Joey the Motor Home Mouse

by Jack E. Tetirick

Overview

Do you speak mouse? Well, you may want to learn after reading this tale of narrow escapes, excitement, and discovery.

Joey is born an ordinary little mousethe eighth of nine ordinary little micein an old barn on a dark and stormy night. Lightning struck and thunder bellows as Joey came into the world. Only a few feet away were fi ve cats, and on the other side of the barn was a huge dog. Poor Joey was surrounded by terrors. Little did the frightened little mouse know as he huddled with his brothers and sisters for warmth that he was destined to become something more than ordinary; that he was going to become something great.

In a series of adventures and misadventures, Joey meets an interesting and unlikely cast of friends who help him on his journey to fame. Learn the true meaning of friendship as Joey uses love, courage, and common sense to win the respect of those around him, even in the face of unthinkable odds.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781475937046
Publisher:	iUniverse, Incorporated
Publication date:	07/25/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	110
File size:	4 MB
Age Range:	3 Months to 18 Years

About the Author

Jack E. Tetirick graduated with honor from Harvard Medical School. He later trained in surgery at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. He currently lives, works, and writes in rural Ohio.

Read an Excerpt

JOEY the MOTOR HOME MOUSE

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By Jack E. Tetirick

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2012 Jack E. Tetirick
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4759-3703-9

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Chapter One

Adventure Number 1:

Joey Is Born

It was a dark and stormy night when Joey was born. Thunderclouds billowed in the blackness, and jagged streaks of lightning ignited; then the roar of thunder was heard, followed by silence—except for the swishing of windswept rain. Joey was the eighth little mouse out of a litter of nine, so you see, he very nearly missed being born at all—or at least not until the next time.

The thunder was so loud it could be heard inside the ball of paper and feathers that served as the mouse family's nest. The ball lay deep underneath a pile of loose straw that had been left, forgotten, in the corner of the barn.

The thunder actually shook the little ball with every blast, but Joey's mother only moved softly to make room for her newest baby. Little did she realize that this tiny little fellow was destined to be one of the greatest mice that ever lived: widely traveled, well educated, and as famous as any mouse could ever hope to be ... but that is information for further on in the story. For right now, he was just a little mouse, hungry and frightened. He didn't know it, but he was very happy that he didn't have to be famous or brave yet; all he had to do was wriggle in among his brothers and sisters to keep warm and to get something to eat. Which he did.

The storm raged on; the huge bolts of lightning raced across the sky and were quickly swallowed by huge claps of thunder. The rain continued in wavering sheets, smashing against the aged wood of the old barn, spraying through tiny cracks and clattering against the rusty metal roof.

At the far end of the barn, old Buck, a huge golden retriever, stood up and shook himself thoroughly. All of the noise irritated him. It was tough to be on guard duty with all of that noise! Anything could be going on! He shook again briefly and lay back down, but he kept an eye open, watching the flashes of lightning through the cracks in the sagging doors.

In the manger to the side, a feed trough was filled with stale hay, ignored now that there were no horses. In it was a much larger nest, one that would have filled a market basket—and it was filled with cats! Even in the very dim light, there peered five pairs of softly glowing orange-yellow eyes.

This was Billie Joe's family: her daughter, Charlie, and her three grand-kittens, King, Fred, and Ruby.

Right now they weren't thinking about their names at all. They had missed their supper up at the farmhouse because of the rainstorm. They had had a dousing before they could scramble back to the nest, and after they crawled in, the hay had become all damp and sticky. They were, to be blunt about it, beginning to get into a bad mood.

Fred, the middle cat in the litter of Charlie's kittens, was the most adventurous. Even when he was in a bad mood, as he now was, he was very rarely mean about it; mostly he was just ornery, as he was about to be now.

Peering down through the dimness from the food trough, Fred could barely see Buck's big tail lying on the barn floor. It was a huge tail, about the size of a baseball bat, except that it narrowed to a point at the end. Buck was very proud of his tail; he had seen it admired often and been told how beautiful it was. As a result, he waved it around a lot. Right now, though, the tail was lying quietly on the dusty floor and barely moving, except at the precious tip.

All in all, this was just too much for Fred to resist. He eased over the rough wooden edge of the food trough and coiled into a crouch. Then, in a great arching leap, he stretched across the gloom, landing squarely on the tail, giving it a quick nip and two lightning-fast raps with the claws of his left paw (Fred is left-handed). He then darted off to the side.

"Arrough!" went Buck, loud enough to shake the barn—if it had not already been shaking from the rainstorm. Buck leaped to his feet and spun around twice in a tight circle. "Rrough!" he said again, but not quite as loud because he had just seen Fred crouched in the corner. Buck took a big breath, almost like a sigh. "Doggone it, Fred, I wish you wouldn't jump on my tail like that, particularly when there is all of this noise outside, and I'm supposed to be guarding this barn!"

"From what?" asked Fred. He was still in a bad mood.

"Well," replied Buck, slightly puzzled, "from someone stealing something!"

"In this dump?" asked Fred.

Buck nodded, angling his head down toward a long stretch in the dimness, where there gleamed a beautiful motor home. He waved his tail twice to make certain it wasn't damaged. "Someone might try to steal that," he suggested.

"No way," countered Fred. "There's no gas in it, and the battery is dead. It takes your pal a week just to get it ready, remember?"

"Just the same," argued Buck, "that's my job, and I try to do it right. And you don't help a bit when you scare me like that. What if I had snapped at you and hurt you?"

"You're too slow, Buck," said Fred in a matter-of-fact tone. "You're big and you're tough, but where cats are concerned, you're too slow."

Fred's curiosity, like that of all cats, was easily aroused. So now he was interested in the monstrous machine, so silent in the dim light. He started to move down along it, placing each foot where the last one had landed to avoid raising the dust as much as was possible. Soon, he walked right past the mound of hay where the family of mice was wrapped tightly in its ball of feathers and soft fur.

In there, Joey was very, very young. Fred had not the slightest idea that, in the neglected pile of old straw, was his future best friend, a mouse who would later become a very famous mouse. In mouse time, which is how this story will be told, Joey was, at that moment, very close to zero.

Chapter Two

Adventure Number 2:

Joey Meets (Some of) His Extended Family

It was a warm spring day when Joey began to learn about his larger family—cats, dogs, people, that sort of thing. His first encounter came very close to being a bad experience because it was still early in his mouse time, and he had not learned to always be very careful, especially in broad daylight.

Joey was working his way slowly along the edge of the barn floor. Joey's brothers and sisters had long since scattered from the nest, and he was feeling a bit lonely. The floor was covered with dry litter of all sorts—leaves left over from autumn, old straw, and several pignut hickory shells from the pignut hickory tree down by the farmhouse. Two squirrels, who were not very tidy, had scattered the shells all around after they had chewed the nuts open and eaten the insides. There was even an old oil can that the farmer had thrown across the barn when he cut his finger opening it. Joey was making far too much noise for a careful mouse as well as not paying attention—a common failing of short-lived mice. He happened to be looking up at the huge wheel well of the motor home. He saw his reflection in the bright chrome cover of the wheel and stood up on his hind legs to admire himself. Then he scurried under the motor home, tempted to see if he could find a way up inside—even though his mother had told him many times that he was never to go up in there, that there might be mousetraps in there.

Reluctantly, Joey turned around, but as he came out from under the edge of the motor home, he suddenly realized that he had just stumbled into a huge shadow that was not right! He looked up and saw the biggest cat he had ever seen, and it was staring right at him! Actually, it was the only cat he had ever seen, since he was just a bit over one mouse-year old. Of course, Joey had heard about cats; his aunts and uncles talked of little else as they gossiped underneath the straw, adding that the babies would learn about cats soon enough.

Well, thought Joey, I guess this is it for me.

"H-hello!" stammered Joey. He was so scared that it came out as a high squeak.

"Hi," replied the cat.

The tone sounded sort of friendly, but Joey was still scared. He couldn't help but notice it was a very handsome cat, sort of golden all over with some dark brown stripes and a not-altogether-unpleasant face. There were several cobwebs tangled in the cat's whiskers on the left side, which made him look silly.

"Wh-what are you doing here?" asked Joey.

"I am thinking about eating you," said the cat, but he didn't sound as if he really meant it.

There is one thing about Joey that he must have been born with: he was able to make up his mind about something, and when he did, he was very confident that he was right. He was always that way, even when he was very young. One mouse-year is very, very young—and most mice never get to be much older than that. The reason is mostly because they are so very tasty. They might as well be wearing a sign saying, Genuine mouse! Delicious!

"I don't think you want to eat me," announced Joey. To show his confidence, he stood up on his back legs and tried to look both friendly and self-confident. The morning sunlight cast a long shadow behind him.

Fred thought about this while staring at Joey. "No, I don't think I do either," he said. He then brightened with an idea. He twitched his whiskers, the ones with the tangle of cobwebs. Joey wanted to tell him about the cobwebs but decided this was the wrong time.

"Actually," continued Fred, "I don't like mouse to eat. I like canned food." Fred licked his lips, and the cobwebs bounced up and down. Fred must have seen Joey watching because, with a lightning-fast flick of a paw, he swept the cobwebs away.

Joey was beginning to realize how lucky he was.

"But don't you ever think, little fellow, even for a minute, that the other cats around here feel the same way! First of all, there are my sister and brother, Ruby and King. They're young, like me, but they are not like me, if you follow me. Understand?"

Joey looked around, wondering if they were there.

"Ruby looks like me," said Fred, trying to be helpful. "She is smaller, but King is a lot bigger. He is gray with very faint stripes. He is really very handsome; trouble is, he knows it." Fred sounded a bit jealous. "And then there's the ... dogs!" Fred had used a bad word.

"My mother said never to say words like that!" scolded Joey.

"I'm just trying to tell you about the—" Fred caught himself in time.

"Well, go ahead!" demanded Joey.

"There are three of them," announced Fred importantly. "You know Buck, of course, the big fellow who is so serious about guarding everything?"

Joey nodded. He had watched Buck from under the straw as he walked past the nest in the barn. Buck was always sniffing, and Joey was sure that Buck knew they were in there, but he didn't seem to mind. Joey even wondered if Buck couldn't smell at all and was just making a lot of sniffing noises.

"Then there's Lady," continued Fred. "She lives down in her own pen with her own water and food. It's all brand-new. Jack, the farmer, calls it a kennel."

Joey remembered wondering about that building that he had seen down a long lane leading away from the old barn.

"She's a hunting dog!" announced Fred. "Not mice, bigger things. She gets to ride around like royalty and be taken hunting; she even gets to go into the farmhouse to get a bath. She's sort of stuck-up, if you ask me."

Joey wanted to tell Fred that nobody had asked him, but, again, he thought it was not the right time.

"Then there's Sagebrush!" snapped Fred. "Let me tell you something, little fellow. You'd better look out for that sucker!"

"Why?" asked Joey.

"Why?" demanded Fred. "Because when he gets out down by the road where Jim, the policeman, lives, and that d— Well, that dog comes through here like a whirlwind, chasing the squirrels, catching groundhogs or anything else that's around, running cats up trees—he even snaps at them. You never know what that—that dog is going to do!" The bad word had popped out again. "He would make a snack out of you, fellow!" Fred was really getting worked up.

"And don't you trust my mom, either," cautioned Fred, looking guilty as he said it. "My mom is all gray and very hard to see at night. Some days she goes out, even when we don't need any food, and she hunts all night and brings all kinds of stuff home. Ugh! I hate it! I wish she wouldn't do that, but when I said so once, she told me that if my grandmother, Billie Joe, hadn't been such a good hunter, we all would have frozen to death when those awful people dumped us out down on the road. Charlie, my mother, says our generation just doesn't appreciate how tough those times were then."

Joey was getting a bit bored with all of this, but he thought it was not the time to tell Fred.

Fred heard something that Joey did not. Fred glanced quickly behind them to the far end of the barn. "Quick!" he hissed, "Get out of here! Billie Joe is coming!"

Joey scrambled away in a panic, running and scratching deep underneath a pile of old boards. Fred hunched down beside the huge motor home. Through a crack, Joey watched the small cat approach where they had been standing. She walked with a very slow, soft step; everything seemed to be moving at once, in rhythm—her four feet seemed to be hardly touching the ground as she glided along the rough cement. Despite all the leaves and litter, she made hardly a sound. She swung her head from side to side as she walked, and she paused briefly to stare up into the wheel well of the motor home, sniffing the air briefly. She seemed so strong and powerful!

"Hi, Grandma!" said Fred, trying to sound pleasant, even though it was obvious he was frightened out of his wits. Of his own grandmother!

Billie Joe's glance swept over Fred like a bright green beacon and kept moving over to the spot against the wall where Joey had been standing. Fred shivered. "Grump!" he said softly under his breath, hardly louder than a thought.

Billie Joe's eyes snapped back onto Fred. As he stared into them, it seemed as if he was frozen in place. He tried to move, but he couldn't! Joey heard Billie Joe making a strange, very soft sound. It was like a growl, but it was so soft it was very hard to hear. Then it rose to a shriek!

"Eeee ... orrrr ... eeeeeeee! ... oeeeeeee!"

The hair rose on Joey's back, and he trembled. When he dared to peek out at Fred, he saw that all of Fred's fur was standing up on end! His tail was all puffed out, and he was crouched as low to the ground as he could get.

Joey was so scared that he deposited a small piece of mouse poop on one of the old boards. He heard Billie Joe's soft padding footsteps as she moved past him. Joey scampered along an escape route his mother had shown him when he was only one-half of a mouse-year old; she had told him never to forget it.

Soon Joey was back in the empty ball of paper, feathers, and fur. He wished some of his brothers and sisters were there to keep him warm.

Chapter Three

Adventure Number 3:

Joey Is Caught by Billie Joe

Soon it was summertime, and Joey was three mouse years old.

Ignoring his mother's warnings, he spent warm evenings out in the meadows, being much more careful, however. He had two good friends.

One was Fred, who constantly worried about him and was always warning him about Ruby and King, his brother and sister. Fred also warned Joey about his mother, Charlie, who spent most of her time under the porch of the farmhouse—so Joey never went near there.

Joey's other friend was Buck, the big golden retriever. One afternoon, Joey, with a lot of nerve, had crawled right between Buck's paws when he was sleeping in the sunshine on the cement slab in front of the old barn. When Buck woke up, Joey had stood up on his back legs and introduced himself. Buck glanced at him, sort of embarrassed, but finally he just yawned a big yawn and told Joey he knew who he was. He had been smelling him around there ever since the big spring storm. Joey thought that Buck was probably stretching it a bit, but, as usual, he thought better than to say anything.

After that, Buck and Joey had spent many afternoons together by the barn when Buck wanted to take his nap. Buck even growled a bit one time when Ruby ventured too close. But he would let Fred come up and sit down beside them. Buck knew pretty much who liked mice and who didn't.

The other way Joey disobeyed was by ignoring his mother's caution to stay out of the motor home. As he knew he would, he found a space up under the wheel well and squeezed through into the interior. He couldn't believe his eyes! All of the instruments were up front, where there were two large seats looking at the old barn door. Then there was a couch on one side, soft chairs on the other side, and a kitchen, a refrigerator, and even beds! Joey crawled behind a wall in the bathroom and chewed a (very small) hole leading into the insulation space. This allowed him to run around back there where it was dark and the spaces were very small. He even chewed up some toilet paper and took it back into the insulation and made himself a nice nest and pretended he was off on a trip! He found his way, among the wiring, to the front, where he could pretend he was the driver. There, he chewed a (very small) hole where it couldn't be seen, but which allowed him to look down the road. If they were only going down a road! He kept wishing and dreaming.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from JOEY the MOTOR HOME MOUSE by Jack E. Tetirick Copyright © 2012 by Jack E. Tetirick. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Foreword: Instructions for the Use of This Book....................ix
Adventure Number 1: Joey Is Born....................1
Adventure Number 2: Joey Meets (Some of) His Extended Family....................5
Adventure Number 3: Joey Is Caught by Billie Joe....................11
Adventure Number 4: Joey Goes to Disney World!....................19
Adventure Number 5: Billie Joe's Story....................26
Adventure Number 6: Joey Goes for a Ride in a Police Cruiser....................33
Adventure Number 7: Joey Visits a Prairie Dog Town....................44
Adventure Number 8: Miss Sara Kirby's Visit....................52
Adventure Number 9: Joey Travels Deep into the Bob Marshall Wilderness....................60
Adventure Number 10: Joey Makes Headlines in The San Francisco Examiner....................81
Adventure Number 11: Joey Travels to the End of the Earth....................87
Adventure Number 12: Joey Decides It is Time to Start a Family....................95