The Dead Disco Raccoon

by Michael Rex

  Then Stew was like, “Uh … what do we do now?”

  I was like, “Um … Mrs. Lambert said I could put out some dry food, too.”

  So I got out the big bag of dry food. The cats were going bonkers and jumped up on me. I dropped the bag on the floor, and it ripped. The cats went crazy eating the food.

  “Oh no!” I said.

  “Wow! Look at them!” said Stew. “They must have really been starving.”

  The cats crowded around us again, all meowing like mad. They cornered us.

  “They’re like zombies!” said Stew. “They just won’t stop!”

  “Yeah.” I giggled. “It’s a cat apocalypse!”

  “They’ve taken over!” said Stew. We started laughing some more.

  Then I remembered something. “Mrs. Lambert said for a treat, I could give them some milk.”

  So I pushed past the cats and got the milk from the fridge. Todd, I swear, jumped up on the counter and leaped on my head! I dropped the milk, and it spilled everywhere. It mixed with the dry food and got sludgy. The cats were eating and lapping up all the stuff from the floor.

  “We gotta clean this up!” I said.

  “Yeah,” said Stew. “Let’s find a broom.”

  We tried to get across the kitchen, but the cats were everywhere and it was all slippery. Stew fell, then grabbed me. I went down right into some slop! The cats began licking the gunk off my face.

  I got up and stepped right onto the litter box. The whole tray flipped over, flinging litter and cat poops across the floor. Then one cat started making this horrible sound, like huuwaaaackssss, huuwaaaackssss, and spit up a hair ball right onto Stew.

  I found a broom in a closet and tried to sweep up the food and milk and litter and poops.

  “This isn’t working,” I said. “It’s too wet. We need a mop!”

  Stew grabbed a mop and started using that. One cat thought the mop was a toy and attacked it.

  “This isn’t working, either,” he said. “We need something stronger!”

  “Like what?” I said.

  “I don’t know, maybe a shovel?” he said.

  Then I had my best idea of the day. “What about a leaf blower?”

  “You can’t use them inside!” said Stew.

  “Why not?” I said.

  “You just can’t!” said Stew.

  “We’ve gotta try something! You stay here and watch the cats!” I shouted as I ran out the door.

  I ran home, grabbed the leaf blower, and ran back. I plugged it in and turned it on!

  The cats went nuts looking for places to hide. They kept banging into each other and leaping through the air.

  The leaf blower pushed all the gunk that was on the floor into one corner of the kitchen. It formed this huge ball of soggy food and milk and litter and poops. Stew shoved it along with the mop like a hockey puck. We blew it right out the back door and into a garbage can!

  “GOAL!” we cheered.

  Then I went back into the kitchen, and by accident I pointed the leaf blower at the little kitchen table. It blew the pile of paper napkins and a newspaper all over the room. But then I figured something out. If I held the leaf blower just right, I could keep the papers in the air. The cats started jumping and batting at the napkins.

  Stew said, “Keep doing that. They like it!” So I kept blowing the napkins all over. Mrs. Lambert had also asked me to play with the cats a bit so they got some exercise. I guess that counted.

  “And that’s what happened,” Ricky said.

  “Well, I see you’re trying to do the right thing,” said Ricky’s dad. “But you have to make sure this place looks like it did when you got here. You don’t want Mrs. Lambert to be upset.”

  Ricky nodded. “We’ll clean up the napkins and paper and stuff.”

  “Okay,” said his dad. He looked at the leaf blower. “So, this thing cleans well?”

  “Yeah,” said Ricky, “it blew all the mess right out the door.”

  “I’m going to need that,” his dad said as he took the leaf blower from Ricky.

  “What for?” asked Ricky.

  “I promised your mom I would clean the living room before she got home!”

  ICKY RICKY’S POETRY CHILL BREAK #2

  Haiku are usually about nature and beauty. Anything can be beautiful if you look at it the right way.

  Old black banana

  Underneath my bedroom rug

  I smell you at night

  Puddle of thick mud

  I jump in and swim around

  I am late for school

  Moldy egg sandwich

  I made you ten weeks ago

  Forgot to eat you

  A stink is drifting

  Noses burn and eyes water

  Tacos for dinner

  Ricky and Gus stood outside the school with Ms. Jay. Gus was very worried.

  “But why are you wearing a tutu?” she asked.

  “Oh yeah. I’ll get to that,” said Ricky, and he kept talking.…

  Gus and I walked to the bathroom. He was still upset.

  I tried to turn on the water, but the sink handle hardly moved. There’s only one sink in there, so we pushed and pushed the handle really hard. Finally, the handle turned, and the water came shooting out into the sink! It splashed back up and sprayed all over us.

  “Curse you, demon sink!” I shouted. Gus started laughing again. I reached over to turn off the water, but the handle was stuck. The water was going everywhere.

  “We shall conquer you, demon sink!” shouted Gus. “Prepare for battle!” He grabbed the handle, too.

  “This is the end for you!” I said.

  We pulled together and shut it off. We were soaked. And the paint and glitter that had been on our faces and hair had mixed with the water. It was all over the sink and the floor. The marker on our foreheads hadn’t washed off, though.

  We yanked paper towels from the paper towel thing and wiped everything up. We threw the towels away, but there was only a teeny, tiny little garbage can. We filled that up really fast. We had tons of wet, sloppy paper towels left.

  Gus said, “What are we going to do with all these?”

  Then I was like, “Well, we can flush them.” So we finished cleaning ourselves and the sink and the floor. We chucked all the paper towels into the toilet, which, come to think of it, wasn’t a good idea. Because when we flushed it, it gurgled and made all these weird noises.

  “Oh no!” I said. “The demon sink has a demon toilet brother!”

  The water started coming up instead of going down, and it poured over the sides of the toilet.

  I was freaking out. “How do we stop it? How do we stop it?”

  “At home we jiggle the handle!” shouted Gus.

  I jiggled the handle, but the toilet just flushed again.

  “That didn’t work! What now?” I said.

  Then Gus was like, “I don’t know! How about magic?”

  I didn’t know if he was serious or not, but my mom always said I should try new things. So I said, “Okay!”

  I pointed my hands at the toilet like I was casting a spell.

  Gus was laughing really hard. “That was the worst demon toilet spell I ever heard!”

  I was laughing, too. “I didn’t get much time to practice. Can you do better?”

  Gus held his hands up and said:

  “That was terrible!” I said. “Lawn mowing? Really?”

  Gus said, “It was the only rhyme I could think of!”

  We started laughing really hard again, and I slipped and fell into Gus. Then he slipped, too.

  Water, paper towels, and paper towels with paint, glitter, and glue on them were floating all over the floor!

  Gus stopped laughing. He looked really worried again. “Oh no! Now we are really going to get in trouble!”

  Then I heard the best sound in the world. You know how Mr. Brucey, the custodian, is always whistling? Well, I heard him whistling, so I said to Gus, “Stay here! I’m going f
or help!”

  I ran out of the bathroom and shouted, “Help! The toilet is overflowing!”

  Mr. Brucey saw me and grabbed his plunger. We both ran into the bathroom. Gus had climbed up on the sink now.

  Mr. Brucey was like:

  I didn’t know what that meant, but he went right to work on the demon toilet! And you know what? It was amazing. You know how Thor has his hammer? And he can do all sorts of amazing stuff with it?

  Well, Mr. Brucey has a plunger, and he used that plunger in ways I never imagined. He was pushing and pulling and swinging and shoving it back and forth. He even hit the toilet with it and started saying words I didn’t know!

  Finally, there was this big burping sound, and the water stopped. The bathroom was a mess. Our clothes were soaked. Mr. Brucey, who is usually a real nice guy, had sort of a mean look on his face.

  He said, “Boys, go to the principal’s office.”

  “Yikes!” said the mailman as he stumbled out of his mail truck, spilling letters and magazines all over the ground. He was shaking, and his eyes bugged out. Ricky, Gus, and Stew ran up to him.

  “What in the world is going on?” the mailman asked. “And why do you all have fake mustaches?”

  “Because the garage sale was all lady stuff,” said Ricky.

  “What are you talking about, kid?” asked the mailman.

  “Well,” said Ricky, “this is the way it happened.…”

  It all started when Stew and Gus and I went to this garage sale. There were some ladies’ hats, fancy dishes, old cookbooks, and this really big dollhouse. The dollhouse was kind of cool because if you stuck your head in a room, you felt like you were actually there.

  And if someone put their eye to the window from the other side, it looked like a giant was peeking in!

  It was a pretty lame garage sale, though. There really wasn’t anything for boys. But then I was like, “OMG! What is that?” And I pointed at the most amazing thing ever! It was some sort of frozen raccoon!

  “Is that a real raccoon?” asked Gus.

  “It looks real,” said Stew.

  A man came over. It was his garage sale.

  He said, “It is real, but it died. Then it was stuffed and put on that display. That’s called taxidermy.”

  I asked, “Why would you sell such an excellent thing?”

  The man said, “My wife hates it. It freaks her out.”

  Gus asked, “How much is it? We have five dollars.”

  The man said, “It’s twenty dollars.”

  Then a lady came up to the man, and it must have been his wife. She asked if we wanted the raccoon for five dollars, and we were like, “YES!” Then she looked at her husband with the stink eye. That’s when you’re mad at someone, but you don’t want anyone else to know. But we knew.

  Anyway, we bought the raccoon. I picked it up to carry it home. It wasn’t heavy, but it was hard to grip. I asked Stew to take the bottom, and I held the arms, and we kept walking.

  Gus asked, “What are we going to name it?”

  “Baboon,” said Gus.

  Stew and I went, “Huh?”

  “Baboon the Raccoon. It rhymes,” said Gus.

  “Nah,” said Stew. “He needs a regular name, like Bill or Joe.”

  I said, “He needs a really cool name like …”

  Then, I swear, we all said “Moogy” at the same time!

  “Moogy the Raccoon! Awesome!” I said.

  Just then, we heard a snap, and Moogy’s arms fell off.

  “Yikes!”

  “Moogy!”

  “We gotta fix him! Right away.”

  We picked up the pieces and ran home.

  When we got there, Stew and Gus stayed outside, and I grabbed some stuff from my room, like tape and glue. Then I found a hammer and nails in the garage. When I ran back to Stew and Gus, they were cracking up.

  “Look,” said Gus. “Disco Moogy.” He held up Moogy’s arms and made them point up and down. Then Gus was singing:

  I grabbed the arms and said, “Umpire Moogy!”

  Stew grabbed the arms and shouted, “Soldier Moogy!”

  We couldn’t stop laughing. But we realized that while we were playing with Moogy, his hair was starting to fall out. I picked up the tape and said, “Let’s fix him!”

  Stew held the arms in place, and I wrapped the tape around them. They were still wiggly, so I got the hammer. I put some nails in his shoulders to make the arms really tight.

  There was hair all over the sidewalk. I took some tape and pushed the sticky side onto the hair.

  Gus and Stew were like, “What are you doing?”

  “Making a mustache!” I said, and I stuck the tape to my face.

  Gus and Stew did the same. Mine was like a cowboy one. Gus made a real wide one that reached his ears, and Stew made one that’s called a Fu Manchu.

  They were the best raccoon-hair mustaches ever. We were looking at Moogy again, and Gus said, “He looks like he’s driving a car!”

  Gus was right. When we put him back together, we had pointed his arms straight forward.

  “Yeah, he does!” I said, and then I had my best idea of the day. I ran to the garage and got out the soapbox car that I built in Kidscouts. It goes really fast. We put Moogy in the seat. His hands touched the steering wheel perfectly. Then we pushed the car out into the middle of the street. Good thing I live on a hill, because all we had to do was give it a little shove, and it took off! It started flying down the hill.

  We ran after it. I know Moogy wasn’t really steering, but the soapbox car was going perfectly straight. Moogy passed a mom who was walking a little girl in a stroller, and they both started screaming.

  Then he passed a lady who was watering her garden. And she started screaming! It’s like they’d never seen a raccoon driving a soapbox car before.

  And we were saying, “Sorry! Sorry! It’s not a real raccoon!” But I don’t think they cared.

  The car was rolling like mad now. I swear it had to be going one hundred miles per hour! But then it hit a bump and swerved.

  I was screaming, “Moogy! Drive straight! Drive straight!”

  Gus and Stew started laughing really hard. “He can’t hear you!” they said. “He’s just a stuffed raccoon!”

  “Yeah, and a terrible driver!” I said.

  Moogy hit a tree and shot out of the car. He went flying through the air and into the big open door on the mail truck!

  “That’s when you got scared and ran out of the truck and spilled those letters all over the place!” Ricky told the mailman.

  “I didn’t get scared!” said the mailman. “I was surprised. There’s a big difference.” He reached into the truck and handed Moogy back to Ricky.

  “Here, take this thing. It’s disgusting,” said the mailman.

  “Sorry,” said Ricky. He put Moogy down and started picking up the scattered letters. Gus and Stew picked some up, too.

  “Don’t worry about that,” said the mailman. “I’ll do it.”

  “But I feel kinda bad about the mess,” said Ricky. “At least let us give you a hand.”

  “Yaaaah!” screamed the mailman as he looked into his mail satchel. “I think you already did!”

  ICKY RICKY’S POETRY CHILL BREAK #3

  This is a really easy kind of poem. Choose a subject, and use the letters in the word to describe the subject.

  TOE CHEESE

  Thick and warm

  Oily and odd

  Exotic and mysterious

  Clump yanked free

  Handy for crafts

  Elastic-like and moldable

  Entertaining for hours

  Stiff when dried out

  Exhibit my artwork

  BURP

  Bigger is better

  Underrated by adults

  Root beer will help

  Practice makes perfect

  MOOGY

  Mysterious person of mystery

  One day I’d like to meet him

  On
his birthday he had no cake

  Great at having rotten parents

  Yeah! Moogy is the best!

  Ms. Jay shook her head and did a face palm.

  “Please, Ricky,” she said, “just tell me where your clothes are.”

  “Sure …,” said Ricky.

  We went to the principal’s office. But since we were so wet, the secretaries said to go to the nurse. But the nurse didn’t want to deal with us. She said to go to the principal’s office. We went back, and they said to go to the nurse. We went back to the nurse, and she was real grumpy. She took us to the backstage area in the auditorium.

  She said, “Here’s a box of costumes. Find something in it and get out of those wet clothes.” Then she left.

  We took off our wet clothes and dug through the box. Gus pulled out the shirt and pants from a gangster costume and put them on.

  “Great,” he said. “Now I have to get up in front of everybody in these stupid clothes.”

  “They look pretty normal,” I said.

  “Everyone is going to laugh,” said Gus.

  “No, they won’t,” I said. I dug through the box. “This is all that’s left.” I held up a bear costume and ballerina costume.

  “Which is better?” I asked. “The bear or the ballerina?”

  That got Gus laughing again.

  “Put them together,” said Gus.