“Will yourses coming with mine?” Megabat asked Daniel and Irwin. “To helping warn Babybat and Batzilla?”
“Of course!” Daniel said. “Doing stuff together always makes it easier.”
“Not to mention safer,” Irwin said. “You really shouldn’t walk alone in the woods, especially at night.”
So they set off together.
As they made their way down the path, Megabat rode on Daniel’s shoulder and Irwin shone the light up ahead.
“Ah!” Daniel almost tripped where the ground was uneven. “What was that? A snake?!”
Megabat clutched tightly to his friend’s shirt, but when Irwin pointed the light down they could see it clearly.
Just a big tree root!
“Nicely to meet yours, tree root!” Megabat said, and he felt his fear dissolve a little.
On they went. They spotted some moths, a flying squirrel and a ring-eyed raccoon. “Nicely to meet yours, foresty friends!” Megabat called into the darkness.
The terrain got rockier and a little steeper. “We’re almost at the edge of the campgrounds now,” Irwin said. “It’s where we’ll find the cave.”
And not a minute later—
“Ummm…Wow,” Daniel said in a shaky voice.
It was easy to see how Devil’s Mouth got its name. The yawning opening of the cave looked monstrous in the darkness.
“You know,” Irwin said, “maybe we shouldn’t go in after all. We can always come back and warn the bats tomorrow…maybe in the daylight.”
But Megabat knew it would be too late by sunrise. If Babybat and Batzilla returned to their roost at the cabin, they’d surely be captured. And yes, this cave was MUCH scarier than bunny rabbits, a deer, a tree root, some moths, a flying squirrel and a raccoon combined…but now that Megabat had said hello to all those things, perhaps he was just brave enough.
“Waiting here.” Megabat’s wings shook as he flew toward the mouth of the cave. He stopped at the edge. For a moment, he thought of turning back, but then, gathering all his courage, “Hello?” he said, ever so softly. “Nicely to meet yours.”
An answer came from inside the cave. “Hello?…Nicely to meet yours.”
Megabat jumped back. Was it a ghost? Perhaps. But, if so, it was quite polite. “Huh!?” he said.
“Huh!?” the ghost answered. It sounded just as uncertain about him as he felt about it.
“Mine won’t hurting yours,” Megabat said, a little louder.
“Mine won’t hurting yours. Mine won’t hurting yours,” the voice answered.
“Daniel. Irwin. Coming here. The cave ghost is being most friendly!”
Irwin approached with the flashlight. Megabat could see the gleam of his braces as he smiled. “That’s not a ghost, it’s an echo,” he explained. “See? Echo! Echo!” he yelled into the cave.
“Echo! Echo!” the cave called back.
Suddenly, a high-pitched screech filled the night. Both boys jumped back. Only Megabat wasn’t scared. He recognized the shrill song. In fact, it was so ear-splittingly awful that he’d know it anywhere.
“Babybat!” he called, and he launched himself into the cave.
As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, Megabat flew in circles, taking it all in. A little stream burbled along the ground and the walls shimmered with bits of crystal. What’s more, a whole colony of bats was swooping around joyfully, playing what looked like a big game of tag.
“They’re catching bugs,” said Daniel, who’d followed Megabat inside.
“Mosquitoes, to be exact,” Irwin added, swatting one on his arm. “The worst kind of bugs. That’s why we hardly ever get bitten at camp!”
Was this the place Megabat had been so worried about? It was wondrous! Magical! The best, best fun! He went deeper into the cave and a few wild bats held out their wingtips for high fives as he passed.
“Babybat!”
“Babybat! Babybat! Babybat!”
He swooped through the echoes and around the shimmery bits of rock that hung from the cave’s roof.
“Where is yours?”
“Where is yours? Where is yours? Where is yours?”
Aha! There she was up ahead, singing her dreadful song.
“Mine’s gots to warn yours,” he called out. But he knew there was no real rush now. He could tell her in a little while.
Her eyes lit up as she swooped gleefully toward him, overjoyed that he’d finally come out to play.
THE FINAL PRANK
It was Daniel who came up with the ultimate prank on the counselors.
They planned it for the very last campfire of the week. Megabat wriggled in anticipation all through the singing of the silly songs, but finally, it was time.
“Okay, guys,” Fiona said. “Get ready for the last ghost story of the week. It’s the scariest one yet.”
Irwin raised his hand. “Actually, if the counselors don’t mind, Cabin 8 wants to tell a story tonight.”
Fiona looked to Vijay, who glanced at the other counselors. They all shrugged. “Fine with us,” Vijay said.
Daniel stood up. He looked around the circle at the gathered kids and counselors, then, even though his voice shook a little at first, he spoke loud and clear. “This is a true story,” he said. “In fact…” He paused ominously. “It’s happening at this very campfire…tonight.”
That got the counselors’ attention.
“Rumor has it there are some counselors here,” Daniel went on, “who once tried to trap bats.”
Vijay and Fiona exchanged a nervous, puzzled glance.
“And when the bats of Camp Wildwood heard about it, well, they weren’t too happy. So they started to beat their wings.”
The twins stood up. They waved their arms slowly for an especially spooky effect. “FLAP. FLAP. FLAP,” they said together.
“Real cute, guys,” Fiona said.
“FLAP. FLAP. FLAP.” The twins said it louder this time.
“You’re gonna have to try harder than that if you want to scare us,” Vijay added.
“In fact,” Daniel went on, “the bats were so angry that they decided to fly out to the campfire.”
Irwin stood up and shone his flashlight around. There was nothing…just trees and shadows. At first the counselors looked smug, but the second Irwin switched off the flashlight, a tall counselor from Cabin 4 jumped so suddenly that the marshmallow he’d been roasting fell into the fire.
Vijay followed his gaze. “AHHHHHH!” he screamed. Eerie eyeballs were glowing in the darkness all around them. A bunch of the other kids, who’d been warned that the story was a practical joke, started laughing.
The kids from Cabin 8 had used up the entire pack of stickers from Daniel and Megabat’s care package. They’d stuck them to the trees earlier in the evening. The stickers had gone unnoticed before. But thanks to the light from Irwin’s flashlight, they were shining bright.
Daniel continued. “Like I was saying, the bats came to the campfire, flapping their powerful wings.”
Right on cue, there was a terrific noise up above.
Megabat glanced up just in time to see Babybat leading the way as the bat colony from the cave flew overhead. All together, their wings made such a strong breeze that the fire’s flames flickered. This time a few kids screamed too, and Fiona threw her hands up over her head and ducked. “What the heck?!”
“And then…,” Daniel continued, “one of them spoke in a thundering voice.”
Irwin turned on his flashlight again. That was when Batzilla landed in front of its beam. She was huge to begin with, but thanks to the way the flashlight magnified her, her shadow loomed as tall as the trees.
Daniel nodded at Megabat. Here was his big moment! He took off into the treetops, chose a perch where he was virtually unspottable, and used his loudest, spookiest voice.
“Mine is Batzill…aaaaaaaah! BATZILL-AHHHHHHHHH!” he cried. “And mine is here to tell yourses that batses are friendses!”
“Okay, enough guys!” Vijay said. “Where’s that voice coming from?”
“SHUSHING!” Megabat shouted. “Be listening to Batzilla!”
Vijay’s mouth dropped open, but he stopped talking.
“Batses are friendses,” Megabat repeated. “So do not be trapping batses or chasing thems away. For fact, batses are an important part of the egosystem.”
“Ecosystem,” Daniel corrected in a loud whisper, but Megabat was on a roll.
“Theys is eating pesty bugses. Suchly as munkskitos and critterpillars.”
Megabat made a face. Personally, he’d never understand the appeal.
“Mine is Batzill…ahhhhhhhh!” he yelled. “BATZILLA!”
At that, the real Batzilla flapped her huge wings once, twice, and took off into the night sky. For a moment, there was silence except for a few of the counselors, who were clutching each other tight and breathing heavily. A bunch of girls from Cabin 3 began to roar with laughter.
“If you could see your faces right now,” one of them said.
“Very funny. Okay, guys,” Fiona said after she’d caught her breath. “That was pretty good.”
“Seriously. How’d you do it?” Vijay asked.
“Do what?” Daniel shrugged.
“It wasn’t us,” Gus added.
“Yeah. It was Batzilla and her friends,” Rusty finished.
“Right,” Vijay said with a small smile, but his voice was a little warbly. “Nice try. Super-creative. But you didn’t actually scare us. Not one bit.”
* * *
Only, the very next morning, the campers were awoken by hammering.
Megabat opened his eyes groggily.
“What’s going on?” Irwin said.
“I don’t know,” Gus answered. “But whatever it is, it’s annoying.”
The four boys and one bat made their way to the porch. There, in the clearing between the cabins, the counselors were hard at work building something that looked like a big birdhouse.
“It’s a bat box,” Vijay explained as the other counselors hoisted it up on a long pole. “We can’t let bats roost in our cabins…but up to one hundred bats can live in one of these. Not that we believe in Batzilla,” he said quickly. “But she made some pretty decent points about the ecosystem, and we all hate mosquitoes, so…”
The rest of the morning passed quickly, between eating a last waffle breakfast, packing their things and saying goodbye to their new friends.
“Hurry up, guys,” Vijay said. “The bus’ll be here any minute.”
Daniel already had his bag over one shoulder, but Megabat was still sitting in the corner. “What’s wrong?” Daniel asked. “Aren’t you excited to see Birdgirl, Priscilla and Talia again?”
“Undoubtedly,” Megabat said sadly. “Ours didn’t even have time to writes thems letters! Mine muchly wants to go home. But now it’s being daylight, and mine forgotted say farewells to Babybat.”
“It’s okay,” Daniel said. “I have an idea for how you can use the stamps from the care package when we get home.” He looked out the window and laughed, “Plus, I think Babybat said farewell to you. Come see.”
Megabat flew into Daniel’s pocket and they went out together. There, pulling into the clearing, was the school bus…but it wasn’t just yellow anymore. It was wrapped in a criss-cross of colorful strings. They draped across the windows and dangled from the stop sign.
“I parked it in the lot last night,” the driver said to Vijay as he got out. “I don’t know what happened.”
Megabat grinned. “Babybat maked mine the biggest, bussiest friendship bracelet ever!”
The driver had to clear off some of the string before the kids could load their luggage and climb aboard, but when it was Daniel’s turn to board, the driver stopped him. “Well,” he said, “I’m waiting for my report. Did you have enough fun to earn this?” He tapped the Ewok’s bobblehead.
“I actually had a lot more than ten kinds of fun,” Daniel answered. But he and Megabat had already decided what to do—difficult as it was for Megabat, who really did love that bobblehead. “Keep it though,” Daniel went on. “You can give it to the next kid who’s scared to go to camp. Because I already know I’m coming back next year.”
The bus driver tipped his cap. Then Daniel and Megabat joined the busload of stinky, sleepy, sun-kissed campers headed home from the adventure of a livingtime.
A Little Bit about Bats
Megabat is based on a real kind of fruit bat (or megabat) called the lesser short-nosed fruit bat. These bats are tiny, weighing between 21 and 32 grams—which is about as heavy as an AA battery, or a mouse—and live in South and Southeast Asia and Indonesia (Borneo), usually in rainforests, near gardens, near vegetation or on beaches.
Of course, even though Megabat is based on a real kind of bat, he’s also made up. I don’t need to tell you that actual bats can’t talk…not even in the funny way that Megabat talks! But it might be worth mentioning that bats don’t make good pets, either.
Bats are amazing creatures and an important part of our ecosystem. North-American bats eat insects, and they’re rarely dangerous to humans. So if you see a bat in the wild it’s okay to observe it from a distance, but don’t try to touch it or trap it!
The bat boxes that Fiona and Vijay put up are real—many people put bat boxes on their property, and they really do hold hundreds of bats! Bats keep mosquitoes and other pests away, and having a bat box gives bats a safe place to roost—instead of attics, barns and camp cabin ceilings!
Acknowledgments
Putting your heart on the page (even in the form of a talking fruit bat) can be a scary thing, but having great people in your corner makes all the difference. First off, thanks to the writers I’ve been lucky enough to connect with through the Canadian kid-lit community, including the members of TorKidLit and my Kitchener-Waterloo area writers’ group. Children’s writers cheer each other on like no one I’ve ever met before, and it helps us all to keep writing bravely in a business that can sometimes be as nerve-racking as it is richly rewarding.
Thanks also to the great folks at Tundra Books, where I know that Megabat and I are always in safe hands. These include Sam Swenson, Sam Devotta and many others who help to edit, design, promote and distribute Megabat. As always thank you also to my agent, the wonderful Amy Tompkins, and to Kass Reich who brings the story to life with her drawings in all the most adorable ways.
And of course, gratitude to my kids for putting up with a mom who’s always talking bat…and to my husband for enduring the camp pranks I tested out on him for this book. (Sorry-not-sorry about the soft-serve ice cream that was actually mayo with sprinkles and chocolate sauce.) Brent, Grace and Elliot, mine loves yours bigly forevers and evers and muchly mores evers.
ANNA HUMPHREY has worked in marketing for a poetry organization, in communications for the Girl Guides of Canada, as an editor for a webzine, as an intern at a decorating magazine and for the government. None of those was quite right, so she started her own freelance writing and editing business on top of writing for kids and teens. She lives in a big, old brick house in Kitchener, Ontario, with her husband and two kids and no bats. Yet.
KASS REICH was born in Montreal, Quebec. She works as an artist and educator and has spent the majority of the last decade traveling and living abroad. She now finds herself back in Canada, but this time in Toronto. Kass loves illustrating books for all ages, like Carson Crosses Canada, Sergeant Billy and Hamsters Holding Hands.
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Megabat Is a Fraidybat Page 5
