Adventures of Ranger Rick: the gang plans on taking a quiet vacation but finds a noisy surprise instead - short story

Ranger Rick, Feb, 1996 by Nora Steiner Mealy

Ranger Rick Raccoon, Scarlett Fox, Boomer Badger, and Ollie Otter were hoping to have a nice, quiet vacation on the California coast. But the beach where they ended up was anything but quiet.

"DOINK! Dudududu . . . DOINK!" A loud noise came from the other side of the sand dunes just up the beach, and it sounded like jackhammers and chainsaws. Everyone's nerves were on edge.

"Du . . . du . . . dudududu . . . DDDDOINK!"

The loud sound made Ollie nearly jump out of his fur. "That's it, I'm going swimming," he announced. "At least it'll be quiet in the water!" Then with a grin he boasted, "Besides, I'm the best diver back home in Shady Pond. I'll challenge some sea otters to a diving contest. Maybe I'll be champion of the Pacific Ocean!"

"Diving, shmiving!" grumbled Boomer as he watched Ollie scramble off to the water. "I'm going to dig my way out of this commotion." He began digging into the sand and was soon gone.

"Now what?" Scarlett asked Rick. "That noise is getting to me too."

Rick looked thoughtful. "Scarlett, something's wrong here," he said. "It's against the law in California to build on the beach. Beaches are for everyone: people and animals. If someone's building, we should try to stop it."

"You're right!" Scarlett said as she jumped up. "And I've got an idea." The fox began looking around on the beach.

"Aha!" she exclaimed when she found a piece of driftwood and a chunk of charcoal left from a beach bonfire. The fox used the charcoal to write on the wood in big letters, "Save Our Coast!"

"There," said Scarlett firmly. "We'll show our sign to the workers, and maybe others will join us. We'll start a protest march!"

Holding the sign between them, Scarlett and Rick marched toward the noise. As they climbed up the dunes, the sounds got louder and louder. When the two animals got to the top, they lifted the sign over their heads to show it to everyone below. But instead of seeing construction work, they saw an amazing sight.

The noise wasn't coming from chainsaws and jackhammers . . . the noisemakers were elephant seals! Baby seals cried for mothers. Mother seals hollered to protect their babies. And loudest of all were the enormous male seals. Out of their large, trunk-like noses came the weird sounds the gang had heard. The males--or bulls--faced each other and arched their backs so that they stood almost upright. Then, making their super-loud jackhammer noise, they threw themselves at each other.

"Wow!" whispered Scarlett, her eyes wide. "They look like monster slugs."

Before Rick could say anything, Scarlett yelled, "Oh, no--look!" She pointed toward a clump of bulls that were crowded around a hole in the sand. Peeking out from the edge of the hole was a badger, too scared to move.

"BOOMER!" Scarlett and Rick yelled.

Scarlett turned to Rick. "How are we ever going to get him out of this horrible mess?" she said with a groan.

"Perhaps I can help you," a friendly voice said. They turned and saw a huge bull standing next to them. In all the excitement, they hadn't seen him waddle up.

"I'm Elbert," said the seal, "and I want to tell you that we northern elephant seals couldn't agree more with the message on your sign."

"Oh, no! We thought . . . I mean, yes!" Rick answered, flustered. "Can you help us save our badger friend down there?"

Elbert looked at the elephant seals surrounding Boomer and then said, "Come with me." Scarlett and Rick followed their new friend as he set off. Elbert brushed past the other seals, bellowing with his trunk as he went. He made a path toward Boomer, with Rick and Scarlett trotting along behind him.

"Move along! DOINK! Move along!" he shouted at the group surrounding the badger. Elbert puffed out his chest and stretched up taller than the tallest human Rick and Scarlett had ever seen. The other seals saw they were no match for Elbert. So, grunting and bellowing, they galumphed off.

Boomer looked around in a daze. "Nosey noises? Noisy noses?" the confused badger murmured. Then he crawled out of his hole, shaking sand from his fur.

Rick laughed. "You sure picked a strange spot to get away from the noise. Our construction noise turned out to be a bunch of seals!"

"Construction noise? So that's what you were thinking," Elbert said with a smile. "Don't worry. The California coast is fairly safe now. And so are the elephant seals. But that wasn't always true."

"What do you mean?" asked Scarlett.

"Believe it or not," Elbert said, "we northern elephant seals were almost wiped out 100 years ago. Not by construction, but by people who hunted us for our blubber--the fat that keeps us warm in the cold ocean." The seal shuddered, and rolls of fat rippled up and down his body.

"Before people used electricity, they turned our fat into oil, which they burned in lamps to light their homes," he continued. "And to get oil, they hunted us--until there were only a few seals left."

Boomer, brushing the sand off himself, looked around. "Sure looks like there are a lot of you now!" he grumbled.

"Yep," laughed Elbert proudly. "I've never counted, but scientists think there are now about 150,000 of us. They say we've made the biggest comeback for mammals ever known!"