Survival

I found myself left to my own devices in the wild lands. Thrown into a survival situation where man is pitted against nature. I did my best to fend off the threats of the untamed boondocks that was my personal jungle.

Like all good survivors I assessed my surrounding and took in all the resources I could gleam from a first glance. Then this old bushman began ticking off my internal list of priorities.

Was I in any danger? Not initially. The natives seems to pay me no heed as they were engrossed in a episode of DuckTales and there was a good 12 minutes of brain numbing programing left to play out. I wondered for a moment if Lauchpad would be able to save McDuck and his nephews from the Beagle Boys and their rather clumsy plan to separate Scrooge from his money. I shook my head loose from the fog. Clearly the atmosphere in this place was affecting my judgment. I needed to keep moving.

Was I thirsty? Not terribly. Though I realized that I should always take the opportunity to hydrate whenever I was able. Crossing the room my bare foot landed squarely on the jutting head and strangely sharp arm of a Princess Aurora figurine that lay on the floor. I stifled my eek of pain. The last thing I wanted to do was to alert the natives and distract them from the attention sucking box. As I reached the wood patterned laminate counter-top my eyes found their prize. I took a sip of watered down apple juice from a Princess Ariel plastic cup. Clearly these natives worship at the Disney cartoon franchise altar. I should remember that if confronted...

Next priority was fire. If I was going to be here for long I would need both the warmth and security that fire offered.

"Daddy! Are you making fire!? Fire! Yes!!"
"I, Uh," Nuts. This might have been a bad idea. I now had the full attention of one of the tribal chieftains from this pink clan of Aborigines.

"Yes, but I want you to stand back while I'm getting it started and have the chain open."
"Okay. I love fire!! Mommy, Daddy's starting a fire!!"

I might have to worry about this one later, but for now the security of fire was already proving true before even before the first spark was seen. I then secured some dry tinder in the form of unwanted mortgage offers and mail order catalogs and proceeded to made fire. Though the lighter fought me valiantly with it's child safety features but man proved himself again and flames soon engulfed the press board firelog.

With thirst and fire off the list I next turned my sizable skill towards acquiring food.

"What's for dinner?"
"It's pretty late dear and we already ate."
"Oh."
"I can make you something..."
"Naw. I got it. Thanks."

I decided to skip on setting traps or snares as there wasn't much wildlife to be had in this region. I set myself into gatherer mode and was able to put enough calories together to replenished those lost while crumpling mortgage ads and flipping though the Lands Ends catalog before tearing it up.

"Oh Peter. I almost forgot. The water heater is broken. I have someone coming tomorrow to fix it."
"What?! Are you kidding me?"
"No joke. Guy said the thermo coupler needs replacing."
"That means I have to take a cold shower! What are we living in a jungle or something..."