird because it was pink! The coconut fell out of the tree as the monkey flew closer to Speckle’s face. When the monkey was about six inches away, Speckles whapped the monkey away. The monkey clung to a branch.
“Sorry,” squeaked the monkey. The little monkey helped bring down the other coconuts and when they got over to the kids, Sunflower squealed and disappeared into thin air!
“Sunflower, come out, the monkey is my friend,” Speckles said. Sunflower appeared and said, “Sorry, I just don’t like strangers.”
“Did you see that? Sunflower disappeared!” Rachel gasped.
“Not only that, but we could understand Speckles and Sunflower talk!” Rebekah added. She stared at the little pink monkey next to Speckles.
“Isn’t that monkey so cute?! I’ve never seen a pink monkey before!” Annalee said. Then the monkey darted off.
“Wait, come back!” Rebekah yelled. Soon the little monkey came back, with a friend. It was a maroon monkey. The second monkey looked at the animals huddled together and then at the girls. Seeming to recognize them, his face spread into an evil grin.
“Hello,” the monkey said, in a voice that made Pinky squawk in fear and sent shivers down the girls’ backs.
“Don’t be shocked, Pinky. Island monkeys speak English. Let me introduce myself. My name is Voldevadar,” the new monkey said.
“And I’m Gum,” the little monkey piped up.
Voldevadar glared at him, then continued, “Come to our home. You can stay with us.”
“No thank you,” all three girls said.
“Oh, please come!” Gum begged.
“After all, you have nowhere else to go,” Voldevadar said slyly. So the girls and their animals followed reluctantly, for two reasons: Gum seemed so nice, so they just couldn’t refuse, and Voldevadar was right, there was nowhere else for them to go. It was rainy, cold, and there was no other shelter. But still, as they followed, they felt like they were walking right into another trap.
When they got to Voldevadar’s home, all the girls had a bad feeling about the place. First of all, it was creepy, cold, wet, and no one knew what time it was. Pinky told Annalee that she didn’t like this place. Annalee told her that she didn’t like it either.
Voldevadar’s house was in a tree, but it seemed to have “Evil” written all over it, as Rachel said. It was so dark and gloomy. Voldevadar invited them into his home. They had to climb some steps on the tree to get to the home.
When they all got inside, they sat on what they thought was a couch. (It was too lumpy to tell.)
Rachel whispered, “I still can’t believe that Sunflower can disappear, and then appear again!”
“I know!” Annalee whispered back.
“So, what are your names?” Voldevadar asked in a low, rumbling voice.
“Um, well, my name is Rachel, and this is Annalee,” Rachel said pointing to Annalee. “And this is Rebekah.”
“And what are you doing, sailing the oceans in winter?” asked Voldevadar.
“Winter?! But it’s the middle of July!” Rebekah exclaimed. The other girls nodded.
“Oh, but not on Monkopia!” squeaked Gum.
“Monkopia? What is that?” asked Annalee.
“It is our island of course!” exclaimed Voldevadar.
Knock, knock, knock.
Someone was at the door. Gum bounced over, with Voldevadar right on his tail.
Creeeeeak!
Gum opened the door. A large black monkey was at the door, holding a light-blue monkey by its tail, dripping with water.
“I found this one wandering in the mushroom forest,” boomed the black monkey. The black monkey pushed the blue monkey inside and then stomped away. The little monkey stumbled and looked up. The little monkey trembled as Voldevadar glared down at her.
“Um, Voldevadar, don’t you have to get yourself a snack?” squeaked Gum.
“Oh, yes,” sighed Voldevadar, still glaring at the blue monkey. Voldevadar moved swiftly out of the room.
“Sky has had a hard time with Voldevadar,” Gum whispered to the others. The little blue monkey, named Sky, gulped in deep breaths.
“Oh, and I wouldn’t sit on that couch if I were you. It snaps on people, (and monkeys,) and traps them. It’s what Voldevadar thinks as funny to watch.” They all jumped off the couch.
“Here, I’ll show you,” whispered Gum. Gum got a long stick and threw it at the couch. Nothing happened. The stick just sat there. Then, suddenly, the couch clamped down on the stick and held it captive in its jaws. The others gulped.
“Okay,” Gum said, as though nothing had happened. “What do you want to know?”
“Who was that black monkey and why is being in the mushroom forest a bad thing?” Annalee asked.
“You don’t know? The black monkey is King Voldevadar’s top knight, Darknight.” Gum said. “And the mushroom forest is forbidden to everyone but Voldevadar and his guards.”
“Then what was Sky doing in there?” Rebekah asked.
“I can answer that,” Sky said softly. “I think Voldevadar is planning an attack. I was looking for clues.”
“But where do you sleep?” Rachel asked. Although she hated the thought of sleeping with someone who might be planning an attack, she would also hate it if she didn’t get to sleep at all.
“I’ll show you,” Gum said, and he led them to a door, which surprisingly opened to show them outside, where some thick branches held hammocks where lots of pink and blue monkeys were sleeping in the moonlight.
Gum went up to a big pink monkey and said, “Mom, me and Sky brought some friends!”
“That’s great!” Mom said. Then she looked up and saw the three girls, a cat, a hamster, and a pink flamingo. “Oh, but I don’t think you’ll all fit in here.” So she helped them spread out some more hammocks.
For the next few days, they helped Gum and Sky work, and then slept in the hammocks. But then one night they awoke to monkey squeals and shouts. Nets were swooping down and scooping up monkeys. Without thinking, Pinky flew up and attacked a net. She pecked harder and harder at the thick rope until it snapped and the monkeys inside climbed gratefully out. Speckles climbed up onto a branch and jumped from there onto a net and bit through it with her razor-sharp teeth. Rebekah, Annalee, and Rachel gathered the monkeys that fell and put them on their hammocks. They were safe there; the nets couldn’t get them under the thick branches.
“What about me?” Sunflower asked.
“Go distract Voldevadar and whoever else!” Rachel shouted down to her.
So Sunflower jumped onto a net, and moved through it quickly. The nets swung around, but she hung on. Nobody would notice a little hamster.
Up in Voldevadar’s house, he sat around a table with Darknight and the rest of the black monkeys, pulling levers that controlled the nets. Sunflower scampered around until she was behind Voldevadar, and then said in her loudest voice, “Leave my friends alone!”
Voldevadar turned slowly around to see a little hamster standing behind him with its paws on its hips.
“Darknight, get your guards and chase this hamster away,” Voldevadar ordered. All the black monkeys jumped up and ran after Sunflower. She darted all around the house, turning invisible every so often so that they would get confused and wouldn’t catch her. Finally she came to a big branch that hung out over the ocean. She ran to the end and pretended to throw herself off the branch and into the sea, but she really turned invisible right before she fell, so the guards, thinking that she fell, dove into the ocean after her. Sunflower ran back to Rebekah, Rachel, and Annalee. They had just gotten all the monkeys on their safe hammock and were getting ready to jump, when suddenly spikes came up from the ground, Voldevadar’s face appearing at the top of the tree. He was laughing, laughing at them as he sent down things to rip off the branches that hid the girls’ hammock from the nets. Then Annalee had an idea. She reached into her backpack and pulled out a long bandage. She put it in Pinky’s beak and claws, telling her to fly to the next tree. She landed and the girls and animals swung across just before Voldevadar’s machine ripped the last of the branches off. They swung from branch to branch, until they were in the last tree.
“What do we do?” Rebekah asked, panting.
“I think there’s an underground tunnel somewhere around here,” Sky said.
Speckles jumped to the ground and started sniffing.
“I found it!” she called, and started digging. Soon she came to a large stone disc. She pried it open and found that the disc was actually some kind of lid, hiding the entrance to the tunnel. A long, dark passageway opened before them.
Rachel leaned over the hole. “Where does it go?”
“I don’t know,” said Sky. “But it’s our only hope.” And they all climbed in.
It was a dark and creepy tunnel.
“Did you hear that?” Rachel suddenly asked after walking for a few minutes.
“I didn’t hear anything,” Annalee said. “But we’d better keep going.”
BOOM! CRACK! BOOM! CRACK!
A loud banging sound came from the side of the tunnel.
“What was that!?” Rebekah cried out.
They all froze in their tracks. The tapping came again, and then dirt was blasted from the wall, and, after the dust had cleared, a rat appeared. It was three times the size of a normal rat. The rat jumped and grabbed Sunflower in its paws and ran down the tunnel and out of sight. Speckles ran after it.
“Speckles, come back!” Rebekah shouted, and rushed after her.
“Rebekah, wait for me!” Rachel yelled, and zoomed down the tunnel after her.
“Rachel, wait!” Annalee shouted, and went as fast as she could to catch up to her.
“Anna SQUAWK! Come back!” Pinky screeched, and ran after her as fast as her fast legs would take her.
“Hey! Where are you guys all going?!” all the monkeys shouted.
“Catch rat, SQUAWK!” Pinky called over her shoulder.
So the monkeys ran after Pinky. Finally they saw a light, and the rat dropped Sunflower and ran down another dark tunnel, the light being too bright for it. Rebekah caught up with Speckles, and pushed the lid all the way off. Everybody clambered out as fast as they could.
“I remember this place!” Annalee exclaimed. “This is right by the beach where we rescued that stranded dolphin!”
Just then, the monkeys climbed out and fell down, exhausted. Or so it seemed.
“What’s wrong?” Rachel asked.
“Monkopia is very different from this place. We can’t survive here,” Gum whispered in a barely audible voice.
“Okay, get back in the tunnel and I’ll call some zoologists to catch Voldevadar. Then we can go back and live on Monkopia,” Annalee said, taking charge.
Pretty soon some men were there. Rebekah and Speckles led them to Monkopia, while Rachel and Annalee followed with the monkeys. A few minutes later, the zoologists had Voldevadar in a cage. But there was a second cage, full of Darknight’s men, and Darknight himself. But they were shorter, fatter, and not as muscular as they had looked earlier.
“Please don’t lock us up,” pleaded Darknight. “Voldevadar hypnotized us. He forced us to help him. The hamster saved us by making us fall into the ocean, as salt water is the only remedy to being hypnotized. Please! We will be your servants! We are only gardeners, not guards!” All the other black monkeys started to cry.
“Do you have any evidence?” Rachel asked.
“You see that tree? It’s dead,” Darknight said.
“So, the tree’s dead,” Rachel said, a bit confused, but she opened the cage. The monkeys quickly dug down around the roots, and one of them pulled out an old, brown, rotten banana that had been tangled up in the roots. The tree behind them started turning green. All the monkeys gathered around the monkey with the banana.
“Banana!” They chorused. Then the monkey holding the banana looked down at it. “Old banana,” he said, and tossed it behind him. Then he picked up a new banana off the tree, newly grown.
“Banana!” they sang again.
“Okay, you’re hired.” Rachel said.
And they all lived peacefully. They built a house for Rebekah, Rachel, and Annalee, sewed some new hammocks for the monkeys, and got a helicopter and a landing pad with lots of carriers. (Gum, Sky, Pinky, Sunflower, and Speckles always went with the girls on their animal rescues while Darknight and his gardeners looked after the rest of the monkeys.) The poachers that had tried to kill them were put in prison, and a law was passed that said, “If Rebekah, Rachel, or Annalee was letting an animal out of your trap, you had to let them, and if you don’t, your hunting license will be taken away.”
So they all lived animally ever after.
