by Luke Sharpe
I open the front door, completely forgetting about the new “doorbell” he installed:
It’s every ball you’ll ever need; the greatest ball you’ll own, indeed. No matter what sport you like to play, the All Ball helps you every day. That’s all! That’s the All Ball!
If that jingle rings every time I walk in, I think I’m just going to crawl through Philo’s doggy door.
“I just can’t get enough of it,” Manny says, humming the jingle’s tune. Then he gets right down to business. It’s so Manny. “So at lunch you were really worried about how you didn’t sleep-invent last night.”
I nod. “I might need to invent that sleep helmet so I can sleep-invent again. But then how am I going to invent the sleep helmet if I can’t sleep-invent!”
“Slow down, Billy,” Manny tells me. “It’s just been one night. You’ll get it tonight.”
Reason #653 why Manny is my best friend and business partner: He always knows just the right thing to say.
I spend the rest of the afternoon making small adjustments to the device, but I hesitate to test it on Philo until I’ve managed to finish the blueprints.
That night after dinner, instead of watching another episode of Gigantic Fails—which, now that I think about it, is probably not the best show for me to watch on a night before I need to invent something—I get into bed with a book: a biography of Thomas Edison.
Maybe it’s because I didn’t get much sleep last night, or maybe it’s because of Manny’s reassurance, but tonight I quickly doze off.
“Billy . . .” A soft voice enters my dream. “Billy, honey, time to get up.”
It’s my mom’s voice. Actually, it’s a recording of my mom’s voice, which I programmed into my alarm clock as a nice way to wake me up. She used to wake me up herself every morning, and I miss that now.
My mom isn’t around much. She’s a scientist who works on TOP-SECRET projects for the government, and so she’s often in some far-flung corner of the world. She’s been gone since the summer, right after the All Ball made it big. It’s nice to hear her voice every morning, but it also reminds me of how much I miss her. I can’t wait until she comes home. Until then, we e-mail a lot. In fact, I should make sure to e-mail her today.
Thinking of e-mailing my mom makes me think of my desk, which makes me think of my blueprints. Did I sleep invent last night? Well, there’s only one way to find out! I slip from my bed and scoot over to my desk. There, sitting in the middle of my desk, are fully rendered blueprints for Sure Things, Inc.’s Next Big Thing—the Cat-Dog Translator!
Obviously, my good night’s sleep included a very productive sleep-inventing session! Rolling up the blueprints, I breathe a little sigh of relief. Now all I have to do is build a working model of the thing.
I have trouble concentrating at school that day. I’m too excited. I can’t wait to get to the office and tell Manny the good news. (Manny was busy at lunch, so we hardly saw each other all day.) Finally the afternoon comes, and with Philo at my side, I race to the office.
I’m so excited about the new blueprints that I don’t even mind hearing the All Ball jingle again as I slip through the door.
“How’d you sleep?” Manny asks.
“Terribly,” I reply, holding up the completed blueprints.
“WONDERFUL!” Manny says. “I knew you’d do it. You are the best!”
It’s at moments like this that I remember why Manny and I were best friends long before we became business partners.
Time to get busy! I happily spread the blueprints out on my workbench right next to the prototype. Opening up the prototype’s main box, I compare the wiring and circuits inside with the blueprints I drew up last night. I can see right away where I went wrong.
Switching a few connections and adding a few parts from my vast stash of stuff, I do my best to match the blueprints wire for wire, circuit for circuit—each part fitting precisely with all the others.
Finally, after about an hour, I’m ready to test my invention. I power it up. The two lights on top of the translator start blinking—left, right, left, right. A low whirring sound rumbles from the speaker. It’s now or never.
Out come the doggy treats.
“Philo! Treat time!” I shout, shaking the box.
Philo hops out of his doggy bed, trots over to me, and sits down. I hold a treat up over his head.
“Speak, boy! Speak!” I say, holding the treat up with one hand, while holding the translator’s microphone down near Philo with the other hand.
“RUUFFF! RUFFFF!” he barks. I toss him the treat.
A second later a sound comes out of the translator’s speaker: “. . . ov . . . oo . . .”
Well, it’s the closest to a translation that I’ve gotten to so far, but it’s still not precisely right.
I rotate the dials on the front of the device slightly, then repeat the experiment.
“RUUFFF! RUFFFF!” Philo barks again.
This time “. . . love . . . oo . . .” comes out of the speaker.
Closer! Definitely closer!
A few more tweaks on the dials, another doggy treat, and . . .
“RUUFFF! RUFFFF!” Philo is really getting impatient for his treat now.
This time it comes out as: “I LOVE YOU!”
During this whole testing process Manny has been hard at work at his desk with his back to me. He knows enough to leave me alone when I’m in the middle of inventing. But as soon as the “I love you,” in a somewhat high, squeaky, yet totally recognizable voice, comes out of the speaker, Manny leaps from his chair, races across the office, and gives me a high five.
“I knew you could do it, Billy!” he cries.
Don’t get too excited just yet, I tell my brain. “We still have to make sure it works for cats, too,” I point out.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m thrilled I’ve gotten so far, but no invention is complete until everything works the way you want it to. If not, you’ve just got more work to do.
“Why don’t I go get Watson?” says Manny. Watson is Manny’s cat. “He usually has to stay in the house, but I can bring him into the garage. Just don’t open any doors.”
“Great,” I reply. “And Philo has always gotten along with cats, so that shouldn’t be a problem.”
A few minutes later Manny returns carrying a large gray-and-white cat. Watson rests in his arms like a giant furry loaf of bread.
“Okay, kitty, you go say hello to Billy,” says Manny, placing Watson on the floor.
Philo is half-asleep in his doggy bed. He lifts his head and sniffs at Watson, who ignores him, walks once around the doggy bed, and then rubs up against Manny’s legs.
“Come here, Watson!” I urge the cat.
“Do you have any string?” Manny asks.
Silly question. I pull open a drawer in my parts cabinet labeled jUNK DRAWER #3. I have a total of five junk drawers, plus all my other drawers, which are basically junk drawers too.
Rummaging around among paper clips, rubber bands, and twist ties, I find a length of string. Placing the translator on the floor, I dangle the string near the microphone.
“Come on, Watson, over here!” I call.
Watson spies the bouncing string and darts across the room. As he swats at the string he lets out a loud: “MWOW! MWOOOOW!”
The lights flash, the speakers hum, and out comes: “RUUFFF! RUFFFF!”
“Uh, that sounds like Philo,” says Manny.
I always appreciate it when he points out the obvious.
“Hmmm . . . ,” I say, scratching my head. “When we decided to make our invention a Cat-Dog Translator, this is not what I had in mind.”
I adjust the dials and slip a sound filter into a slot I had built into the side of the box.
“Let’s try this again,” I say.
I dangle the string, making it dance right in front of the microphone. Watson grabs it with both paws, then flops over onto his back and moans: “BWAAARRR!”
From out of the tran
slator’s speaker comes: “YOU’RE NOT PETTING ME. IS THERE A PROBLEM?”
Manny jumps so high, his head almost hits the ceiling. He gives me another high five and says, “Another home run, partner! Nicely done!”
“Thanks,” I say, breathing a sigh of relief. Another Thomas Edison quote comes to mind: “Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.” Not that I’m saying I’m a genius or anything like that. But inventing does takes hard work.
“Thanks, Watson,” I say, leaning down and rubbing his belly.
Manny picks up Watson to bring him back into the house.
“I’d like to take Philo and the translator to the park,” I say. “You know, kind of field test it out in the ‘wild,’ so to speak.”
“Great idea,” says Manny. “Stop back here before you go home and let me know how it works.”
I snatch up my backpack and carefully slip the translator inside. “Come on, Philo. You wanna go to the park?” I ask.
At the sound of the word “park” Philo is up and racing to the door. I follow him out and we head to the park, with a working prototype of Sure Things, Inc.’s Next Big Thing!
Panic in the Park
PHILO TROTS A FEW STEPS ahead of me as we head out through the fence in Manny’s backyard and into the park that juts right up to Manny’s parents’ property. Ever since the success of the All Ball changed my life and I’ve been coming to Manny’s garage every day, this park has been a huge help. I can take a break from work when I need it and make sure Philo gets a quick walk.
Philo jumps up on a bench, then jumps back off and races around the trunk of a thick tree. I set my backpack down and pull out the translator. A few seconds later Philo comes scampering back to me. It makes me smile to see him so happy.
“What’s up, boy?” I ask, moving the translator close to him.
“GRR-RUFFF!” he barks. Out comes: “I’M HUNGRY!”
“All right, let’s get you some food.” It’s thrilling to be able to understand what it is that Philo wants. Although ninety-nine times out of a hundred, what Philo wants is food.
I toss him a treat, which he catches and gobbles down. Then he happily trots alongside me, sniffing at the ground as he goes. Philo moves closer to me and sniffs near my feet.
“Your feet smell DELICIOUS!” he says through the translator.
Knowing what Philo is saying is both cool and kinda gross at the same time!
We walk a little farther until Philo spots a squirrel dashing through the grass. He stops in his tracks, his tail whipping back and forth, his ears pointing straight up. He begins growling, then barks. What comes out of the translator is: “I’ll chase that squirrel . . . NOW!”
Philo bolts after the squirrel, who takes off like a fuzzy gray blur. The squirrel tears through the grass, darting sharply to its left, then cutting back to its right, heading for the edge of the park’s large grassy field. Philo matches his moves step for step.
With Philo closing in on him, the squirrel makes for a large tree at the end of the field. Just as Philo is about to catch him, the squirrel reaches the base of the tree and leaps up onto the thick trunk, scrambling up into the high branches, its claws grabbing the craggy bark.
Philo skids to a stop just in time to avoid crashing into the base of the tree. He places his front paws onto the tree and starts barking loudly. I catch up to him in time to use the translator to hear: “PLEASE COME DOWN, SQUIRREL. PLEASE COME DOWN SO I CAN CATCH YOU.”
The squirrel probably can’t understand what Philo’s barks mean, but he certainly gets the point. That squirrel is not budging from its perch. If the squirrel could, it would probably stick its tongue out at Philo, taunting him. I scratch Philo’s head, and he brings his front paws back down to the ground.
“I don’t think the squirrel speaks Dog, buddy,” I say, realizing, of course, that the Cat-Dog Translator only works one way. I can now understand what Philo is saying, but my words are still just gibberish to him. Now, if I could invent something that would translate human speech into dog language . . . Slow down, Billy. One BRILLIANT INVENTION at a time!
Philo resumes his barking: “I would like to catch that squirrel. Squirrels are fast. Squirrels can climb trees. I also can climb trees.”
A strange look comes over Philo’s face. As if he has just solved a problem that he’s been working on for years, as if a lightbulb has just gone off inside his doggy brain.
“I can climb trees. I can climb trees,” he repeats.
Philo looks straight up the tree trunk. But he’s too late. The squirrel has disappeared into the highest branches of the tree and is nowhere in sight.
We continue our walk. I decide right then and there to add a long shoulder strap to the Cat-Dog Translator, so that it can hang down near Philo’s mouth. That way I won’t have to bend down to allow the machine to hear what he’s saying.
We pass a garbage can. Philo shoves his nose into the top of the can and sniffs so loudly I can hear it from a few feet away.
“GARBAGE SMELLS DELICIOUS!” he says through the translator. “I’D LIKE SOME GARBAGE, PLEASE.”
“Never mind,” I say, gently guiding his nose and the rest of him away from the trash can. So far, mostly what I have learned from the Cat-Dog Translator is that Philo thinks just about everything—the more disgusting, the better—smells delicious.
A few minutes later I see someone coming toward us, walking a dog on a leash. Philo spots the dog and starts barking as they pass each other. His barking is loud enough that the translator’s microphone picks it up. Out comes: “I WOULD LIKE TO MEET THAT DOG! I WOULD LIKE TO SNIFF THAT DOG’S BUTT!”
The dog walker stops and gives me a pointed look. “Excuse me? What did you just say?”
UH-OH.
“I—um—I didn’t say anything,” I squeak out and start hurrying away. “I mean . . . Well, it was my . . . well, it’s kind of hard to explain, and—um—never mind, have a nice day!”
I think about heading back to the office. The first official field test of the Cat-Dog Translator has been a great success out in the wild. Except for the whole “causing a stranger to think I was VERY, VERY WEIRD” part. I need to wrap up work for the day and get home with Philo in time for dinner, English homework . . . well, you know the routine.
But at that moment another squirrel darts out right in front of Philo and looks him squarely in the eyes.
Philo cannot resist this obvious challenge. He barks. “I’LL CHASE THIS SQUIRREL—NOW!” comes out of the translator. The squirrel dashes off, sprinting across the lawn, heading for the nearest tree. Philo takes off after it.
“Philo, come back here!” I shout, slapping my thigh. I really don’t have time to chase him down. But Philo is on a mission, and even the thigh slap move doesn’t stop him.
Oh great. Now I have to chase him.
I start running after Philo, but carrying the big, bulky translator in my hands really slows me down. I stop, kneel on the grass, and slide the device into my backpack, which I then slip over my shoulders. But by now Philo has quite a lead on me.
I see across the field that the squirrel has reached a tree, jumped onto it, and is climbing quickly up its trunk. This time Philo remembers, in a timely manner, that he, too, knows how to climb trees, although not quite as gracefully as the squirrel.
When I get to the tree, Philo has leaped up onto a low branch and is making his way up, paw by paw, branch by branch. At this point, neither of us can see the squirrel, who has obviously scrambled way up into the tree to safety.
“Come down, Philo!” I shout, now barely able to see him through the leaves. “You lost him, and we have to go home!”
Philo starts to make his way down. His steps are uncertain, and I start to get worried. When he reaches a low branch, he can’t seem to figure out how to make it from there back down to the ground.
“Hold on, boy. I’ll help you,” I say, slipping off my backpack. I place the backpack down on a nearby bench and turn back to the
tree.
“Come on,” I say, lifting my arms as high as they can go.
Suddenly, Philo starts growling.
“Oh, be quiet and come down,” I say. “I’ll help you. Here we go.” I stand up on my tippy-toes, stretching my arms to reach him, but Philo continues to growl and bark.
What’s he growling about? I wonder. Maybe he’s just scared of jumping down from the tree?
Finally, after I stretch so far that I think I might be a couple of inches taller than I was when I woke up this morning, Philo jumps down into my arms.
“There you go,” I say. “Forget about that dumb squirrel. Let’s go and get you some dinner.”
But as soon I put him down on the ground, Philo starts growling and barking again.
“What are you trying to tell me, boy?” I ask. “What’s got you so worked up?” Then I remember that I’ve just invented something that can help answer my question. And it’s right here in my backpack. “Let’s just find out what you’re trying to tell me.”
I turn to the bench and open my backpack, only to discover that it’s EMPTY! The Cat-Dog Translator is GONE!
Where’s Philo?
OKAY, I’M PANICKING. I SEARCH all around the bench where I set my pack down—under it, on the grass near it. Nothing.
Where could the translator have gone? It was only out of my sight for a minute. Maybe it fell out of my backpack while I was chasing Philo. If I retrace my steps, maybe I can find it.
With Philo at my side, sniffing everything he passes, I walk slowly back to where I slipped the device into my pack, retracing my steps, scouring every inch of the ground.
No sign of the translator.
Could someone have taken it? But how is that possible?
I look down at Philo. “Did you see someone take it? Huh, boy? Is that why you were growling and barking?”
“RAFF-RAFFF!”
Philo’s not much help without the translator.
How could someone have lifted it out of my backpack in such a short amount of time—unless whoever took it had been following me, waiting for an opportunity to snatch the device. But who would do that?
