“You mean she wasn’t even pregnant?” asked Emily.
“Oh she was pregnant, all right,” said Tom. “Two or three months ago.”
Three months ago! That was when we went to Niagara Falls and left Katherine at Pets for U and Me. This was starting to make sense!
“You see,” Tom went on, “iguanas don’t sit on their eggs. After they lay them, they leave and go somewhere soft and comfortable to recover.”
“Like to a cable box with underwear in it?” I said.
“Exactly,” Tom answered. “She was just resting up in there after the hard work of laying her eggs.”
“But if the eggs aren’t in there, then where are they?” Ashley asked.
“Good question,” Tom said. “She’s hidden them around here somewhere.”
My stomach did a triple flip this time. Maybe we’d accidentally fried her eggs and eaten them for breakfast. Or maybe they’d been in my toothbrush and I’d swallowed them when I rinsed. Eeeeuuuuuwww. I hope not. Maybe…
My thoughts were interrupted by a sound I didn’t like. It was footsteps coming into our flat, down the hall and into my room. I looked up.
“Dad!” I said in a shocked voice. “What are you doing here?”
My father looked around, and I can tell you this, he didn’t like what he saw. And that just might be the understatement of the century.
“Who are you?” he said to Tom.
“I’m the cable guy, sir,” said Tom.
“He’s also a chartered member of the Society for the Protection and Preservation of Iguanas,” said Emily.
“I’m sure that’s a very worthy organization,” said my father, turning to Tom, “but may I ask why you are in my flat?”
“Actually, we called him,” said Robert, who had just come panting into the room.
“Robert,” I said, “you were supposed to keep my dad away for fifteen minutes.”
“I couldn’t help it,” said Robert. “He came back for his mechanical pencil. He said he can’t do crosswords without it.”
Why hadn’t I thought of that? Of course. His mechanical pencil!
“Hank, you have a lot of explaining to do,” said my father.
“Maybe I should be going,” Tom said.
“That’s a good idea,” answered my father. “Hank, come with me.” He turned to Tom. “What do I owe you for the service call?”
“Nothing,” answered Tom. “The kids took care of it.”
My father nodded and walked into the living room. I followed him.
“What’s the meaning of this?” he said.
“I’m going to explain everything, Dad. I promise. You remember when we had that nice talk about Thomas Edison and what a cool inventor he was?”
“Cut to the chase, Hank,” my father said.
“Well, young Thomas must have taken apart plenty of things before he invented the light bulb. And I bet he couldn’t put all of them back together, either.”
“Such as a cable box,” my dad said.
“Good, Dad. You’re following right along. That’s excellent.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Tom making his way to the front door. He probably thought he had wandered into a family of lunatics.
“So you called the cable company to replace the box you broke,” my dad said. “And I assume you weren’t planning on telling me any of this.”
“Excellent, Dad. I admire your problem-solving skills.”
My dad was so mad his eyes were spinning around in his head, like those guys who slam into mountains in Road Runner cartoons.
“Actually, we could have fixed it, Mr Z., but then Katherine laid eggs in it,” Robert said. He and the others had joined me in the living room – for moral support, I guess.
“That is, we thought she’d laid eggs in it,” Ashley said.
“Turns out, she laid them somewhere else,” Emily said.
“We just don’t know where,” Frankie added.
“Now we do.” It was Tom, bent over the potted tree next to the front door of our apartment. “Here they are!”
We all bolted over to take a look. A clump of soft brownish eggs was half buried in the dirt around the tree. There weren’t forty-five of them, but there were a lot.
“Look, Dad,” I whispered. “Katherine’s babies.”
“Hank, if you think this is going to get you out of the hot water you’re in, you have a lot to learn, young man.”
“Excuse me, sir,” whispered Tom. “The first one is being born. Maybe you’d like to watch.”
We gathered around. It was truly unbelievable. A tiny iguana was chewing his way out of one of the eggs. We saw his snout first and then out popped his little face. He blinked and looked around. He seemed to be looking right at me. I couldn’t believe that mine was the first face he ever saw.
“Hi, little guy,” I said. He was so cute. He was more than cute. He was spectacular.
“This is a miracle,” Emily said. She had tears in her eyes.
We all did. Even me.
SIX THINGS I TOLD MY DAD YOU SHOULDN’T TALK ABOUT DURING THE MIRACLE OF IGUANA BIRTH
1. Cable boxes or anything to do with them.
2. Punishments or anything to do with them.
3. Anything to do with anything other than iguana birth.
4.
5. …
You know what? I can’t concentrate on this list right now. There are baby iguanas being born as I write this. It is so exciting, I don’t even understand why you’re reading this list. Trust me. Hurry up and skip to the next chapter.
Katherine had laid twenty-three eggs in all. We sat around in a semicircle that we had made with our dining-room chairs and watched as nineteen iguanas hatched that night. Nineteen tiny little lizards poking their snouts into the world. I wish you could have been there.
I guess the last four weren’t in such a hurry to come into the world. They must have been so comfortable inside their eggs. All warm and snuggly. Maybe their cable boxes were working and they were just waiting for their favourite show to end.
My mum came home from the deli in time to see all but the first two being born. She wanted to name every single one of them Spencer, which is what she wanted to name me before I was born, only my dad wouldn’t let her. She invited Tom to stay for dinner. It turns out he’s not only an iggie expert but also a vegetarian who really loved her cauliflower casserole with mock tuna. It’s a good thing he ate it, because the rest of us were looking for a place to chuck it. Even Cheerio turned up his nose at it.
My dad did take me into my room for “the talk”, in between when Dexter and Barbara were born. He told me that I was going to have to pay everyone back for the cable box, but he didn’t ground me. He went easy on me because although I had made a mistake, I’d done it in the name of science.
Ashley, Frankie and Robert had to go home after the first nineteen were born. It was almost midnight and we had school the next day. My dad went to bed too, and took Emily’s book on Raising Your Iguana with him. I don’t know why he was reading it now – we had already given birth to nineteen healthy reptiles. What more did you need to know?
Emily had fallen asleep in my mum’s lap. Maybe it was the miracle of birth that was making me feel all gooey, but she looked very sweet.
Tom and I sat by the potted tree. We just watched in silence for a while as one of the four remaining eggs started to roll around a little.
“Here comes another one,” Tom said. “Shouldn’t be long now.”
“Should I wake Emily up?”
“Let her sleep,” whispered my mum. I guess once you’ve seen nineteen iguanas born, the twentieth is pretty much … like … you know … the nineteenth. Or the eighteenth, for that matter.
We watched in silence for a while. The iguana’s snout was showing itself, but he was taking a rest before bursting all the way out of the egg. It’s hard work, getting born.
“So tell me, Hank,” Tom said. “Why did you take the cable box apart in the
first place?”
I told him the whole story, about how I’d tried to tape the film for Frankie and how I’d screwed up.
“What film was it?” he asked.
“The Mutant Moth That Ate Toledo.”
“Oh man, that’s a classic,” he said.
“So they say,” I said. “It’s not out on DVD and they only play it on TV once a year. My best friend has been waiting to see it his whole life. Now he’ll have to wait three hundred and sixty-three more days, thanks to me.”
“Hank, look at me,” Tom said. “What do you see?”
“A guy.” I shrugged.
“A guy who what?”
“A guy who knows a lot about iguanas,” I said.
“And?”
“And who works for a cable company.”
“Bingo,” said Tom. “Hank, I am a cable guy. We carried The Mutant Moth That Ate Toledo on our system. Which means I can get you a tape.”
I jumped out of my seat, almost out of my skin.
“That is unbelievable!” I screamed. I shouted so loud that I scared the little iguana back into its egg.
“Sorry, fella,” I said, “but you don’t know how exciting this is.” I went back to my whispering voice. “You can really get me a copy?”
“Sure,” Tom said.
“But I can’t pay you,” I said. “I only get four dollars and fifty cents a week allowance, and I have to pay everyone back for thenew cable box.”
“I have a better idea,” Tom said. “I’ll do you a swap.”
“What do I have that you would want?” I said. I thought about it. “Oh, I do have a triple size cat’s-eye marble. That’s pretty cool.”
Tom looked down at the little iguana popping out of the egg. “I wouldn’t mind having him.”
“Would that be OK, Mum?” I asked.
“It certainly would be,” she answered. “We have twenty-two other iguanas to find homes for. I think little Spencer there would be happy to go with Tom.”
“Actually, Mrs Zipzer, I was thinking of naming him Sylvester,” said Tom.
I got a flannel from the bathroom to wrap little Sylvester up in so he’d be comfortable on the way to his new home. It wasa Spider-Man flannel, which I thought Sylvester would like. Tom picked him up and wrapped him gently in it. That little iggie seemed as snug as a bug in a rug.
Sylvester was going to get the best home an iguana could have. And I was going to get a personal copy of the best horror film ever made.
A mutant moth for a baby iguana. That’s what I call a good swap.
Tom brought me the tape, and I invited Frankie to sleep over at the weekend. I didn’t mention the film.
I was so excited! I could hardly wait for Saturday night. I put the tape in a secret place to make sure Frankie didn’t see it. I hid it in my third drawer, under my Mets sweatshirt. Then I got worried that I’d forget where the secret place was, so I wrote notes to myself on Post-Its. But I had to write them in code so Frankie wouldn’t figure out what I’d planned for him.
I drew a baseball bat and wrote “Mets Rule” on all the notes. I put one on my clock radio, and one on the mirror in the bathroom, and one on the chart above my desk. When Frankie came over, he looked around and said, “What’s with all the Mets stuff?”
“They’re reminders,” I said.
“Of what? That the Mets suck?”
“No, of where I hid…”
“Hid what?” Frankie wanted to know.
I bit my lip really hard. That secret wanted to come out so badly. I was dying to tell him, but that would ruin the surprise.
Somehow, I made it to Saturday. My parents were going out and Papa Pete was staying with us. He and I put together a great plan.
We set up sleeping bags in the living room, right in front of the TV. Emily was in her room making little cots out of cardboard and toothpicks for all twenty-two baby iguanas. She had come up with a way to make pillows out of cotton balls. That would keep her busy all night. Besides, horror films were not her cup of chocolate milk.
When Frankie got there, Papa Pete made us pastrami sandwiches with brown mustard on seedless rye bread. Put a crunchy pickle next to that and you can’t beat it.
After dinner, it was time for the main event.
“You boys get comfortable in your sleeping bags, and I’ll put on a film,” Papa Pete said. “I picked out something that I’m comfortable with you watching while I’m on duty.” He winked at me.
He handed me a videotape box. I slid the tape out and handed the cover to Frankie.
“The Parent Trap?” Frankie said. “You’ve got to be kidding me!”
It was all I could do to keep from bursting out laughing.
“Try it,” Papa Pete said.
“I’ll hate it,” groaned Frankie.
“For years, I wouldn’t eat raisins,” said Papa Pete. “I thought anything that looks that bad has got to taste bad too. Then one day, I put some on my cereal. And now, I wouldn’t think of starting my day without them.”
“Papa Pete,” said Frankie, “that’s raisins. We’re talking about a film that eight-year-old girls love. How can you compare the two?”
“I watched The Parent Trap with Emily a couple of weeks ago,” I said, trying as hard as I could to keep a straight face. “The part where the parents kiss is pretty interesting.”
“Zip, I think your brains have fallen out and turned into marshmallows,” Frankie said.
“Just put the tape in,” said Papa Pete. “No violence, no naked ladies, good family fun.”
“I’m going to be sick,” Frankie said. “Correction. I am sick.”
“Enjoy yourselves, gentlemen,” Papa Pete said and he went into the kitchen.
I couldn’t look at Frankie. Slowly, I moved my finger towards the “Play” button and pressed it. Then I hurled myself across the room on to my sleeping bag. I tried to watch the screen, but I kept one eye on Frankie to see his reaction.
The music came up and the picture came on. It was a deserted cabin in the wilderness. A window was broken and the night was dark. Too dark.
“Hey, this doesn’t look like The Parent Trap,” Frankie said.
All of a sudden, a giant moth came flying out of the shattered window of the cabin and filled the screen. Its eyes glowed red. It spread its wings and the title came up across them. “The Mutant Moth That Ate Toledo.”
Frankie sat straight up in his sleeping bag.
“No way!” he said. “No way!”
This was truly one of the happiest moments of my life.
“Zip!” Frankie said. He was so excited he couldn’t even put together a sentence. “You … moth … here … now… No way! NO WAY!”
Papa Pete had opened the kitchen door a slice. He was smiling. I was smiling. Frankie was smiling.
“How did you do this, Zipola?” Frankie asked.
“I made a promise to you and I messed up. I had to fix it.”
“Well, you can mess up as much as you want if this is the way it ends up,” Frankie said. “This is so cool, I don’t know what to say!”
“That’s good,” I said. “Because you’re not supposed to talk during a film.”
Papa Pete pushed the door all the way open and brought in a bowl filled with an assortment of ice cream bars. He sat down on the sofa and the three of us spent the next two hours screaming our heads off, enjoying The Mutant Moth That Ate Toledo.
There’s a lesson in this story, which is: you never know where a great science project is going to come from. You start off with the tummy-sliding habits of penguins. Then you’re discovering the wonders inside the cable box. And you wind up observing and recording the reproductive cycle of the flat-dwelling iguana in modern day Manhattan.
My science project turned out great. Thank goodness my disposable camera still had twenty-seven shots left from our trip to Niagara Falls. I got some really good pictures of those eensy teensy iguanas eating their way out of their eggs.
I would’ve got an A on it. I
was so close I could taste it. But Ms Adolf took points off because of my concluding sentence. It said: “I think baby iguanas are the most lovable creatures in the world.” Ms Adolf didn’t think that was scientific enough.
I got a B, though, which is great for me. I don’t get a lot of Bs. The really important thing is I got an A in friendship. Frankie and I are back to being best friends – better than ever.
Hey, you. Baby Iguana Head! What do you think you’re doing?
Listen, I’ve got to go. One of the twenty-two baby iguanas has got into my drawer. I think it’s Max. Or it could be Sneezy. Or maybe it’s Charlotte. It’s so hard to tell the difference.
Oh no you don’t, whoever you are! You poo on my Mets sweatshirt and I’m telling your mum!
Hey, I’ve got to take care of this. I’ll see you all later.
An interview with Henry Winkler
What’s your favourite thing about Hank Zipzer?
My favourite thing about Hank Zipzer is that he is resourceful. Just because he can’t figure something out doesn’t mean that he won’t find a way. I love his sense of humour. Even though Lin and I write the books together, when we meet in the morning to work we never know where the characters or the story will take us. Hank and his friends make us laugh all the time.
Hank likes to write lists. Are you a list person, too? (If so, what sorts of lists do you make?)
Hank likes to write lists, and so do I. My whole life is organized on scraps of paper in a pile on my desk by my phone. If I didn’t make lists, I would get nothing done, because I would forget the important things that I had to do. And then, I’m constantly rewriting those lists and adding to them. So yes, I’m a list maker.
Who was your favourite teacher?
Believe it or not, Mr Rock, the music teacher at my high school, McBurney’s School for Boys, was my favourite teacher. He seemed to understand that learning was difficult for me. He understood that just because I had trouble with almost every subject, it did not mean I was stupid.
Where did you grow up?
The World's Greatest Underachiever and the Mutant Moth Page 8
