The Alligator Smugglers Go to the North Pole

THE LETTER

Pete and Sam are alligator smugglers. At least, they are most of the time. But sometimes they have various adventures up at the North Pole for Santa Claus. And this time they will use their adventure to the "alligator smuggling" convenience.

If you have read the book before this about the alligator smugglers, you would know that Pete and Sam had had some green orangutans as pets. But as this story begins, Pete and Sam are dining at MacDonald's. They were having a quite enjoyable time until they got home and realized that their oranguatans were gone! They didn't know quite how it happened, but the orangutans had somehow escaped.

Just then the mailman arrived. He handed an envelope to Pete. "It looks like a letter from--from Santa Claus, I guess," Pete said. He had a kind of hard time reading the address as he was holding the envelope upside down.

Once the mailman left, Pete opened the letter. "Here Sam, you read it," he said, shoving the letter into Sam's hand. It said:

Dear friends:

You very well know that is is near Christmas time, but I am catching the flu. Just yesterday my sleigh broke down, and I am at my worst. Even Mrs. Claus is sick. It is a good thing my reindeer are still healthy. My elves are on a journey to the South Pole now, and I have no idea where they are. My toys are still not finished! Could you please come up for a few days and help?

Thank you, Santa Claus.

"Santa Claus sure picked a bad time to write that letter," grumbled Pete.

"He had to do it," said Sam. "Come on! Are you Santa Claus's friend, or not?"

So Pete and Sam started packing. It took quite a long time, as they did not know how long they were going to stay. "I suppose I'd better take along our sled, just in case we end up bringing the presents to everybody," said Sam.

"Do you think I should bring along my stuffed reindeer, just in case one of the reindeer gets sick?" asked Pete.

"Sure," replied Sam.

Finally they had everything packed and ready. They hitched a ride with an elephant who was headed north. "But it's getting too cold," the elephant said much too soon. "Maybe you could ask that polar bear over ther." So the polar bear carried the smugglers the rest of the journey, and soon they were at the North Pole.

THE CONTRACT

"Welcome, friends," said Santa claus when Pete and Sam knocked on the door ("You'd wonder if he knew our names," whispered Sam to Pete.) "Come in."

Pete and Sam entered and sat on some chairs that Santa Claus had set out for them. Nobody said anything for at least five minutes, as they hadn't seen each other for quite a while, until finally Sam spoke up. "You sent us here for something, Santa Claus," he said. "What is it?"

Then Santa Claus began in his deep, troubled voice that he sometimes has, "As you heard in my letter, everything is seeming to go wrong. I cannot get all the toys made by Christmas time unless someone helps me. So I decided that maybe you would like to. And you can begin by glueing the wheels on the little toy cars and putting together the baseball gloves. How about it?"

"Fine," said Sam. "Let's get going, Pete."

So they ran to the workshop and did what Santa had told them to do. It was much too easy, a lot easier than they had expected. Within three days they had carried out all of Santa's orders and finished making all the toys and candy.

"Well, we didn't come all the way up here for only three days," said Sam. And then he got an idea. "Hey, Pete," he said. "I know what we could do. We could make a contract to all the blue alligators we can find (Pete and Sam try to steal blue alligators because they are so rare) that says to come to our house for dinner. Of course, we wouldn't sign our name. Then they'd know it was us. We'd just tell 'em our address. Of course, we wouldn't really only have dinner with 'em. We'd steal 'em."

"Sounds like a fantastic idea to me," said Pete.

So they made some contracts, but they didn't tell Santa Claus because he was everybody's friend. (Pete and Sam are everybody's friend too, only they like to steal blue alligators.) The contracts looked like this:
CONTRACT

You are invited to come to dinner at this address:

68200329 South Alligator Ave.
Alligatorville, Alligatosaurus 29803
 "Great," said Pete. "Now what day is it today?"

"It's the--the 24th," stammered Sam. "Al--already? Let's get going!"

"CHRISTMAS DON'T BE LATE"

"Hurry! Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!" Pete and Sam's voices sounded like fire engines and resembled one, too, because their voices drained on and on. "Santa Claus, wake up!" yelled Pete. But Santa Claus showed no signs of waking up. "Wake up!" Same hollered in his ear. All that Santa Claus said was, "ghghghhghhhh! the closet...shhheeeew costughghhghhhhh! You do ishheeeeew" (the strange sounds in there is Santa Claus's snoring).

"What was he saying?" asked Pete.

"I think he was trying to say that we should deliver the toys and that the Santa Claus costumes are in the closet," said Sam. So they lost no time in changing clothes and packing the toys on Santa's sleigh. When they finally had all of the toys packed and Sam was getting ready to go (he was the alligator to steer the sleigh), Sam realized that the sleigh was sagging in the middle. Suddenly he remembered what Santa had told him in the letter, "just yesterday my sleigh broke down." Oh, no! And it was already pitch black. He squinted at his watch to see the time. What? It was eleven-thirty already! "Come on, Pete, let's get going!" yelled Sam. "We'll have to make do!"

They had about a quarter of toys given to the boys and girls in the world when Sma looked at his watch again. It was two-thirty already! Sam didn't think they could pull it off. He called Pete and said, "Why don't we separate here? You could take some toys and I could have some toys and we could both get done faster."

So they separated. The only problem was that, when Pete tried to slide down the chimneys, he sometimes got stuck. "I wonder how Santa can slide these things so easily but I can't, and I'm skinnier," wondered Pete. But he managed.

Pretty soon Pete had all his packages delivered and started to the place where he and Sam had agreed to meet. There was no sign or trace of Sam. Pete looked everywhere for him but could not find him. "Maybe Sam is not finished with his packages yet," he thought as he waited. As it became lighter and lighter Pete became restless. Finally, he decided that Sam had probably gone back to the North Pole. As he was about to depart he heard some scrambling in a chimney. A moment later Sam's head popped up.

THE PARTY

"Hurry, Pete! Back to the North Pole!" Sam yelled. "That was a blue alligator's house, and I think they saw me! I was a bit noisy going down the chimney so they woke up. I just barely had time to slip a contract in their stockings!"

Pete and Sam ran away from the house as fast as they could, forgetting the sled. "That was my last house," Sam said breathlessly.

When the smugglers returned, Santa Claus was a little upset that they were so late and that they had forgotten his sled, but as I said, Santa Claus is a friend to everybody. Santa congratulated them and said that as it was their first time they had done quite well.

Then there was a knock at the door. Santa Claus hurried to open it. And can you guess who it was?

Why, it was the whole midnight blue alligator crew! "We came to give everyone a party," they said. "And even Pete and Sam." They told how they had seen Pete and Sam run from their house and how they had seen the contract in their stocking. They also gave Santa Claus back the sled and even returened the elves from the South Pole! They doctored Mr. and Mrs. Claus to good health and then came a special surprise for the alligator smugglers. Their orangutans were back! "We were hiding in the garden all the time," they explained. Then there was another contract for the smugglers:
CONTRACT

This contract will be useful for getting four blue alligators, the best in the world.
Note: must all go together
Signed, the whole blue alligator crew
 Pete and Sam immediately used the contract. They considered themselves the most fortunate alligators in the world. And they took great care of their orangutans and alligators.

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