Toad Surprise

by Morris Gleitzman

  ‘Hello,’ said Limpy, desperately wondering what he should be saying sorry for. The ribbon? All the gravel Goliath had eaten? The fire they’d caused at the shopping mall? Perhaps the puppy had wanted to meet Santa and couldn’t because of the fire.

  It didn’t seem likely.

  ‘This little fella’s my nephew,’ growled the dog. ‘Today was going to be his big day. A Christmas present for a loving family in the next street. And it was all fine until you wart-heads came along.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Limpy.

  The dog suddenly lunged at Goliath, huge jaws open.

  For a horrible moment, Limpy thought it was the end for Goliath. So did Goliath, judging by the puddle that suddenly appeared at his feet.

  But the dog just grabbed the Santa hat, ripped it apart and flung it to the ground.

  ‘We don’t like Christmas either,’ squeaked Goliath. ‘We hate it.’

  ‘That’s not what I’ve heard,’ rumbled the dog. ‘And because you two clowns have been parading around the district like warty little Santas, no kid in this town wants a puppy for Christmas any more. They all want cane toads in Santa hats.’

  Limpy’s mind was a whirl.

  This was fantastic news.

  Then he saw that the dog was looking even angrier.

  ‘Which is why this evening,’ rasped the dog, ‘my little nephew here was dumped.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Limpy, realising the news wasn’t quite so good after all. ‘Oh dear. We are sorry. Very, very sorry.’

  ‘Sorry’s not enough,’ growled the dog.

  ‘Extremely humungously sorry?’ squeaked Goliath.

  ‘I don’t want grovelling,’ rumbled the dog. ‘I want action. Find this little fella a loving human home. Tonight.’

  Limpy gulped again. Perhaps if they put the Santa hat on the puppy …?

  No good. The Santa hat was in shreds.

  ‘J-just for our information,’ stammered Limpy, ‘if we can’t find your nephew a loving human home, you know, tonight …’

  ‘I’ll kill you,’ said the dog.

  Limpy and Goliath peered in through Stan’s kitchen window.

  ‘Yes,’ whispered Limpy. ‘I think it’s working.’

  Stan was sitting in his usual spot at the kitchen table. But he wasn’t staring tearfully at the photo of his wife. He wasn’t even gazing wistfully at Uncle Vasco’s wrinkles.

  He was feeding chicken nuggets to the puppy, who was sitting on his knee. The puppy was wagging its tail. Stan was chuckling.

  ‘That is a wonderful sight,’ said Limpy.

  ‘I know,’ said Goliath. ‘Aren’t chicken nuggets beautiful?’

  ‘Bouncing bushflies,’ said an alarmed voice near Limpy’s head. ‘Is that a dog?’

  Limpy saw a familiar-looking spider lowering itself from a verandah beam. The spider was staring into the kitchen, horrified.

  ‘It’s a puppy,’ said Goliath proudly. ‘We gave it to Stan for Christmas.’

  ‘Well,’ said Limpy, trying to be truthful, ‘not so much gave it, as helped it in through the window.’

  ‘You idiots,’ said the spider. ‘You realise what you’ve done, don’t you?’

  ‘Stan was lonely,’ said Limpy. ‘And the puppy was homeless.’

  ‘Great,’ said the spider. ‘So now I’ve got to share my home with a dog, one of the most vicious spider-eating species on the planet.’ The spider paused and frowned. ‘Or is that possums?’

  ‘Don’t ask me,’ said Goliath. ‘Do I look like an information website?’

  The spider looked more closely at Goliath, and Limpy saw its eyes widen as it remembered it had met Goliath before, and that Goliath was a spider-eating species too.

  ‘It’s OK,’ said Limpy to the spider. ‘Relax. You’re safe with us. Happy Christmas.’

  ‘Actually,’ said the spider, backing away from Goliath, ‘it’s after midnight, so to be completely accurate it’s not Christmas any more, it’s Boxing Day.’

  Limpy stared at the spider.

  Boxing Day?

  Limpy tried to remember why Boxing Day sounded familiar.

  Of course. The Christmas beetle’s girlfriend had told him about it once. Boxing Day was a really important part of Christmas, mostly because of one particular thing.

  Limpy’s warts tingled with excitement as he remembered what that thing was. And why Boxing Day was the very best day of the year for getting a swamp-load of Santa hats.

  The Boxing Day sales.

  The next morning, after a sleep in the back of the ute, Limpy and Goliath were at the kitchen window again, peeping in.

  ‘Yes,’ said Limpy. ‘Perfect.’

  ‘Is that the Boxing Day sales?’ said Goliath, craning his neck for a better look.

  ‘No,’ said Limpy. ‘Well, kind of.’

  Stan was sitting at the kitchen table, his beard white and fluffy in the morning sunlight. He was cuddling the puppy and studying a newspaper.

  ‘He’s reading ads for the sales,’ said Limpy.

  ‘Oh, right, yes, I knew that,’ said Goliath.

  There was a pause while Limpy watched Stan, and Goliath frowned.

  ‘These Boxing Day sales,’ said Goliath. ‘Can you eat them?’

  Limpy sighed. Sometimes Goliath’s thirst for knowledge was exhausting.

  Keeping his voice low, Limpy explained to Goliath how on the day after Christmas all the big stores cut their prices. And all the humans rushed to buy things cheaply. Specially things they wanted for Christmas but didn’t get.

  ‘Like pizza?’ said Goliath.

  ‘And other things,’ said Limpy.

  He also explained that sometimes, even when you did get what you wanted for Christmas, you had to buy extra things to go with it.

  ‘Like extra cheese and pepperoni?’ said Goliath.

  Limpy decided it was quicker to agree.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And if what you got was a puppy, you need to buy extra things like a kennel and a lead and a puppy bed and some puppy food.’

  Goliath’s face lit up with understanding.

  ‘And if what you got for Christmas was an automatic lint-remover,’ he said, ‘you need to buy some lint.’

  Limpy didn’t have time to answer. What he had hoped would happen was now happening. Stan was on his feet, reaching across the table for his car keys.

  ‘Brilliant,’ said Limpy. ‘Stan’s going to the sales. Quick, back to the ute.’

  ‘Why is it brilliant?’ said Goliath as they hurried across the front yard.

  ‘Because the sales are at the shopping mall,’ said Limpy. ‘And that’s where we can get Santa hats.’

  As the ute chugged down the street, Limpy and Goliath stayed hidden in the back as usual.

  ‘I know why we’re not riding up front,’ said Goliath. ‘It’s because Stan might decide he’d rather have us as pets and dump the puppy.’

  Limpy smiled sadly and shook his head.

  ‘Humans want pets with fur,’ he said, ‘not warts.’

  ‘Crazy,’ said Goliath. ‘Anyway, we can’t be pets. We’re wild creatures of the swamp who are noble and free. Plus we need a constant supply of fresh mud to cool our bottoms when we’ve been eating spicy gumnuts.’

  Limpy nodded. Goliath was right.

  And the swamp was exactly the reason Limpy had decided to stay hidden. He needed time to think.

  There was one part of the plan he hadn’t worked out yet. The most important part. How he and Goliath were going to get back home.

  ‘I am so grateful to you blokes,’ said a friendly voice.

  Limpy looked up. It was the centipede.

  ‘That was genius,’ said the centipede. ‘Giving Stan that puppy for Christmas. That brute of a dog next door, I’ve never seen him so happy. Well, not exactly happy, but he hasn’t killed anything for hours.’

  ‘Just a little idea we had,’ said Goliath. ‘Glad to help.’

  ‘Stan loves that puppy,’ said the centipede. ‘Won’
t let it out of his sight. I reckon he’ll take it with him when he goes to visit his wife this afternoon.’

  ‘His wife?’ said Limpy, confused. ‘But she’s dead.’

  ‘She’s buried in the next town,’ said the centipede. ‘He goes every day.’

  Limpy stared at the centipede. Goliath did too.

  ‘Let me get this straight,’ Goliath said to the centipede. ‘Humans don’t stack dead rellies in their bedrooms, they bury them?’ He thought about this. ‘Fair enough, I do the same sometimes with my dead warts.’

  Limpy barely heard what Goliath was saying. His mind was racing back to when they first met Stan on the highway. Limpy had often wondered where Stan was driving back from that day.

  ‘This next town,’ Limpy asked the centipede. ‘Is it along the highway to the west?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the centipede. ‘Do you know it?’

  ‘I don’t know the town,’ said Limpy, his warts throbbing with excitement. ‘But I know the highway. It’s where our swamp is.’

  ‘Anyway,’ the centipede gushed on, ‘we in the front yard and ute community are very grateful to you both, so if there’s anything we can do to repay you, just say it.’

  Limpy saw Goliath open his mouth.

  He slapped his hand over it before Goliath could say anything about pizza.

  ‘Actually,’ said Limpy, ‘there is something …’

  The car park was even more crowded than on Christmas Eve. Stan had to park the ute round the back of the shopping mall.

  ‘Disgraceful,’ muttered Goliath. ‘We’re regulars here. We shouldn’t have to park out the back with the garbage skips.’

  But Limpy didn’t mind.

  As he waited for Stan and the puppy to head off into the mall, and for the centipede to head off to do the things he’d asked it to do, he rubbed his hands together happily.

  This was exactly where he wanted to be.

  The metal garbage skip was hot in the sun, and by the time Limpy had climbed up the side his warts were toasted and throbbing.

  But not as throbbing as his insides when he finally perched on the rim and looked down into the skip.

  Yes.

  This was exactly what he’d hoped would be here.

  A huge pile of broken plastic Christmas tree branches and tangled fairy lights and charred socks and smashed whatsits and unwell-looking Santa dolls and, mixed up with it all, loads and loads of Santa hats.

  Anxiously, Limpy peered at the Santa hats more closely.

  Some were a bit burned round the edges, or torn, or streaked with melted plastic, but lots of them were fine.

  ‘Good on you, Limpy,’ gasped Goliath as he peered into the skip. ‘You’ve done it. You’ve found me a lifetime supply of Santa hats.’

  ‘Not just you, Goliath,’ said Limpy happily. ‘Everyone.’

  Dragging the Santa hats out of the skip took ages.

  Carrying them in bundles over to the ute took a while too, even though Limpy was amazed how many Goliath could fit into his mouth at once.

  Stacking them in the back of the ute wasn’t a quick job either.

  But Limpy discovered that luckily humans don’t look around much in car parks when they’re hurrying towards shopping malls anxious not to miss bargains. And when a mall is packed, it takes a bloke with a puppy ages to buy a kennel and a lead and a puppy bed and puppy food. Specially when he’s meeting lots of new Facebook friends.

  ‘Finished,’ panted Limpy as he and Goliath stacked the last hats in the back of the ute.

  ‘I don’t want to ruin your Boxing Day,’ said Goliath, frowning. ‘But I’ve just thought of something. How are we gunna get Stan to stop at the swamp and drop us off when we don’t speak his language?’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Limpy. ‘It’ll be fine.’

  He glanced over to the other end of the ute, where the centipede and its friends had almost finished getting things ready.

  By the time they had, Stan was approaching.

  Limpy could tell it was Stan. At first glance it looked like a huge pile of parcels on legs, but Limpy could see the puppy trotting alongside on a new lead.

  ‘OK,’ said Limpy to Goliath. ‘Help me get Stan’s attention.’

  When the pile of parcels had almost reached the ute, Limpy and Goliath started yelling and waving.

  ‘G’day Stan,’ shouted Limpy. ‘We’re down here. There’s something we want to show you.’

  ‘Hey, fuzzy face,’ yelled Goliath. ‘It’s us. Santa’s ex-helpers.’

  It was the puppy who saw them first. After it barked happily and wagged its tail for a while, Stan’s face appeared over the parcels, staring at Limpy and Goliath in amazement.

  Limpy didn’t waste any time.

  He pointed to the other end of the ute, to where the centipede was waiting. Stan shifted his gaze, and Limpy gave the centipede the signal to start.

  The centipede had done a really good job.

  Painted onto the metal floor of the ute was a smear of black engine grease that looked exactly like a miniature section of the highway. Squatting side-by-side on the little highway were two fat beetles. Limpy could see them puffing their chests out to look more like cane toads.

  Best of all was the centipede.

  Stuck onto its back was an old piece of bubblegum in the shape of a ute. At Limpy’s signal, the centipede ute started scampering along the little highway towards the two cane-toad beetles.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ said Goliath. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘You’ll see,’ whispered Limpy. ‘It’s to jog Stan’s memory so he’ll know where to drop us off on his way to see his wife this afternoon.’

  Limpy held his breath. For a while it looked as though the centipede ute was going to drive straight over the cane-toad beetles and squash them flat. But at the last moment, the ute swerved and missed them.

  Brilliant, thought Limpy. If that doesn’t remind Stan where he swerved off the road near our place, I’m a warty placemat.

  Limpy wanted to applaud.

  But he didn’t. Instead he looked hopefully up at Stan.

  And saw, to his disappointment and dismay, that Goliath wasn’t the only one who didn’t have a clue what was going on.

  Stan didn’t either.

  That afternoon Stan drove to the next town to visit his wife’s grave.

  In the back of the ute, Limpy was rolling around as usual. This time so was Goliath.

  Limpy managed to grab hold of the spare tyre and stop rolling long enough to peer out at the highway.

  It was a long way down. Plus the ute was going so fast, the bitumen was just a blur.

  ‘Are you sure you’re OK about this?’ he said to Goliath.

  ‘What?’ said Goliath, rolling past. ‘Risking our lives to get home?’

  Limpy nodded.

  ‘You didn’t say anything about it being so uncomfortable,’ grumbled Goliath, rolling back. ‘I’m melting in these hats.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Limpy.

  He was feeling pretty overheated too. But you had to expect that when you were wearing so many Santa hats. Specially when they were all wrapped round you in a big ball.

  ‘I think this is it,’ yelled the centipede, who was clinging to the roof of the driver’s cab, peering at the highway ahead.

  Limpy squinted ahead himself.

  Yes.

  The centipede was right.

  Coming up was the railway crossing near the swamp.

  ‘This is it,’ Limpy said to Goliath, who was still rolling around. ‘Get ready to jump.’

  Limpy dragged himself up onto the spare tyre.

  Eventually Goliath joined him.

  ‘It’s going to be OK,’ said Limpy, hoping that the wind battering his face wasn’t whipping his croaks away before Goliath could hear them. ‘Try to forget that jumping from a ute at this speed would normally result in instant death. We’ll be fine. We’re wrapped up in so many layers of Santa hats, we won’t even feel it. We’ll just bounce a fe
w times and roll a bit.’

  ‘So there’s no need to be scared?’ said Goliath.

  ‘Absolutely not,’ said Limpy.

  They jumped.

  ‘Arghhh,’ yelled Limpy, terrified.

  Goliath was yelling too.

  For a few moments they were flying, spinning in mid-air, buffeted by the wind, giddy and out of control.

  Limpy hoped he wouldn’t be sick on the Santa hats.

  Then he hit the road.

  He’d been wrong. He did feel it.

  A lot.

  He felt it more with each bounce.

  After a lot of bounces, the rolling started. There was a lot of rolling too, but finally, when it stopped, Limpy opened his eyes.

  He was lying in the long grass next to the highway, quite close to the swamp. The Santa hats were still attached to him. So were his arms and legs, as far as he could tell.

  He heard a loud groan from nearby.

  ‘I’m never doing that again,’ croaked a grumpy voice.

  Limpy rolled over and peered around. And saw with relief that Goliath was in one piece too. He was wedged in a thorn bush, and muttering rude words, but his outer layer of Santa hats was still intact.

  Then another voice rang out through the swamp weed.

  ‘Limpy. Goliath.’

  Limpy rolled over and grinned.

  It was Charm, hopping towards them, her dear little face glowing with delight. Behind her, just as delighted, were Mum and Dad.

  ‘Look, Mum and Dad,’ said Charm. ‘It’s Limpy and Goliath. Santa brought them home in his ute.’

  ‘Limpy,’ said Mum, hugging as much of him as she could get her arms round. ‘Thank swamp you’re safe. Gee, you’ve put on a bit of weight.’

  Limpy didn’t try to explain about the Santa hats.

  Not for a while.

  For now he just wanted to lie here and enjoy Charm’s cuddles, and watch Mum and Dad pulling Goliath out of the thorn bush and pulling thorns out of Goliath.

  He wanted to let it all sink in.

  They were home.

  Limpy stood in the moonlight in the middle of the highway with Goliath and Charm and Mum and Dad, holding his breath.

  This was the moment of truth.

  ‘Limpy,’ said Dad quietly. ‘Whether or not this works, I just want you to know I’m proud of you for going on this quest, and I’m proud of you for trying to bring human friendship to cane toads for countless generations to come. And the same for you, Goliath.’