All of a sudden, a rat ran across the field.
And it ran into Bruce and they decided to have an adventure together.
By means of a large cruiser, they traversed the seas to New Zealand.
Departing from the ship, they ran into a young sailor named Eggbert.
Eggbert gave the rat some New Zealand sour green cheese.
The rat, already sea-sick, did not agree with the cheese, and got _real_ sick.
So Bruce rushed him to the nearest animal hospital..and Eggbert felt real sorry
Eggbert brought the rat flowers, who gives them to a lady rat named Janis.
Janis accepts them, despite her allergies, and gave the rat a kiss on the nose.
The rat (named Olympis) turned 15 shades of red and Janis sneezed.
Eggbert and Bruce giggle.
The cruiser captain, annoyed, fires a missle, destroying the emergency room.
The vet (furtherly annoyed) pulls out his trusty bazooka and returns fire.
The vet then calls in for air support, which arrives two nano seconds later.
His air support, 5 pigeons, fly over the cruiser, dropping their daily load.
The pigeons are shot by anti-aricraft guns & now r like gods chicken experiment
A seagull appears and plays a game of chess with the captain.
Meanwhile, the 4 at the hospital build a large nuclear torpedo.
They descretely pocket the torpedo and walk innocently to the cruiser.
The captian and the seagull leave with the crusier before they get there.
The 4 sell the torpedo to Khadafi, and use the money to buy a submarine.
They name it "Red October".
The rats say, "Isn't life sometimes like a movie?"
Bruce responds, "yeah, and the movie for this cruise is Ghandi II"
"But," adds Eggbert, "shuffleboard is also available."
Just then they hit an iceberg.
But the sub landed safely right on top of the Titanic.
Where they waited patiently for Robert Ballard to come and rescue them.
They got out and searched the Titanic and found some cheese, and it was good.
And then they rested.
Dirk beams them aboard the spaceship The Yellow Toad With Three Radar Dishes.
"Welcome aboard" said Dirk smiling greasily.
And the purser named Gopher takes their luggage.
The first mate Lieutenant Kruschev banged his shoe on the table.
Just then, dirk gave the command to engage the warp drive and everybody cheered
Everyone oohed and ahhed over the special effects of the stars zipping by.
As they come out of warp drive they end up in beautiful downtown Gary, IN.
Where they will be immediately run over by a gang of skater rats,
Who listen to nothing but Paula Abdul.
The cruiser drives by and runs over the skate rats taking them out of the plot.
Eggbert and Bruce grab onto the back of the cruiser as it drives past.
Which is of course illegal in this state.)
(And usually carries the DIP sentence -- usually referred to as Perrier.)
But suddenly, The Yellow Toad With Three Radar Dishes fired it's lasers.
Creating a fireworks display that no one will ever forget...it was beautiful.
All to the tune of "The Stars and Stripes Forever" (By J. P. Sousa)
Which caused Lieutenant Kruschev to become quite agitated.
This is the title of the story, which is also found several times in
The story itself.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch...
Janis pushes the agitated Kruschev out the air lock on The Yellow Toad.
The rats clap.And there was much rejoicing.  *yay*
Then the Jackon five came out of there homes in GARY and played glee musak
They are immeiately massacred by an enraged Kruschev.
The rats clap.
Suddenly, Gopher appears and drops their luggage in a heap on the ground.
They actually have no luggage, but hey, Gopher didn't read the script.)
Lack of luggage will have been creating a time warp resulting in strange tenses
The rats might being clapped.
Gopher then left to go back to his day job as a U. S. congressman.
And his mother had an affair with Dan Quayle's father.
Who is the newest member of the teenage mutant ninja turtles.
If the rats clap in a forest and no one is present...do they make a sound?)
Dirk programs the Yellow Toad's drive for Tau 6 as Eggbert buckles everyone in.
Suddenly, there is a loud crash of thunder
The twin turbine engine in the Yellow Toad overloads and starts to descend
Dirk wrestled furiously with the controls as the ship careened into the Pacific
The rats cry.
Suddenly, the cruiser appears again steaming right at them.
The cruiser falls through a wormhole transfering it through time to chapter 6.
Bruce, Dirk, and Eggbert vainly attempted to keep the Toad from sinking.
Gopher returns to try and save the day, but he fails and the Yellow Toad sinks.
The Yellow Toad sinks to the bottom and lands on the lost city of Atlantis.
The rats clap as the citizens of Atlantis rescue them and give them good cheese
(Not to mention, a few oxygen tanks.)
The vet from the first part of the story reappears, and gives gopher a frog.
Gopher names the frog "Bert" and Bruce makes a new friend, a rock named "Ed".
The rats clap, Ed rolls, and Bert doesn't care (he's too busy drooling on Ed.)
The vet then leaves and goes back to New Zealand in his canoe.
Betty a citizen of Atlantis jumps Eggbert, who enjoys it thoroughly.
And everyone discreetly turns their heads, Bert doesnt care, Ed drowns in drool
Bruce is pissed cause he aint gettin any and kicks Bert, the rats clap.
Dirk silences everyone and faintly our heros hear strains of "Under the Sea."
Romulus promises not to read the rest of the story, and the rats *clap*.
And now for something completely different:  the rats' paws begin to hurt.
And Ed claps.
Just then a great white shark appears and menaces our heroes.
And everyone wonders how they got to Amity.
Kruschev, now purple with rage, reappears and beats on the shark with his shoe
The shark leaves, chasing the vet in his canoe, all the way to chapter 9.
This time instead of clapping the rats get the CLAP! (no offense, rat! -dM)
Who did they get the clap from, and how did they get it?!? hmmmmmmmmm......
This is the only sentence in chapter 1.
As a matter of fact, the rats didn't get the CLAP, they got THE CLAPPER!!
They use the Clapper to turn on and off Kruschev's shoe.
Which transports them all to the surface of the pacific, where they hail a cab.
The cab is driven by Carl Sagan, the rats clap, the shoe turns on.
Carl takes them (Eggbert,Bruce,Rats,Ed,Bert,Dirk,Betty,Gopher&Kruschev) to L.A.
At L.A. they catch a train to Trenton, New Jersey, and put the cab on it, too.
Where they entered a shuffleboard tournament.
They are winning the tournament and have received the prizes, both spatulas.
They put the golden spatulas in the train and drive off into the sunset.
Suddenly, the train is robbed by Armenian nationalists.
Who take the spatulas and train, leaving the heros stranded in Trenton.
They decide that they want the spatulas back, no matter what.
But they stay a few weeks in Trenton to gather in the sites, before going on.
The rats, who wanted a vacation, clap.
The shoe turns off and the rats are immediately slapped.
They then head for Trenton airport to get tickets--No flights to Armenia.
They discover a flight with two stop overs:  the congo and argentina.
They get on, but lose Gopher and the luggage and the terminal.
Bert was sad to lose Gopher, but figured he'd reappear in a future chapter.
Shucks....aisle seats.
Unfortunately there is only one parachute and thats for the pilot.
Olympis hijacks the plane, and lands it safely in the Belgian Congo.
Foreshadowing...good device that...will be used more later.
They decide to row up the congo (or zaire) river in carl's cab.
Carl's cab gets a leak, but they fix it by pounding the leak shut with Ed.
Ed takes some excedrin.
The rats clap.
Two excedrin that's all it took and now Ed's headache and the leak are gone
Suddenly a spear comes wizzing past their heads.
Kruschev's shoe which the rats clapping turned on knocks the spear away.
And a woman in a black porshe drives by and asks "are those bugle boy jeans?"
And we return you to the regularly schedueled plot.
Around the next bend in the river, our heroes see the vet in his canoe.
He is still being chased by the shark, who he is trying to anesthetize.
Along comes the spear which hits the shark, who dies due to red die#3 poisoning
Suddenly, they are all beemed up to an unidentified spacecraft.
That was piloted be a bunch of mushrooms speaking in only technobabble.
The rats are confused.
But they clap anyway, as Gopher shows up as the purser, and thus starts chap. 3
Our heros are to be the newest exhibit in a galactic zoo, say the shrooms.
The shrooms take their luggage instead, and return our heros to El Passo, TX.
A large squid walks by, with more luggage for sale.
Ed purchases a rather nice black leather piece.
Betty steps into a nearby langerie shop and purchases a nice black lace piece.
Meanwhile, in the ocean, strange things were going on, but that's not important
In the murky depths of the Pacific, Squids unite to save luggage selling squids
The rats clap to get the luggage selling squids attention, the shoe turns off.
A rather small pirhana tries to eat Ed, and gets a toothache.
Then someone pounds the dents out of the pirhana with Ed.
And everyone questions why the pirhana is in El Passo.
After the pirhana gains consciousness, he askes where he is.
People dressed in leather and ten gallon hats hand him a LOne STar beer
Olympis buys a ten gallon hat and starts calling everyone "y'all"
The texans get offended by the mocking and draw their pistols (guns that is)
Bert and Ed jump in front of them to save the pirhana.
The squid sells the texans a nice set of matching paisley samsonite suitcases.
Bert, Ed, Olympis, pirhana, texans and luggage get trample by a herd of buffalo
Only the pirhana, the texans and Ed die from said trampling.
Just as quickly, Ed is up and rolling (his middle name is Jason).
Bert, Ed, the rats, and everyone else enjoy buffalo steaks for dinner.
Compliments of Ed's chainsaw.
And the Chef Pedro who sautee`d them in tabasco sauce & italian salad dressin
Then Ed took the chainsaw to Chef Pedro.
And now they are eating Chef Salad.
Smothering the house dressing Creamy Catus Cucumber all over the bloody pieces
Bruce and the rats disgusted, catch a bus to Dallas leaving everyone behind.
Where they decide to invest in an oil well.
Running the Ewings off of Southfork and pulling a gun on J.R. (no, not again)
Carl Sagan shows up and gives JR a lift to the nearest point outside the plot.
Bert, Ed, & the others go off to find where Bruce and the rats have gone.