Stuck in a Hole

I was walking through the woods and fell into a hole. I must have fallen 16 feet. I looked at the sides of the hole, but couldn’t find a means to climbing out. I yelled for help. I must have yelled for a half hour.

Suddenly an armadillo fell into the hole. The armadillo told me that it heard my cries for help and followed the sound. Because it was focused on finding the location of my voice, it didn’t notice the hole. The armadillo felt dumb. I assuaged its guilt by saying that it meant a lot to me that it tried to help me.

We yelled together for assistance. Without warning, a bobcat fell into the hole. The armadillo and I were afraid at first. Bobcats can be fierce. But then the bobcat explained that it was trying to find us, and didn’t notice the hole, and well, you know.

Within a period of a few hours, a tortoise, a sheep, an otter, a caribou, an aardvark and three rabbits had fallen into the hole in an attempt to save us. A beaver had fallen in too, but that was by accident.

We stopped yelling out loud for help because it was becoming obvious that it wasn’t helping. The aardvark suggested we wait and see what happens. We sat silently.

Soon a squirrel stuck its head over the edge of the hole. It asked what we were doing down there. We explained. The squirrel then assembled pieces of vine, tied them to a tree, lowered the vine into the hole, and then one by one we all climbed out.

I apologized to everyone for the inconvenience. No one was particularly angry. As the otter said, “It’s not like we were scheduled to be somewhere.”