The World According to Humphrey

by Betty G. Birney

  “Sue” was apparently Mrs. Brisbane, although I’d never actually thought of her having a first name before.

  She said it was great to be back and what a wonderful class it was, which obviously pleased the room mothers.

  Then Mr. Morales leaned over my cage and smiled. His tie dangled right over my head.

  “I’ll bet you’re enjoying this furry little pupil,” he said with a grin.

  I expected Mrs. Brisbane to tell him what a trouble-making rodent I was. But instead, she forced a smile and said, “Well, yes, but he’s quite a bit of extra work.”

  Mr. Morales waved a finger at me. He didn’t seem to hear what Mrs. Brisbane said.

  “I always wanted one of these fellows,” he said. “But my papa wouldn’t let me have one. Sure is cute.”

  Mrs. Brisbane cleared her throat. “Yes, but I’m afraid he’s a little distracting. I was going to see if Mr. Kim in Room 12 wants him.”

  I was shocked. Luckily, so were the room mothers.

  “Oh, no! The children just love Humphrey,” said Mrs. Patel.

  “Heidi talks about him all the time. And it’s a wonderful way to teach the kids responsibility,” Mrs. Hopper said.

  “Yes, but it’s a little too much responsibility for me.” Mrs. Brisbane sighed. “At least I have a couple days away from him this weekend.”

  “You’re not taking him home with you?” asked Mrs. Patel.

  Mrs. Brisbane backed away from the cage. “Oh, no. It’s out of the question.”

  “But Ms. Mac always took him home,” said Mrs. Hopper.

  “He’ll be fine. He has plenty of food,” Mrs. Brisbane answered very, very firmly.

  The room mothers were silent a second. Mr. Morales was still wiggling his finger at me.

  Then Mrs. Hopper spoke up. “Why don’t the kids take turns bringing Humphrey home for the weekend? They can sign up, we’ll talk to their parents and give them instructions. It will be a great experience!”

  “Some people might not want him,” said Mrs. Brisbane.

  Squeak for yourself, Mrs. Brisbane!

  “That’s fine,” said Mrs. Hopper. “There’ll be plenty who will.”

  “I think it’s great,” Mrs. Patel agreed. “I’d take him today, but we’re going up to the lake for the weekend.”

  “Oh, I’d take him, too,” said Mrs. Hopper. “But we’re painting the house and the place is a mess. Next week for sure.”

  “Yes, I could do it next week,” Mrs. Patel agreed.

  Mrs. Brisbane smiled a fake smile. “So who’s going to take him this weekend?”

  The room mothers looked at one another.

  “I could make a few quick calls. Maybe the Rinaldis,” Mrs. Patel suggested.

  “CALL-CALL-CALL,” I squeaked.

  Suddenly, Mr. Morales stood up straight. “I have a better idea,” he announced. “I’ll take Humphrey home for the weekend. My kids will love him. Then, starting next week, you can have the students take turns.”

  The three women were almost as surprised as I was.

  “Don’t worry. He’ll be in good hands,” Mr. Morales assured them.

  Well, I guess I would be. After all, I was going home with the Most Important Person at Longfellow School!

  As he drove me to his house, Mr. Morales told me how he’d always wanted a hamster when he was a kid. But his dad always said they didn’t need another mouth to feed. “I argued with him, Humphrey. I said, ‘Papa, I will feed him off my own plate.’ Then Papa said we’d have to buy the cage and stuff to put in it. I guess he was right, Humphrey. We couldn’t afford it.”

  He smiled his big smile. “But not anymore. Now I’m the principal of my own school.”

  I told you he was important.

  His house was nice, but I didn’t get to see much of it because as soon as we came in the door, two little whirl-winds tumbled into the room, shrieking and squealing.

  “Quiet down, now. You’ll frighten the little fellow,” Mr. Morales told them. He got that right.

  He introduced us. The little boy, who was about five, was named Willy. He kept poking his fingers through the wires of the cage. I was about to bite him—pure instinct—but then I remembered: This is the son of the Most Important Person at Longfellow School. So I didn’t.

  The little girl, who was about seven, was named Brenda. She kept sticking her face up against the cage and squealing. I tried squeaking back at her, but I don’t think she could hear me.

  Mr. Morales tried to quiet them down. He explained that I was a guest for the weekend and they had to treat me with respect.

  They didn’t listen.

  A pretty lady rushed through the room, jingling her car keys. “I’m late. I have a house to show.” She glanced in my direction. “We’ll talk about that later. Adiós.”

  Mr. Morales wished her luck and she was gone. Then he carried me into the den with Willy and Brenda clinging to his legs and yelping.

  My cage was swinging back and forth so much, I was getting airsick. Or cage-sick.

  Mr. Morales set my cage on a table in their family room.

  “Now get back and listen to me,” he told his children. “I’ll tell you all about him.”

  “Can we take him out?” screamed Willy.

  “Can we put him in my room?” shouted Brenda. “Can he sleep with me tonight?”

  “We can’t do anything until you settle down,” Mr. Morales said.

  Bravo, Mr. Morales, I thought.

  But still, the children didn’t listen. The Most Important Person at Longfellow School was not treated with respect in his own house.

  Willy lurched forward and swung open the cage door.

  “Oooh, there’s poo in there!” he screamed.

  “Where? Where?” shrieked Brenda.

  Willy pointed to my potty corner, which I thought was unsqueakably rude of him.

  “I want to hold him,” said Brenda, grabbing me.

  She squeezed me so hard, I let out a squeal.

  “Stop!” said Mr. Morales. “Put him back right now!”

  She opened her hand and dropped me onto the floor of my cage. Luckily, I landed in a pile of soft bedding.

  Luckily, I didn’t land in my poo.

  I was a little dizzy, but I heard Mr. Morales send Willy and Brenda to their rooms.

  “I will not allow you to mistreat an animal. Upstairs. Doors shut. No playing until I say you can,” he said.

  Suddenly, Mr. Morales didn’t look so important. He slumped down in the chair next to my cage and loosened his tie.

  “Now you know my secret, Humphrey. At school, everybody listens to me. At home, nobody listens to me,” he said.

  Mr. Morales looked TIRED-TIRED-TIRED.

  Above our heads came the sounds of thumping and bumping. It sounded as if the ceiling was about to fall in.

  “They’re bouncing on their beds, Humphrey. Not supposed to do that, either,” he said.

  He slowly rose and went to the stairway in the hall.

  “Willy! Brenda! Stop that now!” he yelled.

  Surprisingly, the thumping and bumping stopped.

  “They listened!” I squeaked when the principal sat down again. But the thumping and bumping began again in a minute.

  “I wish I knew what to do,” he said. “Some way to teach them a lesson.”

  I nodded. A lesson is just what those children needed.

  And I was just the hamster to teach them.

  TIP FOUR: Never, ever squeeze, pinch or crush a hamster. If it runs away, squeals or mutters, leave the hamster alone.

  Guide to the Care and Feeding of Hamsters, Dr. Harvey H. Hammer

  5

  Plans Are Hatched

  When Mr. Morales went into the kitchen to get a glass of water, I carefully opened the lock-that-doesn’t-lock and slipped out of my cage. I leaped over to the chair, then scampered down to the floor and hid in the corner, behind the long curtains.

  Mr. Morales returned and sat down again. The children wer
e still thumping and bumping and were now screaming and screeching as well.

  “Say, Humphrey, maybe you need some water, too,” he said and leaned toward my cage.

  Mr. Morales gasped when he saw that it was empty. “Humphrey, where did you go? Oh, I should have known you’d escape! I’d run away from those kids if I could, too. But do me a favor, Humphrey. Please come out!”

  In a panic, he darted around the room. “The kids in Room 26 will hate me if I lose you!” he said.

  I felt sorry for Mr. Morales, so I scratched around a little.

  “There you are!” he said, bending down to look at me. “Now, let’s get you back in your cage.”

  Not quite yet, I thought. He reached down to pick me up and I scampered forward, just a few inches past his hand.

  “Don’t do this to me, Humphrey,” he said. “Cooperate.”

  But I wasn’t doing anything to him. I was doing something for him.

  “Work with me,” he said, but this time to himself. “Maybe . . . hey, that’s it!” He looked down at me. “With your help, Humphrey.”

  Mr. Morales really swung into action then.

  He raced upstairs. The thumping and bumping stopped. When he raced back downstairs, Willy and Brenda were with him.

  “Close all the doors, Willy,” he said.

  “But, Dad,” Willy whined.

  “Close them,” his father repeated firmly. “Now!”

  Willy closed all the doors.

  “You two scared poor Humphrey with your screaming and poking and thumping. We may never see him again!” he told them.

  Brenda burst into tears. “Humphrey’s dead!” she sobbed.

  “No. Humphrey’s too smart for that,” Mr. Morales told her. “But he will run away if you two aren’t nice to him.”

  RIGHT-RIGHT-RIGHT. You have to be pretty smart to be a principal.

  “Now, do you want to help me get Humphrey back?”

  “YES!” the children shouted.

  Mr. Morales explained the Plan. He said the only way they’d get me back in my cage was if they worked together. And they could only work together if they listened to him. Really listened.

  They were listening now. And they kept listening, too. Because he told them the most important thing they could do was to be quiet.

  So they were quiet.

  “I’m pretty sure he’s still in the room. Our job is to lure him back into his cage,” Mr. Morales whispered.

  He put my cage in the middle of the floor. Then he went to the kitchen and got a handful of sunflower seeds. Willy and Brenda helped him make a trail of seeds across the floor leading up to the cage.

  “Good,” said Mr. Morales. “Now we have to be very, very quiet and wait for Humphrey to pick up the seeds. But if you say anything or even move, you might scare him.”

  “We’ll be quiet, Dad,” said Willy. Brenda agreed.

  They all sat on the sofa.

  “Do you think it will work?” Willy whispered.

  “Of course,” Brenda answered. “Dad’s smart.”

  Well, he’s not the only one.

  I waited for a while. After all, the Morales children needed all the practice staying quiet they could get. When Willy got restless, I started skittering along the floor.

  “I hear him!” said Brenda.

  “Shhh,” said Willy.

  I waited a few more seconds, then scrambled out of the corner and grabbed the closest seed. I could hear loud gasps from the children, but I pretended not to notice.

  I scurried toward the second seed. This Plan Mr. Morales and I came up with was TASTY-TASTY-TASTY.

  I could almost feel three pairs of eyes fixed on me, but I ignored them. I grabbed up the third and fourth seeds, hid them in my cheek pouch, then stopped right outside the open door of my cage.

  Inside, Mr. Morales had left a lovely pile of sunflower seeds.

  It was nice to be free, but my cage was home after all.

  Besides, until the day somebody fixes the lock-that-doesn’t-lock, I can get out whenever I want.

  The kids were still quiet, so I made a run for the cage. Mr. Morales quickly closed the door and the children began to cheer.

  “We did it!” said Brenda.

  “Dad’s the smartest man in the world!” said Willy.

  “Hey, you kids helped. When we cooperate and work together, we make a pretty good team,” Mr. Morales told them.

  “¡Lo mejor!” Willy agreed. “The best!”

  Mr. Morales squatted down and winked at me. “Of course, Humphrey helped, too.”

  I’ll say.

  The rest of the weekend with the Morales family was fine. Sometimes the kids started interrupting their dad or mom, but Mr. Morales just reminded them that they could be polite if they tried.

  Willy and Brenda tried.

  Mrs. Morales sold a house (it turns out that selling other people’s houses is her job), so they celebrated with pizza and ice cream.

  Brenda learned to hold me gently.

  Willy even cleaned the poo out of my cage, which I appreciated.

  Life is good, I thought as Mr. Morales drove me back to school Monday morning.

  Then I remembered Mrs. Brisbane. And how she’d said I was a troublemaker and she was going to get rid of me.

  “Humphrey, you are a true friend,” said Mr. Morales as he carried my cage back into Room 26. “I’ll never forget what you did for me.”

  As soon as class started on Monday, Heidi’s mom came into the classroom and explained to everyone about taking me home on weekends.

  “How many of you would be interested?” Mrs. Hopper asked.

  Every single hand in the classroom was raised.

  Every hand except one: Mrs. Brisbane’s.

  Still, it was a pretty good week.

  I got a 90% on the vocabulary test. I’ll bet Sayeh got 100%. But she still didn’t raise her hand, even though she’d promised.

  And Aldo talked more and more every night. On Tuesday night, he leaned in close and asked, “Humphrey, don’t you ever wish you had a girlfriend?”

  Like most hamsters, I’m pretty much of a loner, so I really hadn’t thought about it before.

  “Not sure,” I squeaked.

  “I would like one,” said Aldo. “A real nice girlfriend.”

  I felt so sorry for Aldo, I squeaked extra loud when he performed his broom-balancing act for me.

  I was still thinking about him on Wednesday. After everyone had left, while there was still light coming in the window, I meandered outside the cage to help myself to any mealworms that Heidi might have left behind when she fed me earlier in the day.

  The table was covered with newspapers and while I nibbled, I browsed the news. All of life was there on the pages of the newspaper. Births and deaths. Lost pets (SAD-SAD-SAD). Funny jokes. Good news and bad news.

  Then there were the ads. My, there were so many stores. Not just Pet-O-Rama but Shoes-O-Rama and Food-O-Rama and Books Galore and Wide World of Tools!

  And there were other ads, too. One in particular caught my eye that afternoon. It read:WORK NIGHTS? LONELY? WANT TO MEET

  OTHERS WHO WORK NIGHTS?

  THE MOONLIGHTERS CLUB

  FOR PEOPLE WHO WORK AT NIGHT.

  MEETINGS ARE HELD DURING THE DAY ON WEEKDAYS.

  HIKES AND OUTINGS TO RESTAURANTS, PARKS, PLAYS,

  MOVIES AND MUCH MORE!

  There was a name and a phone number at the end.

  I could hardly believe it. This was exactly what Aldo needed! I could already see him, smiling and happy, going to parks and plays with the Moonlighters Club and having a girlfriend.

  But how could I get Aldo to read this ad? He’d probably just throw it away. Still, if I cut it out and left it in a place where he couldn’t miss it, well, maybe.

  Hamsters can’t do scissors, but we have nifty teeth. It took me a while to nibble the whole ad out neatly, but I did a pretty good job. Then I stood the clipping up against my cage. Aldo couldn’t help but see it i
f he looked at me, which he always did.

  That evening, I was more anxious than usual for Aldo to arrive. When he turned on the lights, I squeaked, “Hello,” right away.

  “Greetings to you, my little friend,” said Aldo as he pushed his cart into the room. “You sound like you have something on your mind.”

  “You bet,” I tried to tell him.

  He ambled over to my cage and leaned down to look in.

  “What’s happening, Humphrey?” he asked.

  I saw his eyes light on the scrap of newspaper.

  “Hey, I can hardly see you.” He reached out and pushed the clipping aside.

  “Read it!” I squeaked right out. Of course, he didn’t understand.

  He didn’t even look at what the ad said. He just set it down next to the cage and leaned in closer.

  I was squeaking a blue streak. “Look at it now!”

  “Calm down, Humphrey. I’ve got a treat for you,” said Aldo. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a tiny bit of carrot. “Your pal Aldo would never forget you.”

  My heart sank. You try to help a human and they don’t even pay attention. But as you know, I don’t give up easily.

  I squeaked happily while he balanced his broom on one finger, as usual. But my mind was on the Moonlighters Club and how to get Aldo there.

  After he left, I scrambled out of my cage, picked up the newspaper clipping and tucked it inside my notebook. Then I hid the notebook behind my mirror. If I didn’t, somebody mean (like Mrs. Brisbane) might throw it away.

  I was still wondering what to do with it the next day when Mrs. Brisbane rolled in a cart with a big machine on it.

  “This is the overhead projector,” she told the class. “I’m going to use it for some map work.”

  When Mrs. Brisbane turned the machine on, a bright light was projected onto the wall. Then she placed a paper map on the glass and suddenly that map showed up really big on the wall. She could write on it and draw on it and you could see everything she wrote.

  A machine like this could come in very handy, I thought.

  So when Mrs. Brisbane turned the machine off and sent my classmates off to lunch, I thought about that machine.

  When A.J. cleaned my cage and changed my water and bedding, I thought about that machine.