The Alligator Smugglers and the Lost Alligators

THE IDEAL DAY

As I hope you know by now, the alligator smugglers are pink alligators who like to steal midnight blue ones. Now they have two nice alligators who actually wanted to be smuggled. And right now they have a lot of fun letting their "pets," the blue alligators, do all the housework while they drink coffee. They also go for rides in their time machine, which is also fun. They do this a lot, probably too much. Why, you will find you later.

The one thing that the screwy pink alligators miss is adventure. And the only thing they call real adventure is to hunt down blue alligators and steal them. Somehow, this adventure always seemed to fall into place.

But this time it didn't. They waited and waited and waited, and while they waited, Sam decided to make a list of an ideal day that he and Pete would very much enjoy, just to get their wishes of falling into an adventure up. Here it is:
Ideal Day

1 8:00--get up
2 8:30--drink morning coffee
3 9:00--walk the pets
4 10:00--eat brunch (coffee, french toast, and chicken noodle soup)
5 11:00--ADVENTURE TIME! Steal those alligators!
6 6:00--eat dinner (coffee, chicken noodle soup, and peanut butter sandwiches)
7 7:00--go on trip in time machine with pets
8 8:30--bedtime
Pete and Sam liked this sort of day so well that they slept with this list under their pillows to see if their dreams would come true (you know how if you think about something before you go to sleep you'll probably dream about it and you'll probably think about what's under your pillow, well, that's what they thought, too). Pete and Sam aren't known as the superstitious kind, but you never can tell.

One day, item number 5 on the Ideal day just totally came kersplat down the chimney and into the alligator smugglers' hideout. Just as soon, item number 3 disappeared. Why? You'll soon find out.

CLIMBING UP THE CABLE

The alligator smugglers woke up one morning and thought that something was wrong. Then Pete jumped up. "I know what's wrong!" he said. "The house is too silent."

They looked all around the house, but could not find the missing blue alligators. "I sure hope they didn't leave us, like the others," remarked Sam.

"If they did, we could look for them in our time machine," said Pete, so they immediately looked in the closet for the time machine. It wasn't there either!

Now the alligator smugglers, they wanted adventure, and there they had it! But it wasn't the kind of adventure that they wanted. They looked all over the hideout for their pets and the time machine, but they couldn't seem to find anything! They didn't even have time for their morning coffee, and that is important.

So these alligator smugglers, they sat around all day and sulked. There was nothing that they could do, until that night, that is. That night they heard an eerie moaning sound that sounded like their pet alligators! "Peeeeet! Saaaam!......Heeeellllp!" the sound said, but they couldn't hear the voice very clearly. They jumped up in their pajamas and ran all around the house and even in the yard looking for the voice. But it seemed like wherever they went the voice got dimmer and dimmer until it stopped altogether. Discouraged, the alligator smugglers went back to bed. In their room they heard their pet alligators more clearly than ever! "We got stranded in time," they said. "Climb up the cable of the time machine and connect it where it got broken. Then climb up the rest of the way and get us back to the correct time." At first the alligators could not take all this information in and were so stunned that they made no reply. But Sam recovered first, and whispered to Pete, "you know the cable in our dining room? Why didn't we think of climbing up that in the first place?"

So the alligator smugglers immediately started climbing up the cable. Pete was in such a hurry that he almost fell off once or twice, but he didn't. Of course both of them were very much excited. Since the cable was always turning around (they didn't know what made it turn around or how to stop it, since, as you should know if you've read the book before this, they got the whole time machine used), they couldn't go very fast.

Very soon Pete and Sam got to the break in the cable and Sam fixed it. "But remember," Sam said, "That break in the cable was awful early up. We still have a very long ways to go." This made Pete hurry very fast, too fast, in fact. Once Pete lost his grip with all but one foot. The foot wasn't strong enough to stay on with the cable whizzing around like it did, and Pete went flying off into nothingness before Sam could stop him!

PLANET LZ

Pete found himself whizzing off into space without even one of the steering wheels that they had made to guide him. A moment later he found himself on solid ground with a sign almost ready to bump his nose that said "Planet LZ." Now Pete had never before heard of Planet LZ and if you look in all the other alligator smuggler stories before this one you will find that LZ has never even been mentioned in them. Anyway, Pete kept on reading the sign and it said, "Planet of the Ghosts. Beware!" Well, that got Pete really scared, and he couldn't wait until he got back on the cable, if he ever did.

Then Pete saw a mean ferocious glare (whatever that is) coming toward him. Pete yelled and ducked under a bush. He was safe for the time being, but he didn't know how long that would be.
Meanwhile Sam was thinking of how he could get Pete back. He thought a long time, and finally thought of something. He went back down the cable (which took a while) and got some rope at the hideout. Then he went back up the cable (which also took a while, probably longer) and fastened the start of the rope to the cable. Then he started to crawl down the rope inch by inch. He was trying to get the rope to reach wherever Pete was.

So inch by inch Sam crawled down the rope and reached Planet LZ. He barely had time to tie the rope to a bush before he also saw the big ferocious glare. He quickly ducked under the bush that he had tied the rope to and found out that someone else was in the bush. Sam breathed a sigh of relief when he found that it was Pete.

"Let's get out of here quick," said Pete, and I'll tell you, Sam really agreed. When they were about to climb upp the rope they both noticed the glare again. Pete grabbed the rope quickly, but Sam took another look at the glare.

"It's only the glare of a mirror," he told Pete, and turned around just in time to see the rope swinging away! He barely had time to jump on before it was out of his reach! After that they had a hard journey upward because the bottom end of the rope wasn't attached to anything. When they reached the cable they could not see any end of it as it reached up into the sky. They were both totally exhausted as well. But they realized that they would have to keep moving or they would fall off!

OFF TO THE WILDERNESS

Pete and Sam crept up the cable while it kept going around and around. They were very, very tired, and it seemed as if it took hours until they got to the top. By the time they did, they were puffing away like a steam motor engine, and it was a great wonder that they hadn't fallen off more than once. But anyway, guess what they found when they got to the top of the cable and saw their time machine? Nothing! Their alligator pets were no longer there! Pete said sarcastically, "We go to all this trouble to find our pets, and here they are trying to trick us!" Sam was about to reply when they found themselves both going down to the ground in the time machine! When they got down to the ground they found that they were someplace in the late 1700's (you could tell because the Revolutionary War was going on). Anyway, Pete wanted to scoot out quick in the time machine, but Sam stopped him. "If our pets tried to get away or got lost in time, and they haven't used the time machine again, then they must be somewhere around here, right?" Pete reluctantly agreed since he loved to loved to use the time machine but had to admit that Sam was right.

Just then Sam noticed a very thick forest with a mountain close by. "If they went anywhere, it was probably here," he said, looking at the view. So they immediately started into the thick forest, with bullets ringing by their sides and explosions exploding. Gradually the sounds and dangers of the Revolutionary War subsided as they walked farther into the wilderness. Only there was one other unknown danger, and they couldn't figure out what it was. As they walked on they kept seeing signs like, "If you go any further you will find out your fate," "You are dangerously close to something terrible," "You'd better turn back!" and finally "Beware" and just plain "DANGER." Then all of a sudden they started seeing signs like this: "1 mile to Dark Forest," "1/2 mile to Dark Forest." Pete and Sam wondered what the Dark Forest was, and they were awful scared because they knew the signs that said "Beware" were meant for the Dark Forest. When they finally reached a sign that said "1 foot to Dark Forest" they decided to camp down for the night and maybe they would feel less scared if they had some rest. They quickly got out their pullover sleeping bags and went to bed. But little did they know that the Dark Forest was the most ghastly forest in the whole universe.

THE CAVE

The alligator smugglers woke up the next morning fully refreshed and ready for some adventure. And when they saw the sign that said "1 foot to Dark Forest" they were ready to go, so they immediately started off into its new dangers.

Well this Dark Forest looked like any old forest to Pete and Sam as they walked through it. They couldn't find anything different about it. Sam suggested that maybe that was just the name and it didn't mean anything (mountains have names so forests can too, can't they?) but Pete didn't like that idea. "I bet there's panthers and jaguars waiting up in the trees for us to walk under them and then they'll pounce on us," said Pete. They looked up in the treees, but they could not see any panthers or jaguars.

Finally they got to the mountain that they had seen earlier, only this time they could see what looked like a small cave in the side of it. Caves can be, of course, scary, but Sam jumped in because he liked adventure. Pete hastily looked around to see if there were any panthers or jaguars following him, then he ran into the cave too. They found out that it was just an ordinary, rather big, cave with a small entrance. But they decided to do a little exploring and a second later Sam called to Pete from the other end of the cave. He had found a trap door! They opened it just time to hear a very faint "Pete! Sam!" and then it disappeared altogether. But at least they were getting closer to their pets!

Pete and Sam fell through the trap door and found themselves billowing down a little chute! Soon they slid into a pretty large room that had stuff that possibly Indians had painted on the walls. One of the paintings showed a red dragon and above it the words "Dark Forest"! Pete and Sam didn't know that the dark forest was that dangerous! But they had to find their pet alligators quickly, so they tried to find a way out of the room. They found a door that they could barely swing open, but when they did they found themselves at the bottom of a long spiral staricase. They immediately started up it, but they got tired real quick. When they finally got to the top of the staircase, they were huffing and puffing so much you wouldn't know they were alligators!

They they opened another door and entered a very small room with only a small hole in the opposite wall as an exit. They could barely squeeze through, but when they did, they found themselves in a room so large that they could not see the end of it. There were stalagmites and icicles hanging everywhere, and it was really a weird place. They walked and walked and walked through the room, if you could call it a room. It was too long to be a room. Suddenly they thought they saw a torch glowing in the distance, if only for a second. Then they were falling through nothingness. The room had abruptly ended without a wall, and now they were falling through the sky. Suddenly they bumped against the ground, and they saw the start of a tunnel leading away from them. They started walking down it, and after a while they could hear the faint voices of their pets! There was a tunnel that branched off of the tunnel they were on, and they took it because that was the direction the voices were coming from. When they finally got to the room that their pets were in they started to dance around they were so happy. But their pets stopped them. "How are we going to get out?" they asked.

"Easy," Same replied.

But the pets explained. "Did you see that torch when you were in the icicle room?" Sam and Pete nodded. "Behind that is the sheriff, and he's looking all over for us. It sure looks like we're at a dead end now."

But Sam and Pete were convinced not to give up.

BACK TOGETHER

Sam immediately began looking for some way to get out of the room they were in besides the way they had entered (the sheriff was probably about to come in that way any second) and told the others to look, too. They all said okay except for Pete, so he turned around to see where Pete was. He was nowhere in sight!

Just then one of the pets yelled that he had found something. They all pushed on the section of wall he had located and, sure enough, it opened. But they would have to hurry! Sam could almost feel the muzzle of the sheriff's gun against him.

They found themselves at the start of a long tunnel, and they kept seeing signs that showed what rooms they were about to pass. The tunnel turned and twisted, and without warning they saw a huge sign that said:
THE SHERIFF
------->
And just as suddenly Sam had an idea. Why didn't they just go in there and mess up all the sheriff's stuff and take all his papers and burn them! It was a good idea, and he was willing to try it. The only bad thing that happened was that the sheriff almost caught them in the act. But they escaped, and the rest of the journey through the tunnel was okay. When they got to the end of the tunnel they found Pete waiting for them. Pete had fooled the sheriff into following him, for Pete was a fast runner.

While they walked they talked the rest of the way (through the Dark Forest and back, or I should say forward, in time) and the blue alligators told about their adventures. They had waited for Sam and Pete in the time machine until "We decided that you weren't going to come so we took a walk. We got through the dark forest and when we noticed the cave we thought it would be a nice place to stay so we went in, but the sheriff spotted us so we had to keep on going deep into the cave. By the way, we found out what is in the dark forest."

Sam and Pete nodded. "We did too."

"We're passing the dragon's cave right now," on of the pets said. And guess what? There was a blue alligator in there! But as I have written enough I won't write anymore except that all major alligators in this story are now back at the hideout. The alligator smugglers are now telling their pets that using the time machine is a no-no. But they are going to leave their cable in the dining room, just in case!

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