The Native Code (Co Written By CTHands)

Taking Care Of Business

The heat of the morning sun was blaring. Dusty crawled out of the lean-to, fallowed by Carol then Mike. Carol helped mike to a standing position and handed him his crutch. The dog was lying by the lean-to, staring at Mike. "I think he's hungry... What can we feed him?"

"We have stale peanut butter crackers, we can give him those until we can catch some fish..."

Mike brought over a package of peanut butter crackers to the dog. He held out a cracker. "C'mon boy, you gotta eat..." The dog just stared at him. "C'mon boy, do it for Hershal... He wouldn't want you starving. He'd want you to keep going on..." The dog raised his head and took the cracker in his mouth. "Good boy... That's it... Eat up... Want another one?" The dog took the last few crackers, happily wagging its tail.

All being famished, Dustin grabbed a rope and flung it over his arm. They headed in the direction of the banana tree. His first few attempts of climbing, left him with numerous scratches and scrapes on both hands. He felt like giving up, but he couldn't. It wasn't just him. Being a strong athlete, he knew just how to cross his legs and balance himself while making the climb. 

Carol ran back to the camp, knowing just what Dusty needed to accomplish the task. She returned ten minutes later with a T-shirt and her swiss army knife. She cut the T-shirt into long strips of cloth. She tied them around both hands, to not only protect his hands from further damage, but to protect the wounds already formed. 

Though it took time, he finally made it to the top of the tree. He looked at the huge bunches of bananas before him. He took out his knife and cut a few decent sized bunches from the huge cluster. He threw them down to Carol who caught them with ease. 

The three were back at the camp. Carol was drying out some banana slices to make dried banana chips. Mike was petting the dog, and Dusty was brainstorming ways for them to survive on the island. 

Dustin grabbed two T-shirts and started work on something that could greatly help them survive. An hour later, he walked over to Carol and Mike with a hand made net on a stick which could be useful for fishing and catching frogs, if they were to find fresh water. 

Dustin started attempting to catch some fish. He walked into the water about waist deep, and stood as still as he possibly could while still breathing. A fish about twelve or fourteen inches started to swim by. He waited for the perfect moment, and swiped it up with the net. In the next couple of hours, he caught two more about the same size. This would be good for tonight. Flame cooked fish with bananas. 

Dustin started to cook the fish while Carol grabbed a backpack and started exploring. She hoped to find some edible plants, herbs, roots maybe, considering none of them liked fish, it could work wonders. She ventured further into the wooded area, the scent of mint filled the air... She kept walking in the direction of the scent, and sure enough, a group of spear mint plants were growing. She picked off hand fulls of mint leaves and shoved them in her bag. Although mint would be good to make a tea kind of drink, it wouldn't be a good flavor for  fish, so she kept at the search. She kept searching, and soon found black pepper growing, she picked off a handful of that as well. She was satisfied with what she got, so she headed back. She stumbled upon a lemon tree growing, not far from camp... "How didn't we find this sooner?" It was a tree just tall enough for her not to be able to climb, so she grabbed a rock. She threw the rock as a way to knock down the lemons one by one.

Carol got back to the beach and dropped the bag in front of Dusty. He opened it, and his jaw hung in awe. "Carol how did you?... Lemons!"

She smiled. "Yup. Lemons. For the fish, along with the black pepper. And the mint is for the water, to make tea. And we can use the lemon for the water too."

"Carol you're a genius!"

Michael smiled, "We can use the lemons and find something sweet to put in the water for lemonade.  It would be nice to have some lemonade."

 Dusty got a worried look on his face, "What's wrong?" Carol asked.  

"We're getting low on water.  We need to find a fresh water source."  

Michael stated, "I know how to get water but it will only give us a little at a time.  We learned at camp to dig a hole in wet ground, cover it with  a piece of clear plastic, put something to gather the water  under it" and place stones to hold the plastic in place.  Oh, and we need a pebble in the center so the water as it forms drips into the container beneath it."  

"Well, it can't hurt to try!" said Dustin. " We can wipe off the plastic wrap from our sandwiches, "What can we use to gather the water in?" 

Michael thought for a moment and said, "How about cutting the tops off the empty water bottles and use them." 

" We could do that with my knife," said Carol.  "And we still have a couple emergency blankets. We could use one to build a rain water collector, along with some sticks, build a holder for the blanket."

"Good thinking Carol. Mike, you and Carol go go start on that wet ground water collector, I'll start on the holder to collect the rain water." 

The three started working on their separate tasks.