The “House Critters” Critter Olympics

   The house critters are Blue Booby, Henrietta Bobbie Bunny, Ducky Duck, Rainy Reindeer and Big Bunny. Henrietta was the first house critter so she tends to order the others around. This is just like an older brother or sister in a human family. Big was looking out the dining room window at Bob, the male human, mowing the lawn. Big and the other critters weren’t allowed to play outside when the lawn was being mowed. Big was getting bored with just watching something happen so he went looking for the others. He had just gone through the dining room into the living room when he heard a strange noise coming from the downstairs bedroom that the older humans used. He looked in and saw Ducky and Blue jumping on the bed. This looked like it would be fun and it turned out to be even better that normal because Bob had taken the all the covers and sheets off the mattress.

   Big decided to find the others, he scurried around the downstairs rooms and then went upstairs to get everyone down to the jumping party. When they got their Blue and Ducky were competing with bouncing over a bed pillow placed in the middle of the bed. Well of course everyone else decided they needed to give this a try. Rainy said “this looks like what they talk about and show on TV the humans are going to do in some faraway place.” Then Blue said “we should have different activities and see who does best in each and all of them together”. Well this got them thinking about what besides bouncing over a bed pillow they could do on the bed. Then they remembered that when the humans did this kind of thing along with the people that competed there were others that decided how well each one did an activity. They decided to have five events that they would all practice together and have Bob judge the competition. They also decided he would have to give treats to the winners.

   A couple of hours later Bob came in from mowing and was surrounded by jabbering critters but eventually it was Henrietta that talked to him about judging the events. He was really looking forward to a shower but didn’t think this would take very long, so he said yes. If only he had ask what was going to happen before he agreed to be involved! As the critters left the bedroom Ducky turned on the radio, which confused Bob, but was part of the critters master plan!

   The contestants got lined up in the living room, then marched into the stadium with the music playing while they waved to the make believe crowd. The five events were laid out on the bed and each one would do all the events in a pre-determined order. While bouncing over the pillow event was still in the middle of the bed it was now quite different. In addition to the actual event competition Bob was to keep track of how long it took each critter to finish each events. The fastest time while completing all the events would get a prize. The critters had decided to do the course from lightest to heaviest, which they thought would make it faster to reset the course for the next contestant.

   It would take a very very long story to tell all that went on, so we will just recount each critter doing their best event, starting with Rainy. He stepped into the arena for the first event, a standing hop over a couch pillow located at the head end of the bed. You might think a deer would be outclassed in this event by rabbits that hop all over the place. You would be wrong; deer are great jumpers from a standing start. Bob had laid a tape measure under the pillow and ran it to the end of the bed to see how far each contestant jumped. Rainy leaned back on his haunches and launched past the end of the tape measure, past the end of the mattress, over the footboard and landed on the floor. The crowd roared, well at least the other four contestants made a lot of noise. Henrietta got set in the middle of the bed for the trampoline event. She, being a bunny, could bounce quite well all by herself so with the help of a mattress the sky was the limit. Back flips, double forward rolls and straight up with belly or back flops were no problem at all. What made this her event were the poses she made at the top of each bounce. She did a number of cheerleader impressions and even an iron cross from seeing humans do this when working out on   gymnastic rings. Big was up next and he had thought the trampoline event would be his winner, but realized topping Henrietta would be next to imposable. Turned out he didn’t have to worry as he shined at the pillow to pillow hop. There were five pillows, of different sizes, laid out on the bed as a square with a pillow in the middle. The only rule was that contestants had to hit each pillow twice and from a different direction. Big started in front of the pillow used for the standing jump, went around the outside to the pillow next to where he started and then to the pillow in the middle. This is where he won the event. When he landed on this pillow he hopped right onto the first pillow, did the course backwards until he reached the second pillow of his first go around and then went to the middle pillow. Can you figure out what Big did, that the others didn’t do, which won him this event?

  For a different kind of gymnastic event they had a roll around course set up with the same five pillows used for the pillow to pillow hop. This event required rolling around the outside pillows in two directions without touching the middle pillow. An event fault, which included missing a pillow or touching the middle pillow, added a second to the constant time. All the previous constants had done a good job with only a few faults causing just a few seconds separating their times. Ducky knew a secret that would help him in this event it would be his wings. Ducky, like the rest started out by the pillow used for the standing jump. Unlike the rest he didn’t have to roll backward then forward to get going, he had wings. He settled in on his side pushed off with the down wing and with every roll could push off again to maintain speed. This along with a web foot allowed him to steer around the corners better that anyone else and change direction without stopping. He blew the doors off the competition to win the event. Blue was last to compete and knew his size was actually a detriment in some of the events, but he was a smart flightless bird. You remember the original bouncing over a bed pillow that started the whole activity. Well it got modified to start with two bed pillows and grew pillow by pillow till a constant couldn’t bounce over it. The current leader was Big with two pillows from off of the couch added to the pile. Blue cleared the starting pile with lots of room to spare. He then asked the judge to add three couch pillows for his next attempt. Bob didn’t know if this was ok, so he asked the rest of the competitors their opinion. Three were ok with what Blue wanted to do which left one not ok with it. Take a guess as to which house critter didn’t want Blue to get his way. Bob did as asked and approved by the majority of competitors leaving a high pile in the middle of the bed. All the previous critters had done multiple hops prior to the bounce to go over the stacked pillows. This is what Blue started with but then he went to the top of the headboard, turned to face the pillows, jumped off to a bounce spot a foot or so in front of the pile and cleared it by at least two more couch pillows. This cause a roar from the other four and an immediate review of the rules, ask for by Big. Bob decision was quick based on the following, what Blue did wasn’t against any formal rule for the event or the competition in general and he had stayed within the arena so the results were official.

   This had been quite the activity, Big had gotten quite upset over the pillow hop decision but he got over it quickly. He actually got over it faster than it took Bob to compute who the overall winner was. When he started to announce event winners Henrietta stopped him and mentioned they each expected a treat for competing in an event, five treats for winning an event, five treats for the fastest time to complete all events and ten treats for the overall winner. Bob was stunned; he didn’t have any treats let alone as many as they wanted. The first thing to cross his mind were M & Ms and if he remembered correctly Amy and Barb had recently used some for chocolate chip cookies. He looked in the kitchen on the upper and lower Lazy Susans, then looked in Amy’s cabinet next to the stove, next were the shelves in the small basement which was like an old fruit cellar. Having given up hope of finding them he went to the hallway behind the bathroom that was behind the stadium, you remember this was the older humans’ bedroom. There, in the last place he would have stored chocolates, sitting on the top of the old dresser that held odds and ends of everything that nobody knew what to do with was the bag of M & Ms. Now, were there enough of them to hand out to the participants for awards. Have you thought of how many treats Bob needs for the ending ceremony? Bob figure five of them competed in five events earning one M & M for each event which can be stated as five times five or twenty five. Next the winner of each event gets five M & Ms which once again can be stated as five times five or twenty five. Then the fastest time to do all the events gets five M & Ms along with the overall winner getting ten M & Ms which can be stated a five plus ten or fifteen. This give a grand total of sixty five M & Ms needed for the closing ceremony.

   The constants lined up in the order of the event they had won to get their prizes. At this point only Bob knew which constant would win the overall time award and the overall winner award so everybody was sure it was them and a few thought they would win both!  The presentations went off without a hitch and as each participant had competed in all the events and each had won an event they all got the same amount of M & Ms. Do you know how many M & Ms each critter was awarded during this part of the closing ceremony? Next was the award for fastest time for all the events and a clue to who won this is in the story, maybe you already know it was Ducky. He quacked happily as waddling up to get his additional treats. Now the big prize and all the glory that went with it would be presented. The overall winner based on points earned in all the events was a very tight contest. Bob had gone over his notes for each event twice before picking the best of the best for this award. The oldest competitor held her ears high while hopping to get an additional ten M & Ms from the Critter Olympics one and only judge!