by Susan Berran
Our next pooper-shooter would be the world-record holder for flung dung. It had to go higher, further and smellier than ever before. Because next time … we didn’t want to get caught.
I had it!! Another brilliant brain busting idea; I was full of them. Of course I had to come up with just about all of the super spectacular ideas. When they were handing out brains, Jared obviously thought they said …
“Do you want a pain in your head?”
Of course he said, “No way!”
Yeah, good one Jared.
So anyway, we needed to make our Bulravian Secret Document Invisible Folder. It’s pretty simple really.
Now whenever we give the secret signal for, ‘Mrs D is coming’, I simply flick over the inside front cover to hide our plans. Hey presto, we’re doing school-work.
DISASTER averted.
Our secret hideout at Jared’s place was perfect. There was heaps of stuff to build with and no one knew anything about it. It was way out in the back paddock and couldn’t be seen from his house. To everyone else it just looked like a bulldozed hay shed with the roof half collapsed, old tractors and heaps of old rusted-out machinery. But underneath it all there was a huge cavity. That’s where we’d built our very own hideaway that we could survive in for weeks if we wanted to. We’d been sneaking food and drinks from home for ages and storing them in an old fridge, that looked very similar to an accordion. But best of all was that none of the other kids would dare to come anywhere near it. We’d all been totally banned from going to within a mile of it. Ever since Jared’s spectacular NEAR-DEATH skateboarding accident, down the roof and over a tractor and straight into a really, really big tree.
So it was perfect!!
Our bikes were hidden by an old car bonnet and the entrance was just a quick crawl through the crumbling concrete pipe … under the over-turned truck tray that was squashing lower every day …
. . . a belly slide between the two tractors teetering dangerously on top of each other …
… between the fifty or so razor-sharp harvester blades …
… through the rusted-out, half-squashed, steel water tank and you’re in … simple!
The hideout was our idea of heaven. NO adults, NO school-work and NO horse-shearing, sheep-riding, cow-tossing kids. And definitely NO SOOKY SIBLINGS!
We opened the rusted fridge door and took out a warm can of soft drink each. Then we went to work on our newest recipe for pooper-shooting ammunition.
I figured that Fluff Butt just might be useful after all. Because every time that I’d wipe her butt, I felt like chucking up, it stank so badly. We’d been trying cow pats and garlic, horse dung and onions, pig poop and mint, but there it was right in front of us; Fluff Buttus poopus. I’d collected a nice big bag of Fluff Butt crap from the yard ready to ‘cook up’. The texture wasn’t so good but the smell … awesome!!
As we rolled the new ‘maxi-smell’ slime-covered festering stomach juice cannon balls of dung between our hands, Jared started having a huge whinge about their newest addition to their family … guinea pigs. Once that pet shop had opened up, his brothers had all sucked up massively to their mum for a pet. One of his brothers is a year younger; he wanted rabbits. The twins, DUFAS and DORKY are a year older and they were sucking up for mice. The other two are a couple of years older than Jared and of course they wanted some sort of massive bird of prey that could rip your arm off.
Jared was so peeved. Just because we’d been helping the environment by recycling and reusing manure, his mum thought he shouldn’t get to have a say in what the family pet would be. Just because apparently, the only thing he was interested in was the quality and quantity of dung that it produced anyway. So what did she come home with … guinea pigs?
Apparently the pet shop owner was a tall French guy who wore white overalls. He’s REALLY ugly and has a humongous shnoz with thick square glasses balancing on the end of it and a really poxy looking blonde wig. He couldn’t speak a word of English but had still somehow talked her into the guinea pigs, just like he’d talked my mum into the Fluff Butt. And it wasn’t just us. It seemed that every kid in school had a pet all of a sudden, whether they wanted it or not. Peacocks, goats, cockatoos and heaps of other pets were popping up in every home around here. Jared was whinging on and on about the guinea pigs and how he thought the only thing they were good for was taping to the end of a stick and using as a toilet brush.
Suddenly I was struck like a piñata with a baseball bat. It was brilliant, why didn’t I think of it before? I mean Jared had an excuse. His head is like an overflowing vacuum cleaner bag, full of dust and dirt, but me … anyway. Here we were busting a gut, inventing and building our phantasmagorical world-record-breaking Crap Attack Dung Flinging pooper-shooter. When what would be really awesome was to make something that we could use in total secret; … at school!
I shared the idea with Jared. Who naturally, recognised my brilliance once again. Over the next few days at school, we drew up the plans and worked out the kinks. “Quack!” Jared suddenly coughed under his breath as we felt the earthquake of Mrs D’s bulging legs clumping our way. Sneaking was not a natural ability for her. I calmly flicked over the cover of our secret plans’ folder. “The sum of the angles in a right angle is greater than or equal to the sum of the angles of an equilateral trian … Good morning Mrs Duckson,” we sang in chorus with a broad smile.
“Good morning boys. Keep up the good work,” she answered with an uneasy look of surprise and suspicion.
“Thank you Mrs Duckson.” Yep I reckon it shouldn’t take too long to get her under control.
Back to the plans.
By the end of the week we were ready to put together our very first top-secret, one of a kind, totally wicked, Mini-Pellet-pooper-shooter. Jared had collected up plenty of their guinea pig pellet poop. Wow, those little guys seemed to pump out poop all day long. I don’t think they even slept. Food was constantly being sucked in one end and leaving out the other. We tried drying it out, but it crumbled before we could load it. We tried keeping it wet, but that just made it swell up and then we had to moosh it into the tube. We must have tried mixing it and rolling it in a hundred different ways. But finally we found that the best pellet poop AMMUNITION was if it was so fresh that it was still warm.
We used the tube of a clear pen and carefully filed out both ends. Then, using an ear bud, the inside was coated with cooking oil to make the tube nice and slippery. Jared loaded his shooter with three pellets. It was working; they slipped in easily, sliding back and forth in the oily tube.
“OK Jared, take a deep breath and blow,” I directed. In a split second and obviously without thinking, Jared raised the tube to his lips and sucked in a huge breath …
“Hhhhhh, gulp, gulp, gulp!! ” In an instant, all three pellets disappeared from the tube and shot straight down his throat …
“You suck up a breath before putting your mouth to the tube you idiot!” I said as I fell to the ground laughing. He then went on to swallow another dozen before realising that he just wasn’t getting the hang of it.
I could see that he wasn’t going to get the hang of it right from the start. But I didn’t want to say anything because it really was ssooo funny to watch.
We went back to the drawing board and added a spring to power the shooter. Now we were ready.
Monday morning Jared gathered up a nice big bag of fresh warm AMMUNITION for each of us. We got to school way early and set up our command post under the bushes opposite the toilet block. The trap was set, we waited for our prey.
Fifteen minutes to the bell; the clapped-out old rusty minivan that runs on a secret mix of alcohol and pig poop and is used on weekends to take sheep to the sale yards, rattles up with farmer Nick Young behind the wheel. Nick is the oldest hippie around here. He doesn’t say much and he has this bushy grey moustache and beard that a troop of Scouts could get lost in. He also wears this faded worn-out rainbow beanie with a couple of feathers on the side. No one has ever see
n his head without it. Jared reckons his hair has actually grown all through the beanie and so now it’s permanently part of his scalp. The door of the van slams back to cover the faded ‘peace’ symbol. The usual amount of sheep dung drops to the ground as a dozen kids stumble out.
Eight minutes to the bell; the kids have all divided up into their ‘herds’. The girls are discussing how they did at pony club. The boys are wandering around choosing a blade of grass to chew on for the day.
Four minutes to the bell; Jared and I open up our ammO bags and lay the pellets out on the ground ready for quick reloading. We check the springs … and wait.
Ding ding ding!!!
Here they come! The mad dash of bodies racing to the toilets as the bell rings. Their arms and legs flapping about. All trying to get ahead of each other so as not to be last into the toilet.
We lifted our small but deadly loaded pooper-shooters and took careful aim … ppttt ppttt ppttt … ppttt ppttt ppttt … Bullseye!!
Booga Boris stopped dead in his tracks. He looked up and around into the trees above him as he picked a splattered pellet off the back of his neck. He studied the glob closely. We could see him stretching it in and out between his finger and thumb, trying to work out what it was. He sniffed at it twice, then touched it delicately to his tongue. Looked at it again, sniffed it, then he threw it into his mouth and with one crunch it was gone … eewww!!!
I thought my stomach was going to burst all over Jared like a water balloon full of runny porridge. I had to put both hands tightly over my mouth to hold in the laughter … and last night’s dinner. I looked across to Jared. He too had both hands locked solidly over his mouth and tears of laughter rolling down his puffed-up cheeks. I thought he’d give us away for sure.
Booga then disappeared into the toilet, still looking completely puzzled. Although for him that was pretty normal.
We reloaded …
… ppttt ppttt ppttt … ppttt ppttt ppttt
… missed … reload …
… ppttt ppttt ppttt … ppttt ppttt ppttt
… Yes, a direct hit!!
We got Dopey Sophie; she was Crabby’s personal suck up.
“ Eeeeeeee, something bit me! ” she squealed. Then she started to spin faster than a hamster in a runaway wheel as her squeals started to break the sound barrier … and our eardrums. Everyone around her was shoving their hands over their ears while Dopey kept slapping at the back of her neck and spinning around faster and faster. Finally she picked out a piece from her hair and put it up to her face … “ Eeeewww pooohhhh!!! ”
She was hopping around like a flea on a hot plate. We couldn’t hold it in any longer, we both cracked up laughing. The tears poured down our cheeks, making it hard to see. It was time to sneak out of our hidey-hole and get to class. We left our WEAPONS under there so that we could come back for another go at lunchtime.
Poking our heads right down, we started to crawl through the dirt and out from under the bush, snickering all the way. Just as we began to emerge into the light, I noticed someone had left their shoes there … their nice clean shoes
… their nice clean shoes with legs … their nice clean shoes with big hairy legs in them … big, bulging hairy legs and one foot tapping so hard that the dust was flying up.
Our laughter was stopped dead. And as we raised our eyes they were met with the staring bloodshot eyes and vein throbbing fire-engine red face of Mrs Duckson.
My office, NOW!! echoed through my head as we shuffled off with the sound of Dopey’s shrieking still ringing in our ears. As we sat outside the office, we only heard parts of the phone conversations with our mums. But it all added up to the same thing, detention! Which we’d be seeing quite a bit of, as Mrs Duckson put it.
Later that afternoon, we sat in the classroom alone and bored to death. We were staring out the window when we saw the strangest thing; apart from TOFFEE THOMAS doing ballet, which was also a really weird and disturbing sight to see. A group of animals were wandering up the road. Heaps of them all together and they seemed to know exactly where they were going. But these weren’t the local cows and sheep taking a stroll. It was the pets that all the kids had got from the little pet shop on the side of the road and Fluff Butt was in the lead. Jared stretched his neck to get a better look. “Hey, I think that’s our guinea pigs,” he whispered as he watched them scrambling in and around the legs of the other animals. Where were they going?
We watched the clock tick over every single second. I’m sure Mrs Duckson sabotaged it to run slow. Until finally, the clock struck five. We leapt out of our seats, out the door and straight onto our bikes to take off after the animals. But they’d already disappeared well out of sight.
The moment I got home, I raced all around the house looking for Fluff Butt.
“Mum … I saw …”
“You’re in big trouble mister!”
“Yeah I know but …”
“I thought we talked about this?”
“Yes but …”
“You’d better pull up your socks!”
“I know, but …”
“You’re grounded … again! ”
“Yes Mum.”
It was no use. It looked as if Jared and I would have to find out for ourselves what was going on.
For the rest of the week we watched and kept notes, but there seemed to be no pattern. Some days they went by, others they didn’t. We knew each and every animal and which kid it belonged to. They couldn’t have been going very far either because they’d always get home before us. But when it came to the weekends, they just lazed around like they were at some really posh ‘all expenses paid’ holiday resort or something. Lying back with their legs in the air waiting for someone to bring their food to them or wipe their butt. As if we’re their servants. It was really weird and really annoying.
Jared reckons they’re probably getting together to discuss how to get rid of all the cows. Probably because they’re so sick and tired of stepping in the warm, sloppy cow poop all the time … just like us. Or maybe they were just discussing how incredibly stupid and thick-headed the sheep are.
I sometimes think Jared was a sheep in a former life.
By the end of the weekend I was ripping my hair out. Fluff Butt had got me into so much trouble! I’d missed out on desserts, had to go to my room heaps of times and missed out on a few weeks’ worth of pocket money. All because of one stupid fluffy explosion of a rotten dog.
Whenever it came into the house I’d check her butt. The next thing you know …
“ Sam!! Fluff Butt just did her business inside … again!! How many times do I have to tell you to let her out when she scratches at the door?”
“But I …”
“I know you saw it, that’s your footprint squashing it into the carpet!!”
I’d been so careful. And I’d definitely know if I’d trodden in it. So how … as I turned around I looked across to Fluff Butt sitting on her bed … with my shoe in her mouth!
I knew it!!
“Mum look at the dog!!” I yelled.
“She better not be doing it again … ”
“Quick, she’s got my shoe, it was her!”
“I thought we talked about taking responsibility for your own actions?”
“But it was …”
“Do you want to spend the rest of your life in your room?”
“Yes Mum … I mean, no Mum.”
There was no point. When I looked again, Fluff Butt was lying on her bed pretending to be asleep. And my shoe had been tossed to the other side of the room. I thought the dog was doing it on purpose. Now I knew for sure.
But how could I prove it?
When I got to school, Jared was frothing at the mouth he was so ANGRY. All weekend he’d been getting into trouble for pinching snacks. He tried to blame his other brothers, but the two eldest were away and the twins, DUFAS and DORKY, “Would never do that,” said his mum. The youngest one couldn’t even reach the cupboards that the snacks were in. And of cou
rse there was all the evidence. There were chocolate smudges and a wrapper on Jared’s pillow from his mum’s ‘special birthday chocolates that are just for her and no one else.’ And the lolly wrappers in his undies drawer were from the stash in the pantry.
“I know this sounds crazy,” he said, staring at me seriously for the first time ever …
“But I heard this scratching noise in the middle of the night. When I got up and went to the kitchen to look, the guinea pigs were sitting on the bench eating Mum’s chocolates. I could swear they sat up and smiled at me. But when I rubbed my eyes, they were gone, vanished into thin air. I thought I was dreaming so I went back to bed. The next morning I woke up to Mum screeching about the mess in the kitchen and the chocolate on my pillow.”
“But I swear it wasn’t me, it was the guinea pigs!” he said with a frightened shiver in his voice.
I knew Jared was telling the truth and it didn’t take long for me to fill him in on Fluff Butt either. There was something very weird, almost EVIL about the pets, and we knew it had to have something to do with that grotty little pet shop they’d come from.
We started to wonder if it was just our pets, or if any of the others that had come from there were EVIL as well.
Over the next few days we gathered as much information from the other kids as we possibly could. And we knew the best place to get information from the girls was behind the school dunnies. There we could hide and take notes as we listened in on their conversations. After all, that’s how we found out that they were trying to give us coOties and that Mad Magda really, really likes one of the twins.
As usual they were gabbing on and on about horses, boys, music and make-up. But we also heard a few things about their pets. Crabby Abbey had got a poodle the size of a small horse from the same pet shop. She’d been raving on and on about it. How it was a rare and genuine French pedigree from a long line with royal blood. That its hair was like silk and could only be washed with the milk of a Tibetan Yak collected by nuns on a full moon, blah blah blah. I wanted to take her mouth off and use it to kiss the butt of a genuine Siberian ferret. I reckon her dog’s about as French as French fries and the only royal blood flowing through its body is ‘King’s Chunky Dog Food’. And I’ll bet it just rolls around in the sloppy run-off milk for a ‘wash’ when the cows are being milked. But she was always fussing over the big ugly thing and dressing it up in sailor suits and dorky hats. Apparently they were about to take her to some ‘punce-up-your-dog’ shop to get her hair clipped to look like a naked dog wearing giant marshmallows. But someone else had got to her first. They hadn’t just shaved her. It looked like they’d ATTACKED her with a really blunt potato peeler and spray paint. Now Mademoiselle Danielle Poe Poe the Eighth looked like some sick punk rocker that a rainbow had thrown up all over. There were tufts of hair sticking out and painted every colour possible. But worst of all, Abbey got the blame for it. Her parents went on and on about the cost of such a well bred dog and that Abbey should keep her hairdressing skills to her Barbie dolls. When she tried to defend herself, her parents told her how no one could have got into the house without them knowing and they’d also found a pair of scissors and some of the dog’s curly blonde hair under her bed!
