One Big Wacky Family

by Jackie French

‘Oh, Spot!’ said Gunk.

  Gunk thought for a minute then scooted back to his bedroom. He grabbed his pillow and doona then crept out to the laundry. ‘Move over, you dopey dog,’ he said, wrapping himself in his doona and snuggling next to Spot. ‘And don’t dribble on my face, all right? It makes me dream I’m drowning.’

  ‘Spt,’ said Spot happily.

  ‘And wake me up before Dad gets up, too,’ warned Gunk. ‘I don’t want anyone to know I’m sleeping with my dog in the laundry.’

  ‘Spt,’ agreed Spot, settling down beside him, one massive paw across Gunk’s shoulders.

  Ten minutes later both of them were snoring.

  CHAPTER 12

  Disaster

  Gunk slept with Spot in the laundry for the next three weeks, and Spot kept on growing. Now she could no longer get to the bathroom, she did her business neatly under the rose bushes in the front yard. The rose bushes grew nearly as fast as Spot and put out more roses than any bush in the entire neighbourhood.

  There was something weird about Spot’s doggy doos. They were even weirder now that she wass older thought Gunk, as he rolled up his doona to join Spot in the laundry. They didn’t look like any doggy doo-doos he’d ever seen. They were round for a start and they were still green. In fact, they looked like giant green cannon balls. And they didn’t stink either—well, not of doggy doo. They smelt of lettuce and salad dressing with just a touch of garlic.

  Gunk lugged his bedding out to the laundry. But there was no sign of Spot. Gunk crossed to the door and stuck his head out into the night air. ‘Hey, Spot!’ he called softly.

  ‘Spt,’ said Spot sadly. She was sitting by the back door. She’d grown again, Gunk realised. Her head was higher than the doorway now.

  ‘What’s wrong, girl?’ asked Gunk.

  ‘Spt,’ Spot stood up and poked her long neck through the door. Gunk scratched behind her ears. ‘Come on, bedtime, Spot,’ he said.

  ‘Spt,’ said Spot. She inched forward and suddenly Gunk saw what the problem was. ‘You don’t fit!’ he exclaimed. ‘Spot, you have to stop eating so much lettuce! Anyway, Mum is complaining about the greengrocers bills!’

  ‘Spt,’ said Spot sadly.

  ‘Well, you’ll just have to sleep outside. How about under my bedroom window? That way…’

  ‘Spppptttt!’ protested Spot.

  ‘Look don’t cry again!’ cried Gunk, exasperated. ‘Let me think. There has to be some way out of this.’

  ‘Spt?’ asked Spot.

  ‘Look, I’ve got an idea. Follow me—but quietly, okay?’

  ‘Spt,’ agreed Spot.

  Gunk crept out of the laundry and climbed over the fence, trying not to squash the flowers under foot. Spot followed him, grabbing a bite of dahlia as she went.

  Gunk looked at the house next door carefully. Which window was Pete’s? The house had the same design as theirs, so that window was probably her mum’s and that one was the kitchen. Which meant that room was Pete’s or the spare room. Well, he’d just have to cross his fingers.

  Gunk tiptoed over to the window. ‘Hey Pete!’ he called softly. No answer.

  ‘Pete! It’s me! Gunk!’ Still no answer.

  Gunk looked down. In movies there were always a few small rocks around to throw at a girl’s window, but all he could see in the light from the street lamps were the flower beds, all neat and filled with blooms.

  ‘Spt?’ said Spot. She took a bite of geranium.

  ‘No, you dopey dog! We’re not here for a snack! Pete!’ called Gunk more urgently.

  No reply.

  Gunk gazed round again. There had to be something to throw! He dashed over to the fence again and leant over and picked up one of Spot’s droppings. There was no way he’d touch any other doggy doo, but Spot’s doo-doo was different—just like Spot.

  Gunk threw the green ball carefully at the window. Splunk! The dropping splashed open and oozed down the window.

  ‘What…?’ The window opened. Pete’s head appeared. ‘What the heck is going on?’ she demanded.

  ‘Shh!’ said Gunk. ‘I have to talk to you!’

  ‘Talk to me in the morning!’

  ‘No! It’s urgent!’

  Pete looked around. ‘What did you throw at my window, anyway?’

  ‘One of Spot’s droppings. Look Pete, this is really…’

  ‘Doggy doo! You threw doggy doo at my window!’

  ‘It was all I could find!’ called Gunk desperately. ‘Please come outside, Pete.’

  Pete sighed. ‘All right. But it had better be good, okay?’

  The window shut with a bang.

  CHAPTER 13

  The Secret of Pete’s Shed

  Two minutes later Pete appeared around the side of the house, still tying the cord of her dressing gown.

  ‘Okay, what’s so important that you have to throw doggy doo at my window?’ She let out a sigh. ‘Doggy doo! I mean some boys sing outside girls’ windows.’

  ‘But you’re not a girl!’

  ‘Hey, thanks very much,’ said Pete.

  ‘You know what I mean! You’re not that sort of girl. You’re much better!’

  ‘Look buster, you’re making things worse,’ said Pete. ‘You’ve got five seconds then I’m going back inside. Five, four, three, two…’

  ‘It’s Spot!’ cried Gunk.

  ‘Spot!’ Pete looked alarmed. ‘What’s wrong with her? Is she sick?’

  ‘No, nothing like that. But she won’t fit in the laundry any more.’

  Pete inspected Spot, who was munching the geraniums again. ‘I’m not surprised,’ she said. ‘She’s huge! You’d never think she was once a tiny puppy.’

  ‘But she’s still a puppy!’ cried Gunk. ‘I mean almost a puppy. And she’s scared to sleep by herself.’

  ‘What’s she scared about? If any burglar snuck around, Spot could sit on him. Or drown him in dribble.’

  ‘She gets lonely!’ said Gunk. ‘Maybe it’s because there aren’t any other dogs like her. She used to sleep on my bed and then when she couldn’t fit down the corridor, I slept in the laundry with her.’

  ‘You slept in the laundry!’ exclaimed Pete.

  ‘Yes,’ said Gunk miserably. ‘I suppose now you think I’m a real dope.’

  ‘Actually,’ said Pete, ‘my opinion of you has just gone up six thousand per cent. I think it’s heroic sleeping in the laundry with your dog.’

  ‘You do?’ asked Gunk.

  ‘Yep,’ said Pete. ‘But if you’re okay in the laundry, what’s the problem now?’

  ‘Spot won’t fit in the laundry any more! So I wondered…I wondered if we could sleep in your shed. Just for a night or two. Just till I can make a great big doghouse for Spot.’

  ‘No,’ said Pete. She turned to go back inside.

  ‘But…but, please!’ cried Gunk.

  ‘Nope,’ said Pete. She began to tramp back the way she’d come.

  ‘Please! For Spot’s sake!’ cried Gunk desperately. ‘I don’t care what you’ve got in the shed! I won’t tell anyone! I promise.’

  Pete stopped. She turned back. She gazed at Gunk for a minute. ‘You really, really won’t tell?’ she asked.

  ‘Promise faithfully. Hope to die if I tell a lie,’ said Gunk.

  Pete bit her lip. ‘I suppose I can trust a kid who’ll sleep in a laundry just so his mutt doesn’t get lonely,’ she said. ‘But if you say anything to anyone, I’ll…I’ll…I’ll put detergent in your drink bottle so every time you wee, you’ll bubble. How’s that for embarrassing?’

  ‘That’s really cool,’ said Gunk admiringly. ‘I’d never have thought of that.’

  ‘Well, you just remember it,’ said Pete. ‘Wait here. I’ll go and get the key to the shed.’

  A minute later she was back and fitting the key into the lock. The shed door opened with a creak.

  ‘Hey, what have you got in here?’ said Gunk. ‘It…it’s not going to jump out at us, is it?’

  ‘No,’ said Pete.


  Gunk peered into the shadows of the shed. ‘It’s…it’s not alive? Like a vampire bat or…You’re not building a robot that will go insane as soon as you turn it on and tear us into little pieces and…’

  ‘Nope,’ said Pete. She turned on the light.

  Gunk stared. ‘It’s incredible!’ he breathed.

  Pete let out a breath. ‘You like it?’

  ‘It’s wonderful! You really did this all by yourself?’

  ‘Yep,’ said Pete. ‘And remember, it’s a secret. All the other girls at school would think I was really weird if they knew about this.’

  ‘But it’s so cool!’ protested Gunk, gazing round the shed in amazement.

  ‘Yeah. But it’s not a girly thing. It’s not like it’s a Barbie doll collection or posters of some dumb rock singer.’

  ‘I suppose,’ agreed Gunk. To be honest, he didn’t know any other girl who’d made a life-size model of a dinosaur in the shed in her backyard. ‘What sort of dinosaur is it? Were they really that big?’

  ‘It’s a rhoetosaurus,’ said Pete proudly. ‘They were even bigger than this. A grown-up rhoetosaurus would have been fifteen metres long and weighed maybe twenty tonnes. They used to be around in the middle Jurassic, you know, about one hundred and forty-four million years ago. It’s an Australian dinosaur too—maybe it even lived around here way back then!’

  ‘Wow!’ said Gunk, staring at the rhoetosaurus. ‘What did you make it out of?’

  ‘The frame’s made of wire,’ said Pete proudly. ‘Then I stretched aluminium foil over it to look like skin.’

  ‘Did dinosaurs really have silver skin?’

  ‘Well, they might have,’ said Pete defensively. ‘The only bits of rhoetosaurus anyone has seen are fossils—minerals sort of oozed into the bones and made them harder and denser so they lasted one hundred and forty-four million years. Rhoetosauruses could have had any sort of skin for all we know. But foil was all I could get.’

  ‘I think it’s a fantastic rhoetosaurus,’ said Gunk honestly. ‘We’ll be really careful with it, I promise. Spot might be big but she can be very gentle. Can’t you Spot?’

  ‘Spt,’ agreed Spot, moving into the light of the shed. She looked at the rhoetosaurus curiously. She blinked. Then slowly, very slowly, she walked up to it.

  ‘Spt?’ she asked it.

  Gunk laughed. ‘It’s not real, you dopey dog!’ he exclaimed. ‘It’s just a model!’

  ‘Spt,’ said Spot excitedly. She butted the rhoetosaurus gently.

  ‘She thinks it’s alive,’ said Gunk. ‘I suppose because it looks so much like her.’ Gunk broke off. He stared at Spot.

  Pete stared at Spot too. Then she looked at the rhoetosaurus, then back at Spot. ‘Oh my cats and little kittens,’ she whispered. ‘Do you see what I see?’

  ‘I think so,’ said Gunk shakily. ‘Spot looks just like the rhoetosaurus!’

  ‘Your dog’s a dinosaur!’ whispered Pete.

  CHAPTER 14

  A Dinosaur

  ‘Spt?’ inquired Spot, looking hopefully up at the rhoetosaurus as though she expected it to bend down and say ‘hi’.

  Pete and Gunk stared at her. ‘How could I have missed it?’ breathed Pete. ‘A genuine dinosaur living right next door!’

  ‘It’s because you didn’t expect it. No one could expect it,’ stammered Gunk. ‘I mean, it’s impossible!’

  ‘But it’s true!’ cried Pete. ‘How can it be true?’

  Gunk shook his head dazedly. ‘No, it is impossible,’ he said.

  ‘Spot just looks like a rhoetosaurus. Just because she’s got the same long neck and fat tail and thick legs and no ears and funny nose and…’ His voice died away as Spot rubbed her face back and forth against the fake rhoetosaurus’s side. ‘She thinks it’s her mum,’ he whispered. ‘Oh, Spot.’

  ‘Maybe…maybe a rhoetosaurus egg went into suspended animation,’ suggested Pete. ‘Or fell through a time warp. Hey, did you know birds are descended from dinosaurs? Maybe Spot is a throwback!’

  ‘You mean a bird laid an egg and Spot hatched out?’ said Gunk disbelievingly.

  ‘Well, have you got a better idea?’ demanded Pete.

  ‘No,’ admitted Gunk.

  ‘Anyway, rhoetosauruses didn’t have the same skeletons as the dinosaur birds,’ said Pete, growing more and more enthusiastic. ‘You see some dinosaurs had hips like birds and some had hips like…’

  ‘Er, excuse me,’ said Gunk politely, ‘but this isn’t really the time for a lecture on dinosaurs.’

  Pete blushed. ‘I’m always doing that,’ she admitted. ‘People think I’m weird to go on about dinosaurs so much, so I just shut up and think about them instead. Oh, Spot, I wish you could talk. Then you could tell us how you got here!’

  ‘Spt,’ said Spot.

  ‘Talk English, I mean,’ amended Pete.

  ‘Spt, spt,’ said Spot.

  ‘I don’t suppose we’ll ever know how Spot got here,’ said Pete. ‘Even if Spot could speak English, she probably doesn’t know what happened to her when she was just an egg. I mean you can’t remember when you were a tiny baby, can you?’

  ‘No,’ said Gunk.

  ‘Anyway, it doesn’t matter how she got here,’ said Pete. ‘The question is what do we do with her now?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Gunk stared. ‘You said Spot can sleep in the shed and…’

  ‘Not where is she going to sleep, you cucumber brain!’ interrupted Pete. ‘How do we stop other people finding out she’s a dinosaur? Spot looked like a dog when she was small and furry—well, an odd dog anyway. But now she’s bigger and she’s going bald someone is sure to notice soon!’

  ‘Why does it matter if people find out?’ demanded Gunk. It might be fun to have everyone know he had a dinosaur, he decided.

  ‘Because if people find out you have a dinosaur living with you, they’ll take Spot away to a zoo or something,’ said Pete patiently. ‘Or lots of scientists will want to study her, and people will want to make movies of her.’

  ‘You mean I’d never see her?’ cried Gunk.

  ‘Well, maybe they’d let you visit once a month,’ said Pete.

  ‘But that’s horrible! And Spot would hate it too! She doesn’t even like to sleep by herself! She’d be really unhappy in a…a dinosaur pen!’

  He stared at Pete in despair. ‘What can we do?’

  Pete grinned. ‘Good thing you’ve got an incredibly intelligent next-door neighbour,’ she said, ‘because I’ve got an idea.’

  CHAPTER 15

  Pete is Brilliant

  ‘What idea?’ demanded Gunk.

  ‘Simple,’ said Pete. ‘We make everyone think Spot is a dog!’

  ‘But they already think she’s a dog!’ Gunk pointed out.

  ‘Yes, but we’ll teach her to be even more dog-like!’ declared Pete. ‘That way no one will notice she’s looking more and more like a dinosaur!’

  ‘How?’ demanded Gunk.

  ‘Well, we can teach her to bark for one thing. And disguise her a bit. Stick on some hair and maybe false ears…oh, we can do lots of things!’ Pete’s voice was bright with excitement. ‘Imagine,’ she breathed, ‘after all these years of studying dinosaurs, making model dinosaurs, dreaming about dinosaurs, I’ve actually got a real one in my shed!’

  ‘Spt,’ said Spot. She yawned and snuggled down on a pile of sacks by the rhoetosaurus. Ten seconds later she was asleep, the sacks slowly dampening with her dribble.

  Gunk stared at her. ‘But Spot never sleeps by herself!’ he protested.

  ‘She’s got another rhoetosaurus now for company,’ said Pete gently. ‘Look, go and get some sleep. I will too. We’ve got a big day tomorrow!’

  Gunk woke early the next morning. It had been a bit difficult to get to sleep without Spot, but at least she was happy with her dinosaur companion.

  Had last night really happened? he wondered. Was Spot really a dinosaur? It seemed too incredible to believe in daylight.

  Gunk threw his c
lothes on and dashed outside, jumped over the fence and opened the shed door. Pete was already there and so was Spot.

  ‘Hi,’ said Pete, looking up from a big pile of dried grass stuff. ‘I thought I’d bring Spot some breakfast.’

  ‘Spot has lettuce salad for breakfast,’ objected Gunk. It somehow seemed wrong for someone else to feed his dog, er, dinosaur.

  ‘I know. But I thought Spot might like to try some other stuff.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Gunk pointed to the dried grass stuff.

  ‘It’s lucerne hay. Mum uses it to mulch the garden. Spot loves it.’

  ‘Won’t your mum need it for the garden?’

  ‘No,’ said Pete. ‘Spot ate the garden before I got up.’

  ‘Spt,’ said Spot. She burped guiltily.

  Gunk bit his lip. ‘I’m sorry! She doesn’t eat things if I tell her not to. But I just didn’t think of telling her not to eat your garden last night.’

  ‘Forget it!’ said Pete dismissively. ‘It’ll grow again. Anyway, it’ll give Mum more time for other things, you know—like hassling me and other stuff mums like. Spot likes eating straw brooms too. You know, I had an idea!’

  ‘Another one?’ said Gunk.

  ‘Yep. Someone’s going to get suspicious if your mum keeps buying sackfuls of lettuces all the time. I mean, someone only has to say, “Why are you buying two tonnes of lettuce every week,” and your mum answers “Gunk’s dog eats them,” and well, they’ll get really curious.’

  ‘So,’ continued Pete, ‘why don’t we take it in turns to take Spot on a walk after dark when no one’s looking?’

  ‘What good will that do?’ demanded Gunk. Somehow his dog, er, dinosaur seemed to be turning into Pete’s dinosaur too.

  ‘Spot can eat all sorts of stuff on the way. You know, the rose garden in the park and the flowerbeds outside the Town Hall.’