Sprinkles the Unicorn

I never knew that unicorns were real. But today I just happened to meet one when it crashed through my bedroom window. It had a rainbow mane and tail, and smelled like bananas.

And it talked.

Apparently, his name is Sprinkles the Unicorn, his favorite color is all the colors, and he’s sorry that he broke my window. Sprinkles’s first impression wasn’t great, so I screamed, ran out of my house and down the road before I realized I should call animal control and that I didn’t have my phone. I ran back in my house to grab my phone, just to find Sprinkles gnawing on a table leg. I then grabbed my phone and called animal control.

“Animal control, what is your emergency?” a woman’s voice said.

“I have a unicorn in my dining room!” I shouted into the phone.

-CLICK-

They hung up on me. Of course. I decided to call back and just say that I had a wild animal in my house, although I didn’t know what they would think when they saw for themselves what it actually was. Sprinkles had now wandered into my garage, and I decided to follow him to see what he would get into next. I found him pressing the button to open the garage door with his nose. Then, he stepped on a skateboard that was just lying around amidst all of the other stuff on the floor and started to roll outside.

“Oh no you don’t!” I said, desperately attempting to use a jump rope as a lasso to catch Sprinkles, but failing and falling flat on my face after tripping over my own feet. Right then animal control showed up, pulling into the driveway in a big van. A man and a women hopped out, wearing dark grey animal control uniforms. They were gaping at Sprinkles who was rolling down the sidewalk, pushing himself along with his hooves. They seemed to be taking in his rainbow hair and sparkling golden horn.

“Tell me that’s not a unicorn,” the guy said. He was sunburned and had curly, brown hair. His shiny nametag proclaimed that his name was Bob in bold letters.

“It’s not. It’s probably just a deformed horse. Come on, let’s do the job we came here for.” A woman whose nametag said Maureen replied. She had short, black hair and seemed to be the leader of the pair. “After that uni- erm, deformed horse!”  She declared, and they both ran after Sprinkles down the block.

            You know, I had always thought that Moses had forgotten to put unicorns on his ark and just sailed away while the earth flooded and all the unicorns drowned. I guess I’ll never know what actually happened.

I sat there for a while, contemplating what to do next, when the animal control people came back. They were dragging a whinnying Sprinkles behind them with a rope around his neck. My skateboard was nowhere in sight. I sighed again. They loaded him into their vehicle despite his protests and shut the door, leaving him in darkness. I felt kind of bad for him.

“What are you going to do with him?” I asked them.

“We need to take him to our lab for research. It’s not every day you come across something like…this.” Maureen said, gesturing towards the van.

“Are you going to do tests on him?” I started to be concerned.

“Maybe. That’s not really our job. We just catch the animal and either release it or bring it to the lab for research if it looks interesting enough.” Bob replied.

“Oh.” I said, softly. In my head I thought, That’s terrible! But I really couldn’t do anything about it. I was starting to regret calling animal control. What would they do to an animal as majestic and magical as Sprinkles?

I fell asleep that night thinking about Sprinkles and what I had done to him. In the morning, I had my answer of what to do to make it right: I would sneak into the animal control building to visit Sprinkles and see if he was doing okay. Something suddenly occurred to me right then. I had never bothered to ask about his past or how he just happened to crash into my window. I couldn’t believe that a unicorn exploded right into my room and I didn’t ask why! I promised myself I would find out.

Later that day, I summoned up enough courage to visit Sprinkles. Except…I had no idea where the building was, or how to enter it. I slapped my forehead. Today would be a long day. 

I had finally located the animal control building using GPS. It was a big concrete rectangle with one door at the front. Not intimidating at all. As I drew closer, I realized that there were security cameras. I picked up a rock that was laying on the ground and threw it at the security camera. It shattered, spraying glass everywhere. I continued on shakily. I had never done something like that before, and I hoped that it didn’t make me eligible for juvie. 

The inside of the building was pretty much the same thing as the outside: bland. I walked through a drab, dark hallway listening to the distant squeal of an animal. I need to get Sprinkles out of here…I thought. I finally reached the part of the building that I was expecting. The lab. It was lined with cages of all different animals, most of which I couldn’t name. Then I spotted Sprinkles and ran over to him.

“Sprinkles!” I shouted as I clutched the bars of his cage. He glared at me. “I know. I’m sorry I handed you over to animal control. But now I’m going to save you! Come on, let’s go.” I said to him, opening the lock on his cage to let him out.

“Not so fast.” A woman’s voice sounded behind me.

I whirled around. “Maureen!” I exclaimed.

“That’s right. I knew something was up with you and your deformed horse. And I’m not letting you get away with your little escape.” She moved over to block the doorway.

I looked at Sprinkles and he looked back at me. It felt like for a second, we connected and we knew exactly what we were going to do.

“3…2….1…GO!” I said, counting down. At the same time, we sped past Maureen and down the hallway, and outside to freedom.

Later, at home, I asked Sprinkles about his backstory. He told me that he came from a faraway land called Serentifally, where lots of magical creatures roamed. He spoke of mice that could grow wings, cats that really had nine lives, and 2 monster sisters with names like Olivia and Amelia. He said that one day, he was hungry and decided to look for a snack. He ventured far and wide until he found a beehive that he thought was deserted, but really was home to thousands of bees that could become invisible. When he took a bite, they all swarmed around him and chased him all the way to my room! 

“Wow,” I said to Sprinkles, in disbelief. “I never knew that. I’m really, really sorry about what I did to you. You need to go back home.”

Sprinkles nodded. He headed towards the door. The last I ever saw of him was his rainbow tail as he galloped down the road, narrowly missing crashing into a car.

“So long, Sprinkles.” I whispered. I wiped away a tear.

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