Ice Age: The Meltdown (Story of the Wolf continued)

Chapter Two: The Last Mammoth?

It was chaos. Animals everywhere we're heading out into the flow of traffic. Sassy felt almost claustrophobic. Even her pack hadn't been this suffocating. Sid ran by her and Diego, stuffing blueberries in his mouth.
"Manny Manny! Hey I hear you're going extinct!" He said, sucking the juice off his paws.
"If you ever master hygiene, try working on sensitivity." Diego advised.
"But definitely get hygiene down first my sensitive nose can't take much more of your stench." Sassy said, brushing past the sloth.
"I'm not going extinct!" Manny snapped.
"Hey kids look! The last mammoth." An anteater said to his babies. "You probably won't see one of those again." He said after the kids had woahed.
"See?" Sid remarked and Manny glared. Sassy jumped up on a rock and scanned out over the valley. There were a ton of animals but they were moving at a pretty decent pace. They kept moving peacefully until Sid decided to serenade them all with extinction songs. "Someday...when you've gone extinct...you're gonna make a big stink..."
"Shut up Sid." Manny ordered. A few hours later the sloth came up with another one.
"Hey there what's that sound? All the mammoths are in the ground!"
"Stop singing Sid!" Manny yelled behind him. Yet a few more hours later he came up with yet another.
"If your species won't continue clap your hands!" Clap clap. "If your species won't..."
"Sid...I'm gonna fall on you again and this time I will kill you." Manny threatened.
"Okay if somebody doesn't like the classics." He retorted. Sassy sighed in relief.
"I know right his singing is almost as bad as his stench." Diego said.
"Almost as bad?" She asked and they both laughed. Manny stopped and looked at his reflection in the dripping icicles.
"What if you're right? What if I am the last mammoth?" He asked sadly.
"Hey Manny look on the bright side. You got us!" Sid said happily.
"Not your most persuasive argument Sid." Diego pointed out. Suddenly a faint trumpeting echoed through the forest. "Mammoths!?" Diego asked.
"I knew I couldn't be the last one! I felt it in my gut!" Manny knocked Sid onto his tusk and went charging into the woods. Diego and Sassy looked at each other before taking off after them. They raced through the underbrush and Sassy and Diego vaulted over a clump of bushes to land next to Manny, who had halted so suddenly Sid went flying off and skidded across the ground. A loud farting noise sounded and a horse blushed.
"Sorry. My stomach hates me." Sid held his nose with a paw and wandered back over to the herd.
"Well don't that put the stink in extinction." He said. Sassy looked over at Diego and they sadly glanced after Manny, who was retreating into the woods.
"I uh....need to be alone for a while. You go on ahead. I'll catch up." Sid sighed as he walked off.
"One truly is the loneliest number." Diego nodded in agreement and Sassy continued to stare after Manny. Her heart was breaking for her big friend. She so desperately wanted to fix everything and she couldn't. Not this. She heard Diego yelp and wheeled her head around to see the tiger and sloth getting pelted by pebbles. She looked up in the tree and saw two opossums, dangling from their bald, skinny tails, laughing their heads off. Diego roared and clawed his way up the tree, swiping at the screaming rodents. They fell to the ground and ran off singing "Missed me missed me! Now you gotta kiss me!" Sid dove after them and Diego hurried to aid the sloth. Sassy chuckled and crested the hill to watch her friends play wack-a-opossum in the clearing. The little guys taunted them and Diego and Sid went crazy, falling all over themselves and getting tangled up in limbs. Sassy shook her head, smiling.
"Children. I live with children." She chuckled again and trotted down the hill, coming up behind the opossums who gulped as her shadow passed over them. They looked over their shoulders at her and she smirked. "Beat it." They screamed and ran for the next hill. She padded over to where Diego and Sid lay crumpled in a defeated heap.
"If anyone asks, there were fifty of them. And they were uh...rattlesnakes." Diego told both her and Sid. She nodded.
"Oh sure tough guy I won't let anyone know you got whipped by two little rodents with reeds." Diego glared at her. The opossums laughed from the hill.
"Here kitty kitty!"
"Big mistake you miscreants!" Diego shouted.
"Miscreants?" One of them asked and they burst out laughing.
"Uh Diego? They're opossums." Sid informed. The opossums clucked at them and waddled around like chickens. Diego roared and went charging off after them.
"Retreat!!" They yelled. Sassy sighed and looked at Sid.
"At least you learned the first time. Sabers and their stupid pride." She said.
"Don't wolves have pride?" Sid asked. She nodded.
"But we don't put ourselves in embarrassing situations like that in the first place so there's no need to protect it. Well, at least the females don't. Must be a male thing." She and Sid scampered off after Diego. They ran after the screaming opossums until skidding to a halt in front on not one, but two mammoths. And a female no less.
"Well shave me down and call me a mole rat. You found another mammoth!" Sid exclaimed. The female's eyes grew wide.
"Where!? What a minute I thought mammoths were extinct?" They stared at her. "What're you looking at me for?"
"I don't know. Maybe because you're a mammoth?" Manny suggested. She scoffed.
"Me? Don't be ridiculous I'm a opossum!"
"Right good one." Manny said. "I'm a newt. This is my friend the badger..." pointed at Diego. "My other friend the turtle..." pointed to Sassy. "And my other other friend the platypus." Sid's face fell.
"Hey why I gotta be the platypus? Make one of them the platypus." He complained. The opossums lept onto the females tusks.
"This guy giving you trouble sis?"
"Sis!?"
"That's right. These are my brothers. Opossum. Opossum. Opossum." She pointed to herself last.
"I don't think her tree goes all the way to the top branch." Manny muttered.
"Manny brink of extinction is a bad time to be picky." Sid remarked then elbowed him in the ribs. "She should come with us!"
"Are you insane!? No way!!" Manny hissed.
"Ok." Sid sauntered over to her. "Manny wants me to ask you if you'd like to escape the flood with us?" Manny nearly choked. The opossums jumped down.
"I'd rather be roadkill!"
"That can be arranged!" Diego threatened and growled as the three went nose to nose.
"Funny! Just...lemme have a word with my brothers!" The female said, wrapping her trunk around the boys and pulling them away from Diego's snarling face. They whispered in a corner and Manny smacked Sid over the head with his own trunk.
"Why did you invite them!?"
"Because you might be the only two mammoths left on earth!"
"He has a point you know." Diego threw in.
"And you're not getting any younger." Sassy commented.
"Excuse me? When did I join this dating service?" Manny asked angrily.
"My brothers and I would be delighted to join you." The female said as the came back to the group. Manny groaned.
"If..." one of the opossums stomped up to Diego. "You treat us nicely!" Diego snarled. "See that! That's like the total opposite of nice!"
"Maybe we'll have ourselves a snack before we hit the road." Diego snapped and turned away.
"You wanna piece of us?" The two jumped on Diego and Sid rushed in to help his friend but got whipped by their tails. "You know the best part? We're carrying diseases." One said as it held open Diego's mouth. A deep rumble came from a couple miles away. The birds chirped and flew away from the trees. Diego spat the opossum out in disgust.
"Alright. Thanks to Sid, we're now traveling together and like it or not we're all gonna be one big happy family." Manny said. "I will be the Daddy, Ellie will be the mommy, and Diego will be the angry uncle who eats the kids that get on my nerves. Now let's move before the ground falls out from under our feet!"
"I thought fat guys were supposed to be jolly?" Ellie murmured.
"I'm not fat. It's this fur that makes me look big. It's poofy." Manny insisted.
"Oh heh heh ok!" Ellie nervously laughed. "He's fat."