Mad, Mad Words: The Sparkly Barnacle's Journey Part I

     Here's another story we wrote using a Mad Libs word list.  For more details about how we came up with our story, see our original Mad, Mad Words post.  I've included our list below.  Feel free to try writing a story of your own using them and let us know what you come up with, either by posting in the comments below or by emailing me at hathaway.amber@gmail.com.

Word list:
*Sparkly
*Soda
*Cats
*Nine
*Icy
*Swims
*Green
*Owl
*Ottoman
*Cupcake
*Gopher
*Jumps
*Tree
*Pretty
*Book
*Calculators
*Grim
*Toaster

     There once was a sparkly barnacle.  It lived on the side of a soda bottle.  The soda bottle had once been owned by an eccentric old man who had been the caretaker of famous cats.  He had nine such cats, in fact.  However, there was no old man nor were there cats in the icy depths of the ocean.
     As the barnacle's memory of the old man faded, it watched as an eel swam past it.  As the eel passed, the barnacle saw a flash of green light.  The bottle was lifted into the air by an owl wearing scuba diving gear.
     After they reached the surface, the owl and barnacle were hoisted aboard a ship and the owl placed the bottle on an ottoman.  The owl took off her scuba mask and started munching on a cupcake from the tray beside the ottoman.  A gopher dressed in fanciful captain's attire approached the owl.  Feeling a presence behind her, the owl jumped.  She jumped so high that she landed on the tree branch that was the mast of the ship.
     "My, what a pretty view I have from here," she said as she regained her composure.
     The gopher began to flip through pages of a book, searching for something.  He picked up a calculator from the mound of calculators neighboring the ottoman.  As he punched numbers into the calculator, a grim expression crossed his face.  "This thing you found in the ocean is too small to be the toaster of prosperity," he said.

To be continued . . .