The school year had just begun, and Suzy and Justine were going through their backpacks retrieving all the paperwork.

Justine: They need you to fill out the emergency contact forms, Mom.

Adele: What happened to last year’s forms?

Suzy: They expired.

Adele: I’ve given them the same information every year since you girls started school. Why can’t they just use that?

Suzy: Guess they want to make sure you and Dad haven’t killed each other over the summer.

Adele: What else?

Suzy: They’re looking for parent volunteers for the lunch room

Adele: No chance.

Stan: Do they feed me?

Justine: You can chaperone the fall social.

Adele: Nope.

Justine: Want to bake cupcakes?

Adele: Next paper.

Justine: Are we signing up for school lunches?

Adele: I wish. You girls hate the school lunches.

Suzy: It’s not our fault they serve so much mystery protein. They act like alligators will eat anything.

Stan: Uh. Actually, we’re kinda known for that.

Justine: It’s disgusting, Daddy. My body is a temple, and I want to take care of it.

Suzy: Yeah. If I’m going to eat snake, I want to know I’m eating snake. I don’t want it ground up looking like hamburger.

Adele: You two are princesses. No school lunches. What else?

Suzy: Our first fund-raiser is selling pizzas.

Adele: That doesn’t sound too bad. What are you raising money for?

Suzy: We need new mats in the gym. Apparently someone ate the old ones.

Justine: Eww. Probably had too many school lunches.

Suzy: Here’s the last thing.

Adele: A Gator’s Guide to Hurricanes? What’s that?

Justine: It’s part of the new school safety project.

Adele: It says that alligators can sense when a storm is approaching. When the barometric pressure drops, we can feel it in our skin.

Stan: That’s true. Granny always knows when a storm is coming.

Adele: Your mother swears it’s going to be a hurricane every time she gets an ache in one of her joints. Most of the time, it’s just a thunderstorm.

Stan: Those sensors probably don’t work as well inside.

Suzy: I think we should just watch the Weather Channel like everyone else.

Justine: Or the Weather Gator app.

Adele: It says that when we “sense” a bad storm coming, we should seek shelter someplace we can get into and out of easily. They recommend a storm drain.

Justine: It also recommends heading for the water since we can stay under it for a long time.

Suzy: I cannot stay under water. I’d drown.

Justine: You’re supposed to come up once in a while to breathe. Don’t be a doofus.

Adele: They also say the swamp is a good place to hide. We can submerge there.

Suzy: This all sounds really uncivilized. Why can’t we just head inland?

Adele: The brochure says that hurricane season is an excellent time to go house-hunting. Particularly if you live in a neighborhood near humans.

Justine: That’s probably true. Most of them leave.

Stan: I think they’d want their houses back after the storm.

Justine: Yeah. They do usually come back. I wonder why they think we would steal someone’s house.

Stan: Or their belongings.

Suzy: I think that brochure is crazy. It also says that we can wait out the storm in the hole of a tree or a cave. It makes us sound like barbarians.

Adele: It does seem a little primitive. Where did you say it came from Justine?

Justine: Let me see what it says.

She flipped the brochure over and looked at the back.

Justine: I found the problem. It was written by a human “for the benefit of my reptilian companions.”

Suzy: I knew it! We alligators are much more civilized.

We wish all our readers in hurricane territory the best during the storm season.

(Pictures courtesy of Google Images. )