Toad Rage

by Morris Gleitzman

  He grabbed the underpants, leapt out the door, and hopped under the van.

  Okay, he thought as he wriggled into the underpants, making sure that his body and head were completely covered, let's see if humans can be friendly to a cane toad if they think he's a tropical butterfly.

  Limpy took a while to get into the wildlife enclosure, mostly because he couldn't see properly out of the leg hole of the underpants and kept banging into parked cars.

  Finally he found the entrance.

  So far so good, he thought.

  He hopped over to the group of humans admiring the tropical butterflies and waited for them to notice him.

  A horrible thought struck.

  What if I've got the underpants on inside out? The colors won't look as bright. They'll think I'm just a drab moth.

  He could feel something stabbing him in the forehead. He realized it wasn't anxiety, it was a label.

  Everything was okay.

  Then a man looked down.

  Limpy flapped his arms inside the underpants. He did it slowly so he'd look like a butterfly who'd had a very busy day and was too tired to do any more actual flying.

  The man saw him.

  Limpy held his breath.

  A wonderful thing happened. The man didn't chuck rocks at him or jump into a car and try to run him over.

  It's working, thought Limpy delightedly.

  Then the man's face went red.

  “Arghhhh,” he yelled. “A cane toad. In me undies.”

  Other humans shouted and screamed.

  The man lunged at Limpy.

  Limpy leapt out of the underpants and flung himself at the fence. Luckily he was small enough to fit through the wire.

  He hopped frantically across the parking lot, trying to get over to a row of parked cars to hide underneath. To his horror he realized he was going too fast and his crook leg wasn't touching the ground properly and he was veering round in the beginnings of a circle.

  The man was yelling behind him and the yells were getting closer.

  Then Limpy saw that his circular hopping had brought him close to the big painted truck, which was revving its engine and starting to move off.

  Limpy didn't hesitate.

  He hopped higher than he'd ever hopped before and leapt onto the back of the truck and clung on to a brake light with both hands and his good foot.

  With a shuddering roar, the truck surged forward into the sunset.

  Limpy didn't look back.

  He hung on with all his strength while the shouting behind him got fainter and fainter.

  Okay, he said to himself as he hurtled down the highway, I admit it. Pretending to be a butterfly was a dopey idea.

  He sighed.

  He should have taken one of the furry slippers and pretended to be a wombat.

  The highway was soon dark, but Limpy didn't mind because he knew exactly where he was going.

  To the same place the truck was going, wherever that was.

  A place where he could learn about disguises that actually worked. Disguises as good as the ones painted on the side of the truck.

  Limpy hung on tight and had exciting visions of arriving back home with a pile of wonderful costumes. The cane toads would put them on and the humans driving on the highway would think the creatures in their headlights were echidnas and platypuses and kookaburras and butterflies and they'd drive past waving happily.

  Suddenly the truck slowed down for a sharp bend in the highway.

  Limpy realized it looked sort of familiar.

  He peered round the back of the truck.

  Ahead, lit up by the truck headlights and an overhead light that also looked sort of familiar, was a railway crossing that looked very familiar.

  And on the other side of it, sitting in the middle of the road, glaring at them and waving a stick, was a figure he recognized immediately.

  Goliath.

  The truck was accelerating over the crossing.

  “Goliath,” yelled Limpy. “Get out of the way.”

  They were heading straight for him.

  “Jump,” screamed Limpy. “Jump to one side.”

  Goliath jumped.

  Too late.

  The truck, with Limpy hanging on to the back frozen with horror, thundered over the top of Goliath.

  “No!” cried Limpy.

  He spun round, staring back at the circle of light on the road, desperately hoping to see Goliath still standing there waving his stick.

  Or even tottering around, dazed.

  Nothing.

  Not even a blob of squashed skin and warts.

  Limpy turned back and put his anguished face against the back of the truck. Goliath must have been hit so hard he'd been pressed into the surface of the road.

  Limpy felt sadness draining the strength out of his arms and his good leg. As the truck thundered into the night, one thought helped him hang on.

  At least Charm hadn't been there.

  This time.

  By the next morning, Limpy was the world's biggest fan of brake lights.

  Not only were they really useful to hang on to, but when you were spending a long night in the freezing slipstream at the back of a truck, they kept you alive.

  Every time the truck hit its brakes, the brake light bulb glowed and sent a beautiful burst of warmth through your aching body.

  Mmmmm.

  Except now that the sun was up and climbing fast, Limpy was starting to feel a bit too warm.

  He was particularly worried about his armpits.

  The problem with hanging on to a brake light was that your armpits were exposed, and as the sun got higher, that could be a real problem.

  Toast, thought Limpy anxiously. Fairly soon my pits'll be toast.

  The brake light came on again and stayed on for a long time while the truck slowed down.

  Limpy felt himself overheating and becoming not quite such a big fan of brake lights.

  Then he realized the truck was turning off the highway.

  Phew, thought Limpy. At last. We're here.

  The truck drove into a town.

  Limpy knew it was a town because he'd seen photos of towns in the magazines people chucked out of cars.

  The truck drove into the center of the town and parked in a loading dock.

  Limpy didn't know it was a loading dock because magazines don't have many photos of loading docks. All Limpy cared about was that he'd arrived at the place where he could get good disguises.

  And then, thought Limpy happily, no more flat rellies.

  He tensed.

  The driver's door had just slammed and he could hear the driver coming round to the back of the truck.

  Limpy let go of the brake light and dropped to the floor.

  His arms and legs were stiff and numb and he could hardly move, but he managed to hobble behind some trolleys.

  Peering out, he saw the driver fiddling with the back doors of the truck. A man in a suit appeared and pointed to his watch and pointed to his clipboard and said angry things to the driver. The driver scratched himself under his singlet and shrugged. He opened the truck doors and started lifting out big cardboard boxes. The man in the suit started opening the boxes.

  Limpy stared.

  Inside the boxes were huge numbers of small furry toys.

  Limpy knew they were small furry toys because kids sometimes threw small furry toys out of cars, usually with sick on them.

  Limpy gaped as the man in the suit opened still more boxes.

  These weren't just any small furry toys.

  They were platypuses and echidnas and kookaburras.

  Limpy wondered why humans were so keen on platypuses, echidnas, and kookaburras. He'd met a few and they'd seemed pretty average. Nice enough, but nothing to paint a truck about.

  Then Limpy noticed something else about the fluffy toys.

  Not only did they not have sick on them, they were exactly the right size, if you pulled the stuffing out, for a cane toad to climb in
side.

  Perfect disguises.

  Yes, thought Limpy ecstatically. All I've got to figure out now is how to get heaps of these toys back home without the man in the suit flattening me with his clipboard.

  Limpy was still trying to figure out exactly how to do it when the driver suddenly came over and grabbed the trolley Limpy was hiding behind.

  Limpy froze, desperately hoping the driver wouldn't look down.

  He didn't.

  As soon as the driver had turned back to the truck, Limpy hurried out of the loading dock into the street.

  The sun was so bright, Limpy was dazzled.

  For a while he couldn't see a thing.

  Then his eyes started working again and to his horror he found he was looking up at a circle of sneering human faces.

  Teenagers.

  He'd seen them in magazines, but rarely looking as cross as these ones.

  “Yuk,” said one, “a canie.”

  “Let's get it,” said another.

  Limpy didn't understand what they were saying.

  He didn't need to.

  The hands lunging at him and the feet swinging at him told him all he needed to know.

  Ducking, weaving, and hopping in a semicircle, he managed to get across the footpath to the gutter. Ahead he saw the opening to a stormwater drain. Desperately hoping the teenagers wouldn't be able to squeeze in after him, he dived into it.

  Limpy found himself sitting in a cool, dark tunnel with water trickling over his feet.

  His skin started drinking in the water.

  He told it to stop. There was no time for that. The angry faces of the teenagers were glaring down at him. They were kicking at the crumbling concrete, trying to make the opening to the drain bigger.

  Limpy hopped for his life.

  The tunnel was too narrow for him to hop in circles, so he was able to splash along at speed, bouncing from wall to wall.

  He turned a corner, and then another, and the shouting of the kids faded into silence.

  Not quite silence.

  As he moved forward, Limpy could hear another sound above his head.

  The buzz of other human voices.

  Heaps of them.

  Then the voices started cheering.

  Limpy saw a shaft of light coming from another opening up ahead.

  Weak with fear but tingling with curiosity, he climbed up the side of the drain and peered out.

  He was under the main street of the town. Masses of humans were standing on both sides of the street, grinning and cheering as if something wonderful was going to happen.

  Limpy couldn't believe it. Surely this many humans wouldn't gather this quickly just to see a gang of teenagers trying to kill a cane toad?

  Boy, humans really do hate us, he thought sadly.

  Then the cheering got louder and the people started waving at something. Limpy saw what it was. An open-topped car, driving slowly along the street. Standing in it, waving to the crowd, was a girl wearing a sports singlet and holding a really long stick.

  Limpy stared at the stick nervously.

  He hoped it wasn't a special stick for poking down drains to stab cane toads.

  Then the crowd started cheering even more loudly and Limpy saw something that made him forget even that horrible possibility.

  In another open-topped car, following the girl's, stood three figures he recognized.

  A big platypus, a big echidna, and a big kookaburra.

  Not real ones. Three humans in costumes. Just like on the side of the truck.

  The crowd was ecstatic. Limpy watched them cheering and whistling and blowing kisses to the kookaburra and the echidna and the platypus. A lot of people were holding up the fluffy toys from the truck.

  The whole town was in love with kookaburras, echidnas, and platypuses.

  Why? thought Limpy. What have they got that cane toads haven't? Apart from zips down their backs?

  “Bloomin' show-offs,” said a voice next to his ear.

  Limpy jumped, startled.

  “Cloggin' up the whole town with their bloomin' parade,” said the voice.

  Limpy saw that the voice belonged to a cockroach sitting next to him on the wall of the drain.

  The cockroach saw Limpy and leapt back in alarm. Then its shiny brown shoulders slumped and it plodded toward Limpy with a weary sigh.

  “I don't care,” it said morosely. “Go on, eat me. What's the point of clingin' on to life down here in the sewers when mongrels like them up there get all the attention?”

  “Don't worry,” said Limpy, “I'm not going to eat you.” He meant it, even though he was ravenous. He needed information more than food. “Those three up there,” he went on, “why are they so popular with humans?”

  “Games mascots, lucky buggers,” muttered the cockroach.

  “Eh?” said Limpy. “What do you mean, 'games'?”

  The cockroach gave him an incredulous look. “What log have you been living under? The Games. Down south. Where humans from different countries do running and jumping against each other. Starts in a couple of days.”

  “Oh, right,” pretended Limpy. “The Games.”

  He sort of knew what the cockroach was on about. Goliath and some of the kids at home used to have contests to see who could hop the fastest and who could fit the most slugs in their mouth. This sounded pretty similar.

  “And what are 'mascots'?” asked Limpy.

  The cockroach rolled its eyes. “Because there's heaps of humans coming from overseas for the Games, and millions more watching on telly, the organizers want to show them what a top place Australia is. So they've chosen three examples of our wildlife for everyone to go gaga over. Right now those mascots are the most popular individuals in Australia.” The cockroach looked sourly at the platypus, echidna, and kookaburra. “Beats me why they chose those three mangy losers.”

  Limpy gazed up at the adoration on the faces of the humans as the mascots cruised slowly past.

  One thing's for sure, he thought. Humans won't be driving over any platypuses, echidnas, or kookaburras in the foreseeable future.

  Suddenly Limpy knew what he had to do.

  “Come on,” said the cockroach, “get it over with. Eat me if you're going to.”

  “I'm not going to,” said Limpy as he watched the parade come to an end. “Excuse me for dashing, but I've got to make arrangements to be a Games mascot.”

  Limpy hurried back along the stormwater drain, ideas bouncing around inside his head almost as fast as his body was bouncing around inside the tunnel.

  The bloke with the clipboard who'd been yelling at the truck driver. He obviously had something to do with the Games. He looked pretty important.

  I'll volunteer to him, thought Limpy happily. I'll tell him I'm available to be a Games mascot.

  Limpy tingled with excitement.

  Then he had a less happy thought.

  What if the teenagers were waiting for him?

  He had to take the risk. There was too much at stake. Once he was a Games mascot and humans adored him, he'd be able to introduce them to the family. And once people saw what kind, lovable, friendly folk Charm and the other cane toads were and how much fun you could have with them in mud pools, they'd stop trying to kill them.

  Limpy bounced happily round a corner in the tunnel, and stopped dead.

  Standing there sneering at him with narrow hate-filled eyes was the meanest-looking pack he'd ever seen.

  Not teenagers.

  Rats.

  “So,” said the front rat, “we heard we'd got a visitor.”

  “G'day,” said Limpy nervously.

  There were a lot of them.

  “Excuse us if we seem rude,” said the rat, “but we're going to skip the introductions and get straight on with ripping you to pieces.”

  The rats advanced.

  Limpy didn't hesitate.

  He flexed his glands and sprayed streams of poisonous white pus over them.

  It wasn't something h
e usually did to folk he'd only just met, but Mum was always reminding him to do it in emergencies, and this was certainly an emergency.

  Limpy kept spraying till his poison glands were empty.

  “Arghhh,” screamed the front rat, clawing at its face. “That really hurts.”

  The other rats were howling and rubbing their faces and backing away.

  They turned and ran.

  “Vicious mongrel,” yelled one as they went.

  Limpy ignored that.

  When his whole body had stopped shaking, he cautiously poked part of his head out of the drain opening and looked around.

  No teenagers.

  And there, in the loading dock, was the bloke with the clipboard.

  As Limpy hurried across the footpath toward him, he saw that the bloke was still angry. Except this time it wasn't the driver he was angry at, it was the girl in the sports singlet who'd been holding the big stick in the parade.

  She looked so unhappy, Limpy felt a pang of sympathy, even though Uncle Bart had told him once it wasn't natural to feel sympathy for another species.

  Limpy had never seen a human so miserable, not even kids in the backs of cars when the parents were playing their own music.

  He hid behind a box in the loading dock, hoping something would happen to cheer the girl up.

  “Why is it always me?” the girl was demanding, her dark ponytail flapping angrily around her head. “There are thousands of other athletes at the Games.

  Why can't you get one of them to appear at a dumb shopping center for a change?”

  “Because,” said the man, “the public wants to see you. They don't want to see some ugly bloke in his twenties with a prickle haircut and lumpy legs. They want to see Australia's youngest and prettiest Games athlete.”

  Limpy couldn't understand what the man was saying, but he could see the girl didn't like it. She threw her can of drink to the ground. The can rolled toward Limpy. It was another of the red ones with brown liquid trickling out of it.

  “I'm an athlete, not a soapie star,” the girl said angrily. “I've got training to do.”

  “You're in great physical shape,” snapped the man. “And if you stop drinking so much of that stuff, you'll stay that way.”

  Suddenly the girl was in tears.

  Limpy stared, sympathetic but fascinated. He'd heard about this weird thing humans could do with their eyes. Seeing it made him feel strange inside. Sort of sad.