Chapter 6

CHAPTER 6 Merle and Pearl wasted no time in unfolding the map once Ruben threw their canvas prison into the back seat of the rental car. Merle scanned the map and quickly found their location at Haifa Airport. "Look, Pearl— we're up north by Mount Carmel!" Way before even Merle and Pearl's time, Mount Carmel was made famous when the prophet Elijah went there and called down fire from heaven. "Wait," Pearl said. "We're near Galilee!"

Merle caught a glimpse of a road sign out the window. "And we're headed east— toward Nazareth!" he whispered. This was great news for Merle— that's where he'd grown up! It was a small town that he knew like the back of his paw. "Remember the first time we met?" Pearl asked, pointing to a spot on the map along the Sea of Galilee. "I was just a small-town squirrel on my first trip to the big city," Merle recalled. Pearl was from Tiberias, along the shore of Galilee. "You seemed so sophisticated." "And I still am!" Pearl smiled. "Here's where we started our raft ride." Merle pointed to the southern end of the sea, which fed into the Jordan River. Merle's bright idea to sail down the Jordan for a vacation at the Dead Sea was the reason the squirrels ended up petrified in a cave for 2,000 years. "Don't remind me," Pearl said dryly.

Merle turned his attention back to the matter at hand. "If we manage to escape once we get to Nazareth, at least we'll be in familiar territory," he said. "That's a big if," Pearl replied, keeping an eye on their squirrelnapper.