by Duncan Ball
It had all started the night before when Selby went to the Bogusville Bijou Theatre to see a film called The Incredible Shrinking Teenager.
“It’s my birthday tomorrow,” he thought as he snaked past the queue and hid behind a seat till the lights went out, “and I’m going to see a movie as a special birthday treat. I might as well give myself a present in case Dr and Mrs Trifle forget. Oh, boy!” Selby thought as he munched a mouthful of popcorn he found on the seat beside him. “I can’t wait to see the teenager start shrinking!”
The film was about a boy who ate too much junk food and suddenly began shrinking and shrinking until he was so small that the cat mistook him for a mouse and chased him. All through the film the teenager got smaller until he was so little that he climbed through a keyhole to escape from a hungry spider.
“What a great film!” Selby thought and he felt his heart beating against his tight collar. “I wonder how he’s going to get big again?”
Selby munched three chocolate bars that he’d been saving and then sucked a lolly as he watched the Incredible Shrinking Teenager grow big again by forcing himself to eat fresh vegetables.
When it was over, Selby ran home and curled up on the little round cushion he used for a bed — a cushion so small that one of his legs always dangled on the floor. In his sleep he had a terrible nightmare about being so small that an ant chased him round and round the kitchen floor mistaking him for a bit of leftover sausage.
“No! No!” Selby screamed in his dream. “Leave me alone, you six-legged savage! I’m not a sausage. I’m only a medium-sized talking dog!”
Selby woke up suddenly and sprang to his feet, looking around in the darkness for the giant ant.
“I must have been dreaming,” he thought as he turned around three times (as he always did before getting settled) and lay down only to notice that his leg didn’t dangle out onto the floor the way it usually did. And, what was worse, his collar, which had always been too tight, was suddenly loose!
Selby trotted to the kitchen as his brain began to wake up. He was just about to get a Dry-Mouth Dog Biscuit from his bowl when he noticed that the bowl had grown big in the night!
“Help!” Selby thought as the inescapable and terrifying thought shot through his brain. “I’m shrinking! I’m getting littler by the minute! I’m the Incredible Shrinking Dog! It’s just like in the movie! I’m being punished for eating a few chocolate bars and some popcorn. It’s not fair! I don’t deserve to shrink!” he added, staring angrily at an ant that crawled across his bowl.
Selby ran around the kitchen, opening cupboards and searching through the fridge.
“I’ve got to have fresh vegies quick before I shrink any more!” he thought. “But the Trifles haven’t done the weekly shopping! Where am I going to find vegies at this time of night? Except (gulp), except … from Dr Trifle’s vegetable garden.”
Selby tore out of the house, yanked up a carrot and gobbled it without even bothering to clean off the dirt. Then he ate two radishes and, before his mouth even had a chance to cool down, he ate three Zucchinis, a small lettuce and a couple of onions.
“It worked for the Incredible Shrinking Teenager,” Selby said, feeling his stomach filling up and remembering how much he hated vegetables. “I only hope it works for me.”
Selby ran along a row of tomatoes, snatching them right and left in his teeth, and then down a row of rhubarb, leaving behind nothing but a carpet of green leaves. In another minute he’d eaten five cucumbers and a cabbage and was staring greedily at a pumpkin.
“Suddenly I don’t feel so well,” Selby said, clutching his swollen stomach. “I’ve never eaten this much of anything in my life — not even when I gobbled the whole chocolate-cream layer cake with hundreds and thousands that Mrs Trifle made on my birthday last year.”
Selby staggered back into the house and lay down again on the cushion that was still too big and drifted off to sleep only to be wakened by singing voices coming closer and closer.
“Happy birthday to you,” Dr and Mrs Trifle sang. “Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, dear Selby. Happy birthday to you.”
Selby opened his eyes and there were Dr and Mrs Trifle bending over him.
“Poor Selby,” Mrs Trifle said, patting him on the head. “I don’t suppose he knows it’s his birthday. I’m sure he doesn’t realise that we finally gave him a bigger sleeping cushion, one that fits him properly.”
“And a nice big bowl that fits lots of those lovely Dry-Mouth Dog Biscuits that he likes so much,” Dr Trifle added.
“Oh, well,” Mrs Trifle said, looking at the new collar she’d put on him when he was sleeping, “here’s something he always loves: a chocolate-cream layer cake with hundreds and thousands!”
“Yikes!” thought Selby as he put a paw to his mouth to keep from gagging.
“My goodness!” Dr Trifle said. “Did you see that? One look at that cake and he’s gone all green in the face. I do think he’s sick of sweets. Maybe we’d better give him a bowl full of fresh vegetables for a change. I’m sure he’d like that.”
“What a good idea,” Mrs Trifle said. “I’ll go and pick some right now. I hope that possum hasn’t got into the garden again.”
Terrible Tina, Two-Tooth Tiger
Selby was just dozing off when Mrs Trifle’s dreadful sister, Aunt Jetty, burst into the house having just returned from a tiger hunt in darkest Scotland.
“Darkest Scotland?” Mrs Trifle asked politely, spreading more marmalade on her toast. “You mean to say you were hunting a person eating tiger in Scotland?”
“Not a person eater,” Aunt Jetty said, thumping her walking-stick on the floor but hitting Selby’s tail by mistake. “Tina is quite specifically a man eater. She hates men. Or, putting it differently, she loves them — for dinner. Tina was first captured in India many years ago when she terrorised villages and attacked only the men. She never ate a whole man, though, because of a shortage in the tooth department —”
“A shortage in the tooth department?” Dr Trifle said, looking up from the plans he was making for a talking floral clock for the Bogusville Memorial Rose Garden.
“A severe shortage. She only has two teeth: an upper and a lower. With only two teeth she couldn’t actually kill anyone but you can be sure there are a goodly number of blokes in India with shortages in the finger and toe departments.”
“I see,” Dr Trifle said, doing a quick count of his fingers and wondering when he’d last cut his fingernails.
“When they finally caught her,” Aunt Jetty went on, “they sent her to the Haggis Highland Zoo in Scotland. She loved it there for a while but finally escaped one night and attacked a piper who was playing Scotland the Brave on his bagpipes. When they found him the next day his dress was badly torn.”
“Kilt,” interrupted Mrs Trifle.
“No, he was very much alive,” Aunt Jetty continued. “When Tina finally noticed his dress she thought he was a woman, so she left him alone. Anyway, the locals, knowing my reputation as a big game hunter,” Aunt Jetty said, polishing her fingernails on her safari jacket, “called me in. All I had to do was to throw a net over the old girl,” Aunt Jetty said, throwing her net over Selby and yanking him upside down in the air, “like that! It was dead easy.”
“Easy, schmeasy,” Selby thought, struggling to stand up in the net but with his feet poking out everywhere. “If she doesn’t watch her step she’ll meet the world’s first woman-eating dog.”
Aunt Jetty dumped Selby onto the carpet and watched him jump through the front window and tear away down Bunya-Bunya Crescent.
“I brought old Tina back here when I caught her,” she said. “It’s finders keepers I reckon. I’ve just put her in the Bogusville Zoo. She should be happy there.”
Selby went for a walk through Bogusville Reserve till dark and then took his usual short cut back through the zoo, squeezing between the bars of the closed front gate.
“There’s nothing more peaceful than a zoo at night,
when there are no crowds and the animals can relax,” Selby said as he made the rounds of the cages, looking at each of his animal friends.
He stopped for a minute and sang a bit from his favourite opera, Cleopatra and the Asp, to Bazza the opera-loving boa constrictor and watched as tears of joy formed in the old snake’s eyes. And then he poked a handful of hay to Terrence Tusk, the one-tusked elephant.
“How are they treating you, Terry?” Selby asked, not expecting an answer because he, Selby, was the only talking animal in Australia and, for all he knew, the world. “How’s the tusk?”
Selby was about to take his usual short cut through the empty cage next to Terrence’s when he saw a newly painted sign at the front of it which said:
“Hmmmmmmmm,” Selby said, looking closely at the sign. “How am I going to take my short cut? The cage isn’t empty any more. They’ve put an animal in it. But what’s an an eater? Is it an animal I’ve never heard of before, some woolly beast that eats ans? If so, what’s an an? Oh, silly me, I know! They must be getting an anteater and Postie hasn’t painted the T in yet,” Selby said, referring to Postie Paterson, Bogusville’s postman and part-time helper at the zoo. “Well, anteaters are pretty harmless — at least to dogs. I think I’ll take my usual short cut anyway. It’s a lot quicker than going all the way back through the front gate.”
Selby barged in through the bars of the cage, little knowing that Postie (a not-very-experienced sign-writer who always painted signs backwards because when he painted them frontwards he always ran off the end of the sign) had written a warning sign to say that Two-Tooth Tina was a MAN EATER. He’d started by painting the R and then the E and so on but he hadn’t got a chance to paint in the M and finish the sign when closing time came so the sign still only said AN EATER.
As Selby walked through the cage towards the bars at the back he felt a pair of eyes following him in the darkness.
“Hmmmmmmmm,” he thought. “There’s something creepy about this place. I feel like there are eyes following me around in the darkness. It must be that new anteater. I wonder where he is?”
Suddenly there was a great roar and Tina jumped out into the moonlight.
“Yoooooooooowww!” screamed Selby as he backed into a corner. “You’re no flippin’ anteater! Get away from me! Help!”
Tina roared again and snapped at Selby’s front paws. Selby quickly stood on his hind legs and put his front legs over his head.
“It’s Tina! What is she doing here? I thought she was still in darkest Scotland! Oh no! Aunt Jetty must have brought her back! Heeeeeeeeelllllllllllp!”
“Roooaaarrr! Arrrrrr!” Tina snarled and her two teeth clicked so fast as she lunged for Selby’s feet that it sounded like a high-speed knitting contest.
Selby jumped in the air as she snapped and snapped until he found himself dancing from foot to foot with his front legs still over his head. Then suddenly Tina sat back on her haunches and watched.
“What is she doing?” Selby thought, still jumping furiously from foot to foot. “I know! She thinks I’m a Scottish dancer doing a highland fling.”
Selby grapped a piece of cardboard from the ground without missing a step and held it to his waist with one paw to make it look like a kilt as homesick tears formed in Tina’s big round eyes.
“The Campbells are coming …” Selby sang and his feet hammered the ground in a frenzied blur. “And I’ve got to be going because I can’t (puff) keep this up much longer. Heaven’s above, how am I going (puff) to get out of here with all my toes?”
Just then something strange and snakelike slipped gently around Selby’s waist. It was Terrence Tusk’s trunk reaching in from the next cage and soon Selby was lifted high in the air.
“I’ll take the high road,” Selby sang as he was lowered to the safety of the elephant’s cage, “and Tina can have the low road. Phew! Thanks Terry. You rescued me just in time. One more minute and that highland fling would have been my last fling.”
The Diabolical Disappearing Dog
It was one of those days when Mrs Trifle would gladly have given someone else the job of being mayor of Bogusville. The day went from catastrophe to catastrophe and crisis to crisis and then — to make matters worse — in dashed international daredevil superstar Awful Knoffle.
“Mrs Mayor, ya gotta give me permission to leap Gumboot Gorge,” Awful Knoffle pleaded, holding up a photo of himself jumping seventy-two school buses on his motorcycle. “Nobody’s ever done it before. From the moment I saw it I knew I had to be the first. It’s just a gorgeous gorge. Ha ha ha ha ha.”
“I’d hate to have you land in Bogusville Hospital. As I recall you didn’t quite make it over the seventy-second school bus and you crashed and broke every bone in your body,” Mrs Trifle said.
“Yeah, well, I don’t remember much about that but Gumboot Gorge will be a snap. I can do it!” Awful said, pounding the mayor’s desk with his fist and hitting her sandwiches by mistake.
“If there was anything I could do to keep you from this crazy scheme of yours, I would,” Mrs Trifle said. “But as it happens, Gumboot Gorge isn’t in Bogusville so you can do as you like and I can’t prevent you.”
“Aawl riiiiiiight! Why am I wasting my time talking to you then? I’ve got a gorge to jump!” Awful said, dashing for the door just as Dudley Dewmop, Bogusville’s short-sighted, part-time dog-catcher stumbled in.
“I’ve got him! I finally caught the phantom pooch!” Dudley screamed as he threw a hessian bag with a large lump in it on the carpet. “Every night for weeks I’ve heard that unmistakable baying — Oooooooooo. Oooooooooo,” Dudley howled at the ceiling. “But I finally caught him with my Handy-Dandy Telescoping Sleeve Net.” With this a long pole with a net on the end shot out of his sleeve and captured Mrs Trifle’s squashed sandwiches.
“Dudley!” Mrs Trifle said grabbing what was left of the sandwiches from Dudley’s net. “What are you talking about and exactly what is in that bag?”
“It’s him!” Dudley said, throwing open the bag to reveal a rather embarrassed Selby who wasn’t having much of a day either. “The phantom pooch! The mystery mutt! The diabolical disappearing dog that howls in the night and keeps everyone awake! I’ve caught him!”
“That’s no disappearing dog. That’s my dog, Selby,” Mrs Trifle said. “And he doesn’t go out and howl at night. He stays right in my house and sleeps like any normal dog. In the past three weeks you’ve brought me seventeen perfectly innocent dogs, three cats and a possum and each time you said you’d caught this mysterious dog of yours. Forget the phantom pooch and buy a decent pair of glasses so you can see properly.”
“Er … ah … yes, Mrs Mayor,” Dudley said, backing out the door and pushing the Sleeve Net up his sleeve again as he listened to a distant sound that could have been the unmistakable baying of the phantom pooch but was really Dr Trifle’s new invention, a talking floral clock in the Bogusville Memorial Rose Garden screaming out, “It’s twenty past twooooooooooooo!”
“Poor Selby,” Mrs Trifle said. “I hope the silly man didn’t hurt you.”
“Hurt, schmurt,” thought Selby, whose pride — but nothing much else — was hurt as anyone’s might have been if they were netted and dumped on the mayor’s carpet. “If that near-sighted ninny catches me again I’ll bite him into next week.”
All of which he thought too soon because the next day every man and his dog (which included Selby) was at Gumboot Gorge waiting to see Awful Knoffle make his death-defying leap.
“This is great!” said Selby, who loved anything death-defying as long as his own life wasn’t at stake, and he climbed a tall tree away from the crowd.
“What a view!” Selby thought as he grabbed thinner and thinner branches near the top of the tree. “From here I’ll be able to see Awful tear all the way up the mountain and then leap the gorge.”
All of which would have been okay if Selby hadn’t spied an even thinner branch at the very top of the tree where the view was even better — which st
ill would have been okay if he hadn’t sat on the branch — and which still would have been okay if the branch hadn’t decided at that very moment to break off, sending Selby plummeting downward, hitting branch after branch on the way.
“Ooooooooooooh! Nooooooooooo!” Selby screamed, as he landed, slightly bruised, on the ground. Dudley Dewmop, who was innocently admiring Awful Knoffle’s roaring motorcycle, heard Selby’s scream and mistook it for the unmistakable baying of the phantom pooch.
“It’s him! It’s the diabolical disappearing dog!” Dudley screamed as he knocked Awful from the motorcycle and hopped on. “I’ve got to get him!”
Dudley put the big bike in gear and tore up the steep slope towards Selby.
“Gimme my bike back, numbskull!” Awful screamed, chasing after Dudley.
In a flash Selby was on his feet and running, with the motorcycle just behind.
“I’ve got you now!” yelled the short-sighted part-time dog-catcher.
“Help!” thought Selby as the puzzled crowd watched him tear up and down the steep sides of Gumboot Mountain with the mad motorcyclist hot on his heels. “Somebody’s got to stop this (puff) madman before he runs me over!”
The answer came to Selby in a flash: “I’ll (puff) run to the edge of the gorge (puff) and he’ll have to stop and get off the bike (puff puff). Then I’ll climb down to where he can’t get to me!”
Selby dashed to the edge of the gorge as fast as he could and then dug in his heels for a quick sliding stop.
“Oh, no!” Selby thought as he skidded towards the top of the cliff with the shortsighted motorcyclist just behind. “I’m not going to stop in time! This time I’m really a done dog!”
The crowd screamed as Selby flew out into the middle of the gorge with the motorcycle soaring through the air above him.
“I’ve got you now, phantom pooch!” Dudley yelled, seeing the blur that was Selby dropping into the gorge and wondering why the ground was suddenly so smooth.
