by Alan Nolan
‘They’re better dancers than the Clontipper Academy girls anyway,’ said Martha.
‘Yup! And they’ve better personal hygiene too,’ added Abbie.
Bruno got involved in caring for the animals but also spent a lot of time in Daddy Mike’s inventing sheds, now surrounded in the garden by newly made animal barns and shelters. After all the adventures with the Brain Swap 3000, he had decided to become an inventor himself.
Nanny Gigg was happy to make dinners for all of the animals, constantly surprising them with her hare-brained combinations of different foods and her strange choice of hats, and Ajay and Sam were more than happy to feed the animals three times a day – before school, at home time and before bedtime.
Ajay brought Tadhg the Tarantula and the rest of his creepy-crawly menagerie of insects, lizards and snakes around for regular visits, all travelling in boxes with little air holes in the back of his dad’s taxi.
Sam sighed in contentment as she looked in the mirror and brushed her fuzzy red hair. She had always wanted animals but could never afford to have any (other than Rover the goldfish); now she had loads of animals, all happy, cared for and well fed, and she had loads of money to look after them with. She even owned Barker now, the lovely, furry hound whose body she had lived in for four full days.
Sam Hannigan smiled wide at her reflection. She was one lucky dog.
AN EXTRACT FROM CONOR’S CAVEMAN BY ALAN NOLAN
Chapter Five
Ogg’s Duvet Day
Conor woke the next morning to the sound of his alarm clock. When he sleepily opened his eyes, the first thing they focused on was an A4 refill pad page taped to the chair beside his bed. It read: ‘NOT A DREAM!’ His eyes sprung open. OGG!
He jumped out of bed and hastily pulled his trousers on over his pyjama bottoms. He ran down the stairs, two at a time, not worrying about the racket he was making as he knew his mum had already gone to work in the old people’s home. She was always up and out a couple of hours before Conor, leaving him to fend for himself with breakfast and getting to school.
He opened the front door and looked around the side of the house. There was Ogg, sitting outside the kennel, scratching his matted, hairy head. He looked like he had just woken up too. Conor was glad that the thick creeper bush kept Ogg hidden from the view of anyone walking up Clobberstown Crescent.
Ogg looked up. ‘Con! Nor!’ he said and smiled a huge, toothy smile.
So it wasn’t a fluke, thought Conor. He CAN speak. Well, kind of.
Ogg got to his feet, which were huge and just as hairy as his arms. Conor took him by the hand and led him into the house, after first checking that no passersby or nosy neighbours were looking.
Ogg was a bit reluctant to go through the door, but Conor tugged him through. He supposed Ogg probably found the dark, drafty kennel to be more cave-like than this nice, warm house.
‘Right, Ogg,’ said Conor. ‘I have to go to school soon. You’ll have to stay here until I figure out what to do with you.’
He led the caveman into the kitchen. Ogg was so tall he was practically hitting his head off the top of the door frames.
‘Are you hungry?’ Conor asked.
Ogg looked down at him impassively.
Conor pointed to his mouth and added, ‘You know, hungry? Are you starvin’ Marvin? Fancy a bit of brekkie?’
‘Brekk. Eee,’ said Ogg.
‘That’s the spirit!’ cried Conor, amazed at how quickly Ogg was catching on to the language. Conor himself was almost three years old before he spoke his first word, and, being the quiet boy he is, he hadn’t spoken that many since.
Conor looked through the kitchen presses. ‘Okay, we have cornflakes, shredded wheat, Wheetie-Wheels?’ He handed Ogg the packet of Wheetie-Wheels. Ogg shook it. He sniffed it. He stuck out his big tongue and licked it.
‘No!’ said Conor, remembering how Ogg had eaten the chocolate bars, wrappers included. ‘You have to open the packet first!’
Ogg looked at Conor quizzically, then understanding seemed to dawn. He ripped the cardboard packet apart, and Wheetie-Wheels went flying all over the kitchen in a massive explosion of sugary toasted wheat.
Conor sighed. ‘Never mind. Mum won’t be back until tonight, so I’ll clean it up later. How about we cook something?’ He opened the fridge. ‘We have sausages, rashers, fish fingers, a little bit of custard … Do you like eggs, Ogg?’ He held up an egg to Ogg.
Ogg’s face lit up. He held one finger up and put his other hand under the fur he was wearing and rummaged around. After a moment he took out of his furs the biggest egg Conor had ever seen – it was so enormous it made the egg Conor was holding look like a Tic Tac in comparison.
It was a greenish-blue colour and looked like it may have been laid by a prehistoric ostrich or emu. Ogg’s hand, as colossal as it was, could barely hold it. ‘Ogg. Egg. Ogg,’ said Ogg.
Conor shook his head in wonder, shrugged his shoulders and took out the biggest frying pan he could find. Even that didn’t seem big enough for Ogg’s mega-egg, so Conor got up on a chair, climbed onto the kitchen worktop and reached up to take down the wok from the top of the press. His mum had bought it for cooking Chinese food, but she worked so much she never got time to cook any more.
Conor turned on the stove, heated some oil in the wok and, with Ogg’s help, broke the heavy egg into it. The smell from the egg was ATROCIOUS! Conor had to take a kitchen chair and sit down! He pulled the neck of his school jumper over his face and opened up the window. He looked like a bandit from a cowboy movie, but at least it kept the stench out. Ogg looked delighted, standing over the wok as the egg cooked and licking his lips.
Conor wondered what a six-thousand-year-old egg would taste like and then decided he actually never wanted to find out.
When the egg was done, Conor had to use a garden spade to lift it out of the wok – none of the ordinary kitchen implements were big enough to shift it. He put it on a plate, and while he gathered up the huge bits of broken, jagged eggshell and put them in a bin bag, Ogg tucked in. He ate with no knife and fork, using only his bulky, sausage-like fingers. He smacked his lips as he ate, wiping his nose with his hairy forearm.
When he was finished, Ogg sat back happily in the chair and let out the loudest BBuUuUuUuURRrRrRRPpPpPPP! Conor had ever heard. He checked out the front window to make sure nobody else on the road had overheard Ogg’s prodigious wind-breaking, but all out on Clobberstown Crescent – unlike in Conor’s kitchen – was quiet.
Conor checked his watch. Time to go. ‘Okay, Ogg,’ he said, leading Ogg into the living room and sitting him down on the sofa, ‘I have to go to school now. You will have to stay here until I get back.’
Ogg looked up at him from the sofa. ‘BE GOOD,’ said Conor. ‘Don’t answer the door. Don’t answer the phone. Just sit here and watch the telly, and when I’m back I’ll figure out what to do with you.’
Conor switched on the television, which came to life with colours and noises blaring. Ogg jumped up and hid behind the sofa. ‘It’s okay, it’s okay,’ said Conor. ‘It’s only morning TV, but I’m sure you’ll find something you want to watch.’
He went into the kitchen and returned with the half empty, half torn apart packet of Wheetie-Wheels. ‘Eat some of these if you get hungry again,’ said Conor, and Ogg’s head popped up slowly from behind the sofa. He could smell the Wheetie-Wheels.
As soon as Ogg was sitting back on the sofa with the Wheetie-Wheels packet in his lap, Conor grabbed his school bag and ran to the door. ‘See you later, Ogg!’ he whispered, not wanting the neighbours to hear. He closed the door quietly and set off for school, hoping that the six-thousand-year-old caveman he had left sitting on his couch wouldn’t wreck his house.
Conor hadn’t even reached his garden gate when his phone beeped. For one mad second he thought it was Ogg texting him, but he shook that crazy idea away – the caveman seemed to be very good at picking up words, but picking up a mobile phone and sending a text? Conor didn�
��t think so.
He looked at his phone; it was from Charlie.
HOW IS R LITLE FREND? it read.
FINE, he texted back.
He was as economical with the written word as he was with the spoken word. Besides that, it is dangerous to text while you are walking down the street – you could be so distracted you could easily walk out under a bus.
About the Author
Alan Nolan lives and works in Bray, County Wicklow, Ireland. He is co-creator (with Ian Whelan) of Sancho comic which was shortlisted for two Eagle awards, and is the author and illustrator of The Big Break Detectives Casebook, the ‘Murder Can Be Fatal’ series, Fintan’s Fifteen and Conor’s Caveman (The O’Brien Press).
Special thanks to my lovely editors Nicola Reddy and Aoife Walsh, and to Michael O’Brien, Emma Byrne, Ivan O’Brien and all at The O’Brien Press.
And extra-special thanks, as ever, to my long-suffering family, Rachel, Adam, Matthew and Sam.
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Copyright
FOR MY REAL GREAT-GRANNY, NANNY GIGG,
AND FOR GRANDMAS AND GRANDADS EVERYWHERE
This eBook edition first published 2017 by
The O’Brien Press Limited
12 Terenure Road East, Rathgar,
Dublin 6, D06 HD27, Ireland
Tel: +353 1 492 3333
Fax: +353 1 429 2777
First published 2017
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.obrien.ie
ISBN: 978-1-84717-993-7
Copyright for text, illustrations and layout design © Alan Nolan 2017
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilised in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or in any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Editing: The O’Brien Press Limited
Sam Hannigan’s Woof Week receives financial assistance from the Arts Council
