I didn’t mention about Rudy maybe eating Trixie, partly because he probably didn’t, but mainly because they’d get rid of him for definite if they thought he had, and I’d grown quite fond of the ugly brute.
But at tea time my dad said something to my mum that made my blood run cold.
‘Have you heard about Mrs Cake’s little dog?’
‘No, what about it?’
‘Disappeared.’
‘Really? That’s funny.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, the postman told me this morning that the King Charles spaniel that always used to bark at him at number seven has run away. He said the Johnsons were very upset about it, but it’s the best news he’s had all year.’
‘Strange them both disappearing,’ said Mum. ‘I wonder if they’re linked?’
‘Well,’ said Dad, ‘they were both pedigrees, so perhaps they were kidnapped by dogsnatchers.’
Mum laughed.
And then she stopped laughing, and a quite complicated expression came over her face, as if she’d just thought of a brilliant plan but didn’t want anyone else to know about it.
Luckily Rude Word wasn’t around to hear all this. He was still trying out his new bed in the garage.
I had trouble sleeping that night. I had a lot on my mind. Mainly, of course, it was the whole thing about Rude Word and whether or not he had gobbled up Trixie. Even worse than that, if those other two dogs had disappeared, then maybe Rudy had eaten them as well. That made him a serial cannibal dog, which is just about the worst, most embarrassing kind of dog there is, after a sausage dog.
Finally, when I was nearly asleep, I heard a snuffly, growly sound outside. I went to the window and looked out. Mum was dragging Rude Word along by his rope. When they reached the gate, she tied him to the post and then hung some sort of sign over it. Then she patted Rudy and went back to the garage and got his bed and blanket. I didn’t think much about it because I was tired by then, and I soon fell asleep, dreaming about dogs and trousers and being kissed by Mum.
When I left for school in the morning, Rude Word was still there, asleep in his bed.
The sign said:
BEWARE! – VERY EXPENSIVE DOG
I was quite pleased that Rudy had a job at last, even if it seemed a funny way to scare people off.
The next day was Saturday. I tried to teach Rude Word some tricks, but he spent most of the day licking his bottom. Mum made him eat his supper in the garden. He had three fried eggs and some cold baked beans.
The sign was still on the gate. Dad gave Mum a funny look when he saw it, but he didn’t say anything.
It rained on Sunday so nothing happened apart from more bum licking.
School on Monday was not very nice. Some of the other children were talking about the pet dogs that had gone missing. We tried to ignore it, but I think the Bare Bum Gang were all secretly afraid in case it turned out to be our fault and we got blamed and everyone hated us.
But that evening things took a turn for the better, at last, even though at first it seemed as though they’d got worse.
MY NUMERACY HOMEWORK was measuring things. We had to measure an object in every room in the house. I’d measured some forks in the kitchen, the telly in the living room, a toothbrush in the bathroom, and a toilet roll in the loo.
So next I was looking for something to measure in my bedroom. I thought I’d try my old teddy, Malcolm. I hadn’t really played with Malcolm for a long time, because I didn’t need him to look after me any more now that I was old.
I felt a bit guilty about not playing with him, which is why I thought I’d measure him, to make him feel wanted again. But now I couldn’t find him. I looked under the bed and on the shelves and in my toy box.
‘Mum, where’s Malcolm?’ I yelled downstairs.
Before she answered, who should wander in but Rude Word. There was something in his mouth. I knew what it was. Or rather, who it was.
In case you aren’t very good at guessing, I’ll tell you – it was my poor old bear!
‘Bad dog!’ I shouted, and tried to pull Malcolm from the Jaws of Death. Rude Word pulled back. I’ve already said how strong he was, and he certainly wasn’t the kind of dog who’d give up a tasty meal – even one made mainly of fluff and hair – so you can probably imagine what happed next:
RRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIPPPPPPPPPPPP!
Rude Word had the head end.
I had the back end.
In between there was nothing.
That was it. I lost my temper and started really screaming at him. I used all the bad words I know, such as stupid, fat, nasty, idiot, smelly, ugly, smelly, fat, stupid, idiot, etc., etc. That seemed to work, because Rude Word sat down and spat out the parts of Malcolm he was chewing.
I don’t want to come across as a baby, but I got quite emotional then. Malcolm had been a faithful bear, and had fought off all kinds of monsters that would otherwise have got me when I was asleep, including dragons, vultures, Gaseous Aliens from Uranus, vampires and werewolves. Once when I had chicken pox he stayed up all night to make sure I didn’t die.
And so I cried – quite a lot, really. Rude Word came over and sat on me, which I think was his way of saying sorry, but I pushed him away. Then Mum came in. She’d heard me crying, which means I must have been quite loud, which is a bit embarrassing. It was lucky there was no one important around to hear. I told Mum what had happened, and she said not to worry, because she could sew Malcolm together and make him all well again. She dried my eyes with some clean underpants from my underpant drawer, and I felt a bit better.
‘Let’s find all the pieces,’ said Mum.
‘What do you mean?’ I said. ‘Here’s the top and here’s the bottom.’
‘But what about the other leg?’
That’s when I saw it.
I mean, didn’t see it.
Of course, Malcolm.
Two arms. One leg.
One brown leg.
He was supposed to have two.
And I knew where the second one was.
IT WAS RAINING again the next day, so at school we had to stay indoors at break and play with the rubbish Lego they have. You would have thought it was impossible to break Lego, but half of the bricks have been chewed so they don’t snap together properly. So, if you built a really good space station, or even a new type of tank, there’d be a good chance it would just fall apart, like it was made of dried bogeys and ear wax.
At least being inside gave us a chance to talk things over without getting hit by a football. We were all there, apart from Jennifer, who was playing with the girls somewhere else, probably doing girl things, such as skipping, talking, hair-brushing and being mean about other girls, etc., etc.
Naturally we talked about Rude Word. I couldn’t wait to tell them about Malcolm’s leg.
‘Don’t you see?’ I explained to the Gang. ‘It means that Rudy didn’t eat Trixie.’
‘Actually,’ said Noah, ‘it only proves that Rudy ate Malcolm’s leg, not that he didn’t also eat Trixie.’
‘That’s just stupid,’ I said. ‘Are you saying that Rudy eats bears and dogs? Nothing eats bears and dogs. Everyone knows that.’
‘Well, whatever he ate, I say he’s voted out of the Bare Bum Gang,’ said The Moan, kicking things off in his usual cheery way. (That’s me being sarcastic, this time, in case you didn’t notice.)
‘You can’t vote him out by yourself,’ I said.
‘What about you?’ said The Moan, looking at Noah.
Noah started to take a lot of notice of his fingernails.
‘Jamie, what do you think?’ continued The Moan. Jamie was trying to separate two bits of Lego with his teeth. ‘You agree with me, don’t you?’
Jamie said something like, ‘Oogaggomp,’ because of the Lego in his mouth.
‘See!’ said The Moan. ‘Let’s face it, he’s a useless dog, even if he isn’t a cannibal, or a teddy-bear-eater. He’s never going to find any treasure. He doesn’t even f
etch sticks, or roll over, or play dead. What we need is a decent gang pet, one like Declan and Dylan have.’
Declan was in our class and Dylan was his older brother, who went to big school. Declan wasn’t in our gang. He was in a different gang. They called themselves The Commandos, but they mainly played card games like Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh! that have rules so complicated that nobody really understands them.
The Commandos weren’t our friends or our enemies. It was a bit like the United Kingdom and, I don’t know, say Peru or Greenland. We just didn’t have much to do with them.
Actually, of all The Commandos, Declan was the one we talked to the most. He was a bit crazy and was always getting into trouble for not sitting still when Mrs Walsh was taking register, or for yelling out, ‘I’M A BANANA, I’M A BANANA,’ at the top of his voice during quiet time. And because he was a bit crazy, everyone liked him. Well, not really Mrs Walsh, but she didn’t matter.
Another reason everyone liked Declan was because of his pet. And even I had to admit that it was probably the coolest pet in the world.
‘Yeah,’ said Jamie, freeing himself from his Lego, ‘a snake!’
‘Not just a snake, but a giant snake – a python,’ said The Moan, rubbing it in.
‘Actually I think it’s a boa constrictor,’ said Noah, but that didn’t really help me as ‘boa constrictor’ sounds even more cool than ‘python’. And both of them sounded way better than Rude Word.
The snake even had a cool name. It was called Ray Quasar.
‘It’s brilliant,’ continued The Moan. ‘They feed it on live animals. Rats. Anything really. But it has to be alive. You can’t just give it dog food or sausages.’
And that’s when it hit me.
‘Quick, Noah!’ I yelled. ‘Go and get me a pencil and some paper.’
‘Right,’ I said when I had the equipment sorted out. ‘I think I’ve discovered what happened.’
There were some gasps then, although part of it was just Noah having a mild asthma attack because of all the dust in the bottom of the Lego bucket.
‘Think about it, everyone. Animals – warm-blooded animals, that is – have been going missing and poor old Rude Word has got the blame. Well, now we know he’s innocent, but there is, in fact, a vicious predator on the loose – one that has a well-known taste for warm-blooded animals.’
I could see from their eyes that they were beginning to get it too.
‘What?’ said Jamie. ‘Are you saying that there actually is a real black panther in the park?’
‘No,’ I said patiently, ‘it’s Declan’s python.’
‘Or boa constrictor,’ chipped in Noah.
‘What a load of rubbish,’ said The Moan. ‘How can a pet snake eat three dogs?’
‘I’ll show you how,’ I answered. I sketched and explained at the same time, which was quite hard because I always do my best drawing with my tongue sticking out of the corner of my mouth.
‘I remember reading a book and there was a picture of a python, or maybe a boa constrictor, and it had just eaten an elephant.’
‘ELEPHANT!’ they all yelled.
‘Yes,’ I continued. ‘And you could see it inside the snake. I can’t remember how, exactly. I suppose it was probably a drawing and not a photograph. Yes, that’s it, it was like one of those cross-sections you see, but instead of a battleship or a jumbo jet, it was of an elephant eaten by a snake.’
‘What is he on about?’ said Jamie to The Moan.
The Moan shrugged his shoulders.
‘And it looked exactly like this,’ I said triumphantly, holding up my drawing of the other drawing.
And this is it, although I’ve smartened it up a bit on my own since then, so it wasn’t quite as good as this to begin with and it didn’t originally have the poo coming out of it – that was Jamie. I find it highly un-likely that an elephant inside a snake is going to be in a fit state to go to the toilet.
‘No way could that be real,’ said The Moan.
‘It was in the book,’ I said. ‘And things in books are always true. It looked exactly like this.’
Then there was a really big row. In the end Noah went and asked Mrs Walsh. She said that she didn’t think there was a snake big enough to eat an elephant. Then she helped us go on the Internet, and we found a film of an anaconda, which is the biggest snake in the world, eating a pig. Sadly, she wouldn’t let us actually watch the film because she said it would be too gross and scary.
So then I went back to my pens and paper and drew a picture of the pig inside the snake, which everyone, even The Moan, said was really good.
This is the picture:
We all agreed that a pig inside a snake could easily happen.
‘And a pig,’ I said, ‘is definitely bigger than a dog.’
Then I drew a picture of Trixie inside the snake.
‘I think this proves for an absolute fact that Trixie is the victim of a snake.’
‘I don’t think you’ve completely proved it,’ said Noah. ‘I mean, I admit that it’s very likely, but very likely isn’t the same as proved. I think we need to do some more investigating.’
‘Mmm,’ I said. ‘Maybe you’re right. Tonight we go to Declan’s house to . . . Oh, drat, Noah, what’s that really good word you use when the police have captured a criminal and they ask them really hard questions?’
‘Interrogate.’
‘Precisely. Tonight we interrogate the python!’
‘Or boa constrictor.’
I DIDN’T TALK about the mission any more then, because I knew that this was a job for an Elite Force, the best of the best, which probably wouldn’t include The Moan (because of the moaning) or Jamie (because of him being slightly thick).
So my Elite Force was going to be me, Noah, who always said that he wasn’t afraid of snakes, and Jenny, who wasn’t afraid of anything.
At tea time my mum and dad were talking about the mysterious disappearances again. There had been more of them, and it wasn’t only dogs now that had gone missing. A Persian cat called Fatty had vanished from a house on the new estate. And a parrot called Potty had gone too, leaving an empty cage behind.
It was obvious now what was happening. Ray Quasar was working his evil way through all the animals in town, and would soon move on to humans, probably beginning with the babies, before swallowing the children and finishing up with the adults, as a kind of dessert.
By my calculations, within three weeks there would be nothing left alive in town except for one bloated python. Or boa constrictor.
I telephoned Noah after tea.
‘There have been developments. We’re meeting at Declan’s house at nineteen hundred hours o’clock.’
I wouldn’t tell him any more. Then I phoned Jennifer and explained all about Ray Quasar. She was very pleased to have been selected for the mission, especially as her brother, The Moan, hadn’t been.
Declan answered the door.
‘Hello. What do you want?’
‘We’ve come to talk to you,’ I said, trying to sound like a detective or a secret agent. ‘And your snake.’
‘You want to talk to Ray Quasar? I thought it was only Harry Potter who could speak snake language.’
Then Jenny pushed past me. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘we just want to find out some things about your snake. It’s for a project. Can we come and see it?’
‘OK.’
Declan led the way upstairs. ‘Is this for school?’ he asked.
‘Sort of,’ I said.
Declan opened the door to his bedroom. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. I thought there might be a giant python (or boa constrictor) coiled around his bed. But the only things on his bed were a duvet, a pillow, and a special display case with his best Yu-Gi-Oh! cards.
Then I saw the fish tank. Well, I suppose you’d have to call it a snake tank, because that’s what was in it.
‘Come over to my vivarium.’
‘Is it safe?’ I asked.
I was worried in ca
se Jennifer had a panic attack.
‘Of course it’s safe,’ said Jennifer.
We gathered round the snake tank – I mean, vivarium. It contained a dried-up branch from a tree, and there was a little wooden house in one corner. Oh, and there was a snake in there.
The snake had green and brown and white blotches in a complicated wiggly pattern on its back. And it kept putting out its tongue, flicker, flicker, flicker.
‘Want to touch it?’
‘No!’ I answered, maybe a bit too quickly. I was speaking on behalf of Jennifer and Noah. I didn’t want them to run out screaming.
‘I’d love to,’ said Jennifer.
Declan reached into the tank and put his hand under Ray Quasar. The snake began to coil around his wrist. He lifted it out. It raised its head and looked me right in the eye – trying to work out if I would taste nice, I expect.
Jennifer stretched out her hand, and Declan touched her fingers and the snake wriggled from him to her.
‘It’s beautiful,’ she said. ‘Can I stroke it?’
‘Sure.’
‘Hey, it’s lovely and dry. Not even a bit slimy.’
I was getting annoyed about all this. We’d come here to ask serious questions, not to get all kissy-kissy, lovey-dovey over a dangerous predator who might be busy digesting dogs, cats and parrots even as we spoke.
‘What kind of snake is it?’ I asked. ‘A python?’
‘A boa constrictor.’
‘I thought so. And what does it eat, eh? Warm-blooded animals, I expect. Little furry creatures? Big furry creatures? And other creatures with feathers? Isn’t that right?’
Before Declan could answer Jennifer dragged me to one side, using the hand that wasn’t holding Ray Quasar.
‘You don’t still believe that this cute little snake ate all those other animals?’ she whispered.
‘Yes, well, it might have. Look, I drew some drawings – I meant to show you earlier on.’
The Bare Bum Gang Battles the Dogsnatchers Page 3
