Louie crawled as only Louie can crawl. He'd been doing it since he
was a baby. He knew this was the only way he could sneak out.
Louie looked like all the others, but he never did fit in. So Louie was leaving home.
He pushed on through the gloom, ever afraid that he was crawling in circles. The
forest looked the same, hour after hour. At last, he entered a clearing. No,
better yet, it was the timberline beyond which no trees could survive. Louie emerged into full sunlight for the first time in his short life. Once his sensitive eyes had adjusted, he rolled onto his back to let the sun dry his belly.
Louie trudged over the uneven terrain. Up...down...up again...he clawed his way over
one barren ridge after another. He then pushed his way
through some dense bushes. Louie cautiously ventured onto a long knife-edged ridge
between twin lakes. He looked way down on each side into a mysterious pool -- transparent
near the shore, blue in the depths and black in the central abyss.
Louie trembled at the thought of losing his footing. Fortunately, he was very sure-footed, even tenacious.
A pinnacle arose at the far end of the ridge. Louie gulped. Could he
possibly make it all the way to the top? By putting one foot in front of
another and another and another, higher and higher he climbed, gasping for each breath.
Just when he thought he couldn’t go on, he looked up and saw his goal almost within reach. The route got a bit easier.
Louie nervously crawled onto the summit. He could go no further. Ahead of him was a sheer cliff with a yawning chasm at the
bottom. A warm, moist wind howled around him.
Louie the Louse gazed in awe at
a world that he had never imagined.
