‘So am I,’ said Mum.
‘And me,’ said Charm.
Limpy gave them all a grateful look.
‘Limpy,’ said Charm. ‘The car’s still ages away. Breathe.’
Limpy took a breath.
And held it again.
The car wasn’t that far away. He could see its headlights getting closer and closer.
For the millionth time, Limpy peered around at all the cane toads on the highway to make sure every single one of them had a Santa hat on his or her head.
They did.
Limpy tried to feel relaxed.
It was hard. Some of the toads weren’t even looking at the car. They were busy looking at the flying insects they were having for dinner. The dinners were complaining as usual.
‘Christmas spirit?’ the flying insects were saying, peering out of various mouths at various Santa hats. ‘Don’t make us laugh.’
The headlights were very close now.
Please work, Limpy pleaded silently.
‘It’d better work,’ muttered Goliath, adjusting his Santa hat and gripping his stick, ‘or I’m gunna start stabbing.’
Suddenly the cane toads on the highway were completely lit up in the glare from the headlights. Limpy knew the driver could see them, and their Santa hats.
He waited for the driver to feel a surge of Christmas peace and goodwill.
To swerve.
To not drive over any cane toads.
It didn’t happen.
The driver swerved, but directly towards a group of rellies.
‘Look out,’ screamed Limpy.
Cane toads scattered in all directions. Limpy grabbed Mum and Dad and dragged them away from the car. He saw Goliath with Charm on his shoulders, pushing toads to safety with one hand and hurling his stick at the car with the other.
The car hissed past and roared away into the night.
‘Where’s your Christmas spirit, you bully,’ yelled Charm at the disappearing rear lights.
‘Mongrel,’ yelled Goliath.
Limpy looked fearfully at the surface of the highway, wondering how many patches of squashed rellie he’d see.
It was a miracle.
There weren’t any.
But Limpy knew it wasn’t because of the Santa hats. It was just luck.
He put his head in his hands.
The Santa hats hadn’t worked.
Why?
At dawn, after Limpy wearily finished his lookout shift on the ant hill, he went to see the Christmas beetle, hoping for an explanation.
The Christmas beetle had one.
‘Christmas is over, dopey.’
Limpy didn’t understand.
‘But it’s still the Christmas holiday period,’ he said.
He waited while the Christmas beetle did some exasperated head-shaking and eye-rolling.
‘What did you expect?’ said the Christmas beetle. ‘Christmas cheer till August? Forget it. Humans are busy. They’ve got Easter and Mothers Day and Halloween to think about. Those hats’ll protect you for one day a year, two tops.’
Later, as Limpy flopped onto his bed, Charm came in with another explanation.
She was dragging a newspaper that had been left at a picnic site that day.
Limpy stared at the page she was pointing to.
He couldn’t understand the headline, or the columns of ant yoga, but from the photo he could tell it was a report about the shopping mall fire. Limpy knew what human newspapers were like, so he guessed the report had an angry theory about who or what had started the fire.
The photo showed the wrecked and burning Christmas tree.
The angry and outraged shoppers.
And in the middle of it all, staring out of the photo, bits of a Christmas angel on his head, was Goliath.
‘Oh no,’ moaned Limpy. ‘They know we were involved.’
Suddenly it all seemed hopeless. All the risks, all the danger, all the effort he and Goliath had put into their quest, and now humans hated cane toads even more than before.
Accidently burn down one Christmas tree, thought Limpy bitterly, and they never forgive you.
‘You tried,’ whispered Charm, pressing her little face against his tummy.
‘We did,’ said Limpy miserably. ‘But it was a complete waste of time.’
The next afternoon, while Limpy was sitting by the swamp gazing sadly into the water, Charm appeared, her little warts glowing with excitement.
‘Limpy,’ she said. ‘Santa’s come to see you.’
Limpy stared at her.
Then he jumped up and hopped after her towards the highway.
Goliath was already there, in the long grass next to the road, with something that made Limpy’s warts perk up with pleasure.
Stan’s ute, and Stan, and the puppy.
‘G’day,’ said a familiar voice.
It was the centipede, perched on the edge of the ute with its two beetle friends.
‘We did another performance of the highway swerving demonstration this morning,’ said the centipede. ‘This time Stan got it.’
Stan was grinning, happier than Limpy had ever seen him.
Limpy gave the centipede a grateful hug, even though he knew Goliath didn’t like cane toads showing their feelings in front of insects. Then he saw Goliath was giving the two beetles a hug.
Stan handed round some chicken nuggets.
‘Thanks Uncle Limpy and Uncle Goliath,’ said the puppy, licking them both on the warts. ‘You were right, I really like Uncle Fuzzy Face.’
Limpy gave the puppy a stern look.
‘That’s just a name Uncle Goliath made up,’ said Limpy. ‘His real name is Uncle Stan.’
‘I like that better,’ said the puppy. ‘Thanks.’
After a while, Limpy saw Stan looking at his watch, which Limpy guessed was a thing humans did when they were worried about being late for visiting times at cemeteries.
Limpy and Goliath said goodbye to the centipede and the beetles and the puppy.
Saying goodbye to Stan was harder.
Limpy could see that Stan had lots of things he wanted to say. Limpy had a few too, mostly thanking Stan for devoting his life to fighting bushfires, and giving him some more sympathy about his wife, and inviting Stan to meet Limpy’s wife once Limpy had met her himself.
But of course none of those things could be said.
It didn’t matter.
When Stan crouched and gently shook Limpy and Goliath by the hand, Limpy could tell from Stan’s warm smile that language wasn’t really needed.
And when Stan lifted Uncle Vasco from the cabin of the ute and laid him gently on the grass in front of Limpy and Goliath, Limpy knew what Stan’s eyes were saying.
Thank you.
Stan got back into the ute and started it up.
Limpy waved while Stan reversed onto the highway. Stan and the puppy and the insects waved back.
As the ute drove off, Limpy had a lot of sad goodbye feelings, but he also had a very happy thought.
The mission hadn’t been a complete waste of time after all.
Limpy lay in a lovely cool mud hole and gazed up at the beautiful night sky.
A shooting star grazed the twinkling heavens.
Or perhaps it wasn’t a shooting star.
‘I wonder if that’s Santa?’ said Limpy. ‘On his way home.’
Goliath grunted. ‘I don’t believe in Santa any more,’ he muttered. ‘Or his ute.’
‘I do,’ said Charm. ‘Look, if you squint a bit, you can see the reindeer.’
The three of them lay in comfortable silence for a while.
Then Limpy gave a big sigh.
‘Oh Limpy,’ said Charm. ‘You’re not still feeling bad about the quest, are you? You shouldn’t. You did your best.’
‘We did better than our best,’ said Goliath.
‘I’m not feeling bad,’ said Limpy. ‘I’m sighing because I’m feeling so happy.’
And he was.
; As he gazed up at the stars, Limpy thought about what an interesting Christmas it had been, full of surprises. A Santa who turned out to be a firefighter. An automatic lint-remover that turned out to be a lawnmower. A killer dog who turned out to be a big help.
And even though the quest wasn’t a total success, thought Limpy, there’ll probably be others, and one of them might be.
That thought made him happy.
So did something else.
Charm gave Limpy a muddy hug. Goliath gave him a muddy slug cutlet. Limpy gazed across the swamp to where Mum and Dad were relaxing in their own mud hole.
Tonight his family was safe and he was home with them.
What better Christmas present could you ask for than that?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Morris Gleitzman grew up in England and came to Australia when he was sixteen.
He was a frozen-chicken thawer, sugar-mill rolling-stock unhooker, fashion-industry trainee, student, department-store Santa, TV producer, newspaper columnist and screenwriter. Then he had a wonderful experience. He wrote a novel for young people. Now he’s one of Australia’s most popular children’s authors.
Toad Surprise is his twenty-eighth book.
Visit Morris at his website:
morrisgleitzman.com
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