The narrator, a snowman, wakes before sunrise listening to the tide and distant sounds. He observes a grey‑hazy horizon lit with a pink‑rosy glow and offshore towers silhouetted against the lagoon. He checks his stainless‑steel watch, which no longer works and reads “zero hour,” causing anxiety about lost official time. After calming himself, he tends to bug bites to prevent infection and scans the ground, finding no wildlife. He descends from a tree, wraps a dirty bedsheet around himself like a toga, and retrieves a replica Red Sox cap left on a branch, removing a spider before putting it on. He urinates in the bushes, warns nearby grasshoppers, then moves to the opposite side of the tree where he has constructed a cache of concrete slabs lined with wire mesh. Inside the cache he stores a single mango (now opened), a can of Sveltana No‑Meat Cocktail Sausages, about a third of a bottle of Scotch, a chocolate‑flavored energy bar, a can opener, an ice pick, six empty beer bottles (for sentiment and water storage), and sunglasses missing one lens. Ants have entered the bag; he rubs black and yellow ants off his arms, noting the sting of the yellow ones. He reflects that strict daily routine supports morale and sanity, recalling a vague colonial‑plantation directive about attire and behavior with natives, though he cannot recall the exact wording. He then sits on the ground and begins to eat the mango.