Do Not Take Rodents Camping

And here I am, nearly waist-deep in snow with an octopus carcass tucked behind my belt and Marie’s missing pinkie sticking out of the dug-up layers in front of me like some mocking joke. It wasn’t supposed to end like this. Right, just a simple camping trip. What a brilliant idea to bring that damn chinchilla with you, David.

Julie was supposed to pick me, Dave, and Marie up at the petrol station at seven in the morning, but she was a little late. While the three of us were waiting, we decided to stock up on booze. Dave was supposed to bring enough for the weekend, but he left it for the last minute, smoked three joints, and forgot all about it. The single emergency bottle of cheap vodka Marie took was all we had. When we finally got some more drinks from the station shop, we took turns sipping from a beer can which lasted us exactly until the moment Julie arrived in her dad’s red jeep.

“Sorry guys, the roads are super icy today. Had to be careful,” Julie said after rolling her window down.

“All good. Better to have a late driver than a dead one,” Marie joked as we loaded our bags into the trunk, soon getting in the jeep. Dave went to sit in the passenger’s seat while Marie and me squeezed in the back with all our winter jackets between us. Julie didn’t seem very excited about our layout, especially as she swatted Dave’s hand away from her thigh. It’s always something with these two; I can’t remember the last time they managed not to get into a fight for a week straight.

We opened Marie’s cheap vodka on the drive to the cabin. She was the only one who thought of not leaving it in the trunk and Julie refused to stop just for us to get wasted before we even got there. But when I think about it now, it was probably because Dave needed to pee and she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction.

By the time she finally parked at our destination, half the bottle was gone. Dave ran inside to find the bathroom like his life depended on it while the rest of us got our luggage. Well, except for Dave’s. Julie dropped his bag onto the slowly rising layer of snow behind the cabin and made it very clear that we weren’t allowed to help him look for it later.

Once everyone was inside, we went over our plans for the trip. We wanted to go on a hike after lunch, but with the unexpected snow falling faster every hour, it started seeming like a very bad idea. In the end, we agreed to wait for the weather to calm down. Worst case scenario, we’d just sit around the warm cabin with a backpack full of booze. Both seemed like great options to me.

The cabin was small but cozy. Aside from the two bedrooms upstairs, it had an open lounge area with a small kitchen in the corner, two orange couches, and a stone fireplace by one of the walls. We started a fire to warm the place up, which gave the wooden interior a soft, comforting glow.

Soon enough, Dave started digging through the pile of luggage by the door in panic.

“Where’s my bag, Julie?” he asked in an irritated voice.

“Should’ve brought it with you. It’s not my job to constantly know where your stuff is,” Julie replied as she scrolled on her phone, complete unbothered by his rising panic.

“This isn’t funny, Julie. Did you leave it in the car? Do you realise how cold it is out there?”

He ran outside, not even bothering to put his shoes on first. I followed him out of curiosity, wondering what could be so important to him in that bag. After good two minutes of searching every crevice of the car, he turned to me with terrified eyes. It was more serious than I thought.

“Behind the cabin,” I said finally with a sigh. He ran around the wooden walls to finally find his bag under a decent layer of fresh snow and opened it with haste. He took something out and wrapped it in his jacket before rushing inside, leaving his stuff behind again. I decided to prevent future problems such as having to share my dry clothes with him and brought it with me on my way back. Just as I opened the door, I was met with Julie’s scream coming from the lounge.

“David, are you serious? Why would you bring Roger?”

“It’s General Roger. I’ve told you like a hundred times,” Dave replied. By the sound of it, he was on the brink of tears. I rushed over to see what’s going on and sat down on the couch next to Marie as I stared at the small bunch of wet fur he placed in front of the fireplace.

“His chinchilla,” Marie whispered to let me in on the situation. She occasionally bought weed from Dave and was certainly better acquainted with his life than me.

“That wasn’t the question,” Julie insisted, standing behind him with her arms crossed. Even without seeing her face, I knew it was better to act invisible for now. Her rage terrified me sometimes.

“It was an accident, okay? I was high when I packed my stuff, he must’ve gotten in without me realising it. I found out when we were waiting for you, but you’d kill me if I said you need to drive me back home to drop him off.”

“Maybe if you didn’t smoke every damn minute of your life, we wouldn’t be dealing with shit like this all the time. You need to grow up, David. I feel like I’m dating a damn teenage secondary school dropout.”

“Well, maybe if you didn’t have the attitude of a middle-aged mother of three, I wouldn’t be smoking so much.”

The fire behind them rose for a moment as a suspicious burning smell filled the room.

“Dave, where’s Roger?” I asked when I realised that the ball of fur has disappeared.

“It’s General Ro-” David started before noticing the smell too. “Shit, Roger!” he cried out, hastily digging through the ashes with a fire poker. After a moment, he managed to fish out what could be best described as a very burnt and bloody potato, letting it rest at the edge of the fireplace.

We all took a minute of silence for the fallen General Roger. Marie attempted to lift the mood by passing around the rest of her vodka, most of which was gulped down by Dave and Julie. Luckily, it seemed to have calmed them down, as they were making out just a couple minutes after the bottle returned to us empty.

“I’m getting a beer. You want one?” I asked Marie while the two disappeared upstairs. She nodded, clearly exhausted from the whole ordeal, and I went outside to get two cans from the packs I buried in the snow when we arrived. When I got back, I handed one to her before turning on some music to drown out Julie and Dave’s peace-making.

“I don’t think we’re going anywhere today. Look at that weather,” she said as she stared out the window. She was right. It was snowing so heavily that I couldn’t even see the individual snowflakes, only a homogenous layer of sharp white light.

“Yeah, I don’t think that would end well.”

“We could play some games inside. I brought some cards and two simple board games even David will understand.”

“Ready for everything, huh?” I asked with a chuckle. We chatted for a little longer before Dave ran halfway down the stairs in his underwear.

“Guys, you won’t believe what we found!” he called out, suspiciously excited. We followed him upstairs to his and Julie’s room. She barely managed to cover herself with a duvet as the three of us barged in.

“Dave, seriously!” she yelled, clearly not expecting visitors.

“Oh, chill out. It’s not like they haven’t seen tits before. Guys, check this out,” Dave said as he walked to the back of the room and pushed aside a yellow shower curtain. Behind that wasn’t a shower but a wooden stand with a fish tank on top of it.

“Would be nice if we stopped finding random animals around. At this point, a gorilla could be hiding in the basement and I wouldn’t be surprised,” said Julie with a sigh as we stared at the octopus floating around the tank. I tapped the glass, fascinated by its disproportionally big head.

“I don’t think there’s a basement here, don’t worry,” I said.

“Right, I forgot to mention this. The owner is abroad this weekend, so he asked us to feed it in exchange for a discount. I’ll take care of that, don’t worry. Just be careful around it, it’s a rare breed,” Marie explained.

“Come on, don’t you trust us around a damn fish tank?” Dave asked with a smirk as he reached into the pocket of his pants on the floor and pulled out a joint before lighting it. By the look Marie gave him, I assumed the answer was no.

We all left Julie to get dressed in peace and made our way back downstairs. David stared at his burned chinchilla for a moment, likely having forgotten about it. I wanted to suggest that we bury it, but that wouldn’t exactly be the best idea with that snowstorm outside. Eventually, Dave scooped it up into his hands and walked back upstairs without a word, almost like he was in some trance.

“Where are you taking it?” I asked. No answer. Once he disappeared back into his and Julie’s room, me and Marie exchanged a glance before something clicked for her and she ran after him in panic.

“Dave? Dave, don’t you fucking dare,” she called out. I walked up after her as the situation slowly dawned on me too.

When I entered the room once again, Marie had her hands in the tank, frantically trying to pry the chinchilla out of the octopus’ mouth as its tentacles wrapped around her wrists in protest. Julie rushed to help, pulling on the octopus’ head.

“They can’t eat burnt stuff, it makes them sick,” Marie said through gritted teeth before letting out a blood-curling scream and pulling her hand away. Julie didn’t expect her to let go so suddenly, and so the octopus went flying through the window into the snowstorm outside. That was, however, the least of our problems. Marie was missing a finger.

We all panicked. Julie puked into the aquarium. Marie stared at her bloody hand without blinking for a long moment, for once in her life having no idea what to do. David was searching the entire room with shaky hands for something to stop the bleeding, finally pressing a scrunched-up pillowcase against Marie’s wound.

I took my phone out of my pocket, dialling the emergency hotline before quickly realising that the snowstorm cut off our signal.

“Shit. Jennie, can you drive?” I asked, figuring she was the most sober one in the group.

“We can’t drive in this weather, I’d just kill us all,” she answered, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

“The storm should pass in like an hour. I checked it before we got here,” Marie said, clearly doing her best to even think straight. She had to grit her teeth as she spoke. “Somebody find my fucking finger. They can reattach it. I’ll just stick it in the freezer.”

“We won’t find shit in that,” I said and pointed to the window. Even the trees weren’t visible. “It’s frozen anyway, I’ll go get it later.”

As we waited for the storm to pass, Julie found an emergency kit in the bathroom and disinfected Marie’s wound in the lounge. Me and Dave sat on the other couch, drinking (in moderation to prevent more problems, but enough to deal with the whole situation) and staring at the wall. Nobody said anything for a whole hour before, — just as Marie predicted — the snow started to slow down.

I went outside with a shovel, already dreading the endless search I volunteered for. I must’ve been searching for a good half hour before I finally uncovered the frozen octopus buried deep in the snow. My arms hurt like hell, but when I remembered Marie’s situation, I had nothing to complain about. After prying the octopus’ mouth open with almost frostbit fingers (and getting scratched by its teeth), I realised with disappointment that the only thing inside was General Roger. And so I tucked one of the tentacles behind my belt before continuing my search.

I couldn’t feel my legs at that point. Good thing we were going to the hospital later anyway. After about ten more minutes of searching the radius around the octopus’ landing spot, I finally dug it up. The pinkie was completely solid-frozen as I picked it up. I pushed back a gag as I slowly made my way back to the cabin, passing out the moment I victoriously opened the door and raised Marie’s pinkie up with pride.

The hospital staff managed to bring me back to my senses (David had to carry me to the jeep), and as I soon learned, they reattached Marie’s finger with success as well. One thing was certain for all of us: David’s bags will be thoroughly searched every time we go anywhere again.