CHAPTER 1 FEAST FOR TWO A full moon, round like a wheel of cheese, shone bright over The City. Streetlights lit up signs on every street corner. And I, Ratnip, was in rat paradise. Why? you might ask. Well, because I was eating the biggest feast of my life! Just a few moments ago, I had been walking around The City. I was doing my nightly rounds, looking for something interesting to add to my treasure collection--candy wrappers, string, stuff like that. Tuffy, my skunk friend, had tagged along too. He isn't a treasure hunter like I am. But ever since I met him in the alleyway behind the ice cream store, he loves joining me on walks around The City. So far this evening, I hadn't found anything on our walk except a few used tissues. Yuck! "Let's try the next street," I said. "Maybe we'll have more luck there." We hadn't gotten very far when Tuffy pointed at something lying on the sidewalk up ahead. "Look! A bottle cap!" he said. We circled around the bottle cap, sizing it up. "Hmmm," I said, stroking my whiskers. Bottle caps were easy to find in The City. I had to choose carefully which ones to add to my collection, or else my treasure room would be overflowing with them. This bottle cap was plain white, and it didn't have interesting patterns on it. So I left it alone. Just a few steps ahead, we found another bottle cap. This one was yellow with a picture of a lemon printed on it. "Oh hey! This one is cool!" I said. I showed it to Tuffy before putting it in my bag. "Whoa," Tuffy said. "What is with all these caps?" I looked ahead and gasped. All along the sidewalk, bottle caps were strewn everywhere! Like I said, bottle caps are common on The City streets. But so many of them, all on the same sidewalk? Something was going on. Tuffy and I followed the trail of bottle caps down the block, around the corner, and all the way to... the biggest, stinkiest dumpster we had ever seen! The dumpster was big and green, and it had gigantic wheels. It was standing in the street, resting beside the curb. And--best of all--it was overflowing with trash! "WOW!" Tuffy and I shouted. "Forget bottle caps," I said. "That dumpster must be filled with all kinds of treasures!" "Including treasures that go in our tummy," Tuffy added, rubbing his belly. We scampered up the wheels on the dumpster. Then we dove right into the sea of trash. "This is AMAZING!" I squeaked. "It's so amazing, it's almost too good to be true!" Excerpted from Dumpster Dive and Dine by Cam Higgins All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
