Yesterday was my 22nd birthday and it was as uneventful as ever, which I have to admit was pretty nice. Aside from getting some nice phone calls, everything was pretty normal. Today was nothing special either. I made some signs for our new apartment, which I haven't even seen yet, but whatever. So instead of telling you about my boring day, I'm going to give you guys a little more of Bob's boring day. Well, today his outlook on The Vanishing Pest Corp. (I renamed the company to better suit what's coming up) is finally starting to take a turn for the better. At least in his mind anyway.
The Adventures of InvinciBob (working title) 8/30-06
...He planned on studying it more when Jim wasn’t watching. College Indy could prove to be the career break that he had been looking for.
Chapter 2
Sitting down at his squeaky swivel chair, he pulled out the first case stacked in the IN box. The manila brown folder made a wobbling noise as he flipped through it. The Inspector who had filled out the detailed chart had horrible handwriting that was about the size of a termite. Bob squinted at the tiny boxes. He felt like he was trying to decipher the secret code. He was getting too old for this. Teenaged boys never wrote big enough for his eyes to see well enough and the girls had so many loops and bubbles that their charts look more like art projects than pest control records. He shook his head and flipped through the pages.
Apparently inspectors had captured a disoriented porcupine in a woman’s front yard. It had been taken down from a tree where it had been munching on the tree’s leaves and bark. The woman had claimed to see the rodent from outside of her kitchen window and thought it was a huge rat. Bob let out a soft snort. Really, a rat? What kind of rat hung out six feet in the air stripping bark and eating twigs? People these days. He turned to the picture paper clipped to the back cover. The animal almost looked cute, with its spines erect and rear sticking up in the air.
He glanced at the garbage can. Rolling over, he stuck his head out of his cubicle. No one was coming. He plucked the newspaper out of the trash with College Indy speed before anyone had the chance to pop in on him. Opening the paper, careful not to make any rumpling noises, Bob smoothed the paper on his desk and read the comic strip over again. He hugged his arms around the paper to prevent anyone from seeing what he was reading, a method he had picked up from his seven-year-old.
Carefully, Bob slid his desk drawer open and took out a pair of scissors. He cut College Indy out the paper and placed him safely onto the bottom of his desk drawer. Returning the newspaper to the trash bin, he turned and faced his computer. Okay College Indy, what would you have done if a porcupine showed up in your front yard?
“ An African Brush-tailed Porcupine was found on April 30, 2006 in the front yard of Mrs. Aprai Frisco…”
Boom. Boom. Boom. The windows of Mrs. Frisco’s house were rattling. He tightened his grip on his pen and clipboard. Instinctively his pen hand touched his sword.
“InvinciBob, you have to save my house from that evil porcupine!” Mrs. Frisco squealed, her hands at her cheeks and eyes wide with fear.
“Don’t worry ma’am,” he said, holding out his hand to stop her jabbering, “I have everything under control,” he continued in the toughest voice he could muster. He gave her a nod to reassure her and set the clipboard on the kitchen table. Invincibob strutted out the front door and placed his hands on his hips.
“Okay, you evil porcupine, we can do this the hard way if you like, or you can get into the cage over there in the InvinciVan,” he told him with a small gesture towards the van.
Boom. Boom. Boom. The porcupine got closer to him.
“I will never surrender to the likes of you InvinciBob!” With that he jumped and spun with a booming crash as he landed. His quills rose as he prepared to shoot.
“You’re not scaring me Porcupine. I know very well that porcupines can’t shoot their quills. I paid attention in zoology you know. They don’t call me InvinciBob for nothing,” he said with a smug grin. He crossed his arms over his chest and waited for the porcupine’s next move. The animal slowly turned around to glare at him. His clawed feet tore up the lawn in the pivoting motion.
“That’s what you think, InvinciBob. Dr. Gizmo suped me up with ejecting quills and steel tipped claws,” he said with a garish laugh. “One of these babies into your stomach and you’ll never get it out. Dr. Gizmo enhanced the barbs with flesh eating bacteria that feasts on my victim’s body after I impale them. The hole will be so big that you could fit a log through it.”
“A riced out porcupine,” InvinciBob said more to himself than to the porcupine. “Who is this Dr. Gizmo?” InviciBob asked.
“You’re worst nightmare.”
The porcupine jumped around again and began to shoot deadly quills at InviciBob. ‘Doof, doof, doof’. The quills came shooting out at him.
“Noooooooo!” he yelled, slashing though the massive quills with Jun, his trusty sword. He blocked the mutilated spines from puncturing his skin with his shield and ran at the porcupine. He jumped and cut the tips of the spines off his back. ‘Sttttssss’ Steam left the quills as they deflated on the mutated porcupine’s back.
“Noooooooo!” the porcupine repeated InvinciBob’s yell. The porcupine spun around and flung his claws down at InviciBob. ‘Sheungk, sheungk, sheungk’. The pan sized paws bombarded his shield with weight and ferocity. InvinciBob swung Jun at him with all his might. Jun connected with the porcupine’s nostile.
“Yoooooowwww!” the porcupine roared in pain. InvinciBob took advantage of the animal’s agony and lassoed a chain around his body. Pressing a button on his belt, the chain retracted and pulled the miserable porcupine into the van’s cage.
“Take that you engorged rodent! I am InvinciBob! No one can defeat me!” he said with triumph. Sheathing Jun back at his hip he started for the front door. Mrs. Frisco ran to meet him.
“Oh InvinciBob! You’re my hero!”
“All in a day’s work, ma’am,” he told her with a toothy smile. He took up his clipboard and wrote in perfectly legible handwriting “Pest secured by InviciBob.”
“Bob. Hellloooo? Bob.”
“Huh?” Bob asked with a start. He had so avidly been writing his report that he had lost track of time.
“You ready to go to lunch?” Jim asked him.
“Oh, yeah, sure. Let me get my stuff together.” Taking one last look at the tiny picture of the porcupine, he closed the folder and saved his document. “Hah!” he said softly. “I got you Porcupine.”
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