by Bill Myers
“Great,” I sighed. “I can never get in there now.”
“Maybe you won’t have to,” Wall Street said as we approached the cages.
“What do you mean?”
“Take a look.” She pointed to a baby baboon sitting next to the bars. He was a real cutie with beautiful brown eyes staring out at us. But the eyes weren’t nearly as beautiful as what he was gnawing on. Because there, in his hands, a little gooey from all the chewing was . . .
“The lotto ticket,” Opera gasped.
“Oh, no,” Wall Street groaned.
“What?” I asked.
“He’s chewed off some of it.”
“He what?”
“Take a look at the end. Instead of 333777, it now reads 33377.”
I squinted at the ticket. Sure enough, we only had five of the winning numbers left.
Wall Street sighed sadly. “That means instead of 2.1 gazillion dollars, the ticket is only worth 2.1 million dollars.”
“Great,” I groaned. Still, 2.1 million dollars was better than nothing, which would explain Wall Street’s next little suggestion. “Wally, see if you can reach in there and get it from him.”
“Why me?” I asked.
“Why not?”
“Because.”
“Because why?”
As usual her logic was flawless. I obviously had no other choice. Ever so carefully, I crawled under the iron handrail. Now came the hard part; deciding which arm to live without. If I stuck my right hand into the cage and they ripped it off, I’d have to learn to eat all over again with my left. If they ripped off my left hand, I’d have to learn to catch a baseball all over again with my right. Decisions, decisions. But, since I’d never quite mastered the fine art of catching baseballs (or doing anything else athletic, except switching channels with the remote), I figured there was really no competition.
Slowly, I shoved my left hand between the bars. Then, ever so slowlier (don’t try that grammar at home, kids), I started to reach toward the baby baboon.
“Atta boy,” I whispered gently. “Now, let’s give Uncle Wally that nice ticket.”
Baboon Baby just sat there watching quietly as my hand came closer and closer.
“Come on now,” I whispered. “Here we go . . .”
But, as my hand closed in, he began to pull back.
I stretched a little farther, trying to shove my shoulder through the bars. No luck. Well, not the good kind, anyway. By the looks of things, all I’d done was manage to get myself stuck.
Uh-oh.
I tried pulling out.
Nope. I was definitely caught—squeezed in tighter than Dad trying on his old army uniform.
It was about then that I noticed Monkey Boy had begun watching my fingers. Maybe I could coax him closer. I began to wiggle them.
He leaned in to investigate.
Great, it was working. I wiggled them some more.
He bent down and started sniffing them. I wasn’t sure what he thought they were, maybe midget bananas, or giant peanuts, but he definitely thought they were something to eat.
Which would explain his sudden chomping down on them with his teeth . . .
Which would explain my sudden
“AUUUUUGH!”
Which would explain his leaping back and shrieking—along with all the rest of the monkeys in the cage.
But the monkeys did more than yell. After all, someone was invading their home. It was up to every man, woman, and child to save themselves, which, unfortunately, meant destroying me. Not that they came up and physically hit me. No, this was not a ground war. Instead, it was an all-out air campaign!
FLING! FLING! FLING!
They began throwing everything that wasn’t tied down—rocks, banana peels, even sand . . . and they were pretty good shots.
THUD!— “Ouch!”
SPLAT!— “Oooch!”
SPFFT! (how else would you spell flying sand?)—“Eeech!”
I don’t know how long I stayed stuck like that doing my imitation of a human dartboard, but finally Wall Street and Opera grabbed hold of me and started to pull.
“Heave!” Wall Street shouted.
FLING! FLING! FLING!
“Ho!”
THUD! THUD! THUD!
“Heave!”
FLING! FLING! FLING!
“H—”
K-PLOP!
I popped out of the bars and tumbled to the ground on top of my buddies. A moment later, we were all scrambling for cover behind some nearby bushes.
“Wally?” Opera shouted. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I nodded, a little dazed as I felt for broken bones or misplaced organs. As far as I could tell, everything was all right . . . well, except for my left arm, which now dragged on the ground. (A minor side effect of being stretched two feet longer than the other.)
But Wall Street had more important things on her mind. “How are we going to get that ticket now?” she complained. “We can’t reach it, and we don’t have keys to get inside!”
“They don’t use keys,” I said.
“What?”
“It’s all done electronically, with codes.”
“Then we don’t know the codes,” she said.
Unfortunately, it was about then that my eyes landed on the main office. The one Dad and I had been in just a few hours earlier. The one where Mr. Zookeeper had unlocked the leopard cage by computer.
Now you’d think after all I’d been through, I would have kept my mouth shut. I mean, common sense said, “Admit defeat and go on home,” right? Unfortunately, greed has nothing to do with common sense.
“Come on,” I said, rising to my feet and starting toward the office. “I know how we can get into that cage.”
Chapter 7
Breaking In
I know, breaking into the zookeeper’s office wasn’t like the best thing in the world to be doing; but for the past few hours I hadn’t exactly been going out of my way to be doing any best things. In fact, as the night dragged on, I seemed to be doing more and more of the worst things.
To help ease my conscience, I told myself that if Mr. Zookeeper really wanted to keep people out of his office, he would have locked his windows. (I didn’t bother to ask myself why he locked his doors.)
But since the windows weren’t locked, I managed to climb inside and
K-Thud
fall onto the floor.
“Wally?”
“Coming,” I called as I scampered back to my feet and raced to the door to unlock it.
Wall Street came bursting in, followed by Opera. “Where’s this computer thingamabob?” she asked. “The one that opens the different cages?”
“Right over there.” I pointed to the computer sitting on a small desk under a large bookcase. “And up there on that shelf is the notebook with all the different combinations.”
“Great.” She pulled up a chair, snapped on the computer, and went to work. “I’ll have this puppy up and running in no time.”
And she would, too. After all, computers were how she played the stock market during lunch hour at school. (And you thought I was kidding about her making her first million by fourteen.)
Meanwhile, Opera and I decided we’d kill some time by pursuing our favorite hobbies.
“Think I’ll go check out the snack machines in the hall,” he said.
I nodded and said, “Think I’ll write some more on my superhero story.”
As Opera headed into the hall, I found a tablet and a pencil. Since Wall Street was over on the computer, I figured I’d continue my story the old-fashioned way:
When we last left our handsome hero of horribly horrendous halitosis (that’s a fancy word for bad breath...see how educational these stories can be?) he was about to become a billionaire...in more ways than one. Hiding behind his satellite, the dreaded and dumber-than-dirt Dollar Dude was just turning his green Megabucks beam on him.
No one’s sure what made Dollar Dude so hungry for money. Some say it cam
e when his mother accidentally left the radio turned to the stock reports all day. (Who is this Dow Jones guy, anyway?) Others insist it came after Dollar Dude won big-time in Monopoly then had his heart broken when he found out it wasn’t real money.
Finally, there’s the ever-popular theory that winning the lotto majorly messed up his mind. (Although, of course, we know that could never happen.)
Whatever the case, Dollar Dude loves money more than his own life...or, at least more than B.B. Boy’s own life, which explains why he’s turning the Megabuck beam on him.
The first thing the beam hits is our hero’s feet.
B.B. Boy gasps a good-guy gasp. Already he can see his $250-a-pair high tops starting to turn green. “Please, Dollar Dude,” he cries, “there’s got to be a way to work this out!”
“Words are cheap,” Dude hisses. “Only money talks.” He gives a tiny little laugh over his tiny little joke. “So, just hold still and let me turn you into a magnificent mound of money.”
Desperately, B.B. Boy tries to float to the left, but Dollar Dude keeps the beam trained on him.
Now he tries for the right.
Same beam, same story. No matter which direction our hero floats, Dollar Dude has him covered.
Soon, B.B. Boy feels a strange sensation in his feet and again looks down. Not only have his trendy tennies turned green, but his tender tootsies are turning green, too!
And then (before your tongue even has a chance to recover), his fabulous feet fully feel the ferociously felonious force.
Next come his legs. (Sorry, no L words, I wore myself out on those Ts and Fs.)
Then his waist. (Ditto with the W words.)
The point is B.B. Boy’s body is turning greener than the mold on last month’s spaghetti sauce. (You know, the one in the bowl shoved back in the corner of the fridge that no one ever sees?) Not only are parts of his body turning green, but they are flattening out into pieces of paper with “In God We Trust” printed all over them.
Great gobs of greenbacks! In just a matter of seconds our hero will be nothing but dollar bills. Of course, he’s hoping they’ll be mostly hundreds so he can buy that fancy HD TV he’s had his eye on. Shoot, he’ll even settle for fifties, if there are enough to——
Holy hard cash! What is he saying? The beam is obviously affecting his thinking, too.
Now his chest is turning green!
Now his neck!
In desperation, he turns to Dollar Dude. “Please, help me.”
“No way,” the awesomely awful and absolutely antagonistic anti-hero answers. “Soon you’ll be nothing but a pile of cash. Then I’ll direct my beam back to earth and change it all into money. And that’s one promise you can take to the bank!”
His humor is obviously getting worse.
Unfortunately, so is the situation.
And then, just when you think all is lost——
“Got it!” Wall Street exclaimed just as Opera stepped back into the room.
I looked up from my story to see her gloating over the computer screen.
“You say the codes are in this notebook?” she asked, reaching for the notebook on the shelf above her.
“That’s right,” I nodded. “When the guy wanted to get into the leopard cage, the zookeeper pressed a certain code.”
Wall Street began flipping through the pages. “Then I’m guessing each cage has a code.”
“Be careful,” I said as I crawled out of my chair to join her. “We only want to unlock the monkey cage. We don’t want to unlock any of the—”
That was all I said before I realized my foot had fallen asleep. First came the usual stumbling as I tried to keep my balance.
“Wally, look out!”
Followed by my crashing headfirst into the bookcase above the desk
K-Thud!
Followed by
K-Plop, K-Plop, K-Plop
the books falling onto the desk. Unfortunately, not all fell onto the desk. Quite a few fell on the
K-rash, K-rash, K-rash
computer.
“Wally!!”
No problem, except for the
K-rackle! K-sizzle! K-pop!
of the computer. I tell you, that baby was putting out more sparks than fireworks on the Fourth of July. Even that might have been okay, if I hadn’t tried to hang on to the bookcase to keep my balance.
“Look out!” Wall Street cried. “You’re pulling the whole thing down!”
I looked up just in time to see the entire bookcase, complete with its one thousand books (and its one me) tilt forward and
K-RASH!!
fall on top of the computer.
If it had sparked before, it was really going to town now.
“Look out!” Wall Street cried. “It’s going to blow!”
Suddenly,
K-WOOOSH!
the computer did an Old Faithful routine.
I don’t know how long it lasted. It’s hard to keep track of time when you’re cowering on the floor making deals with God to let you live. But when things finally quieted down, Wall Street was the first to stir. “Is everybody okay?” she asked, coughing and trying to catch her breath. “Opera?”
“Here,” Opera said between coughs.
“Wally?”
“Present,” I gasped.
Slowly, she rose to her feet. “Uh-oh,” was all she said.
I got up and joined her. From what I could tell, I’d pretty much done the usual McDoogle remodeling job . . . which meant the place was pretty much trashed—especially the computer. It lay in a smoldering heap, sparking just a little more for old time’s sake.
“It’ll be okay, won’t it?” I asked. “I mean, I didn’t ruin anything too bad—did I?”
Wall Street said nothing. She was too busy shaking her head and marveling at my handiwork.
So was Opera.
I guess I had my answer. Well, part of it, anyway. Unfortunately, there was more to come.
“Guys?” Wall Street asked. Something outside had caught her attention and she moved to the window. “Isn’t it a little weird for those kangaroos to be hopping around loose like that?”
I felt a knot in my stomach.
Opera joined her at the window and looked out. “It makes perfect sense to me,” he said. The knot loosened slightly, until he finished his sentence . . . “I mean, if you’re being chased by two giraffes and one polar bear, wouldn’t you be hopping?”
Chapter 8
Breaking Out
I threw a look to the computer. By now it had melted down into this steaming mass of tan and yellow. (I’d say it looked exactly like my sister’s famous steamed cauliflower smothered in mustard sauce, but I promised not to make fun of her cooking, so I won’t.)
Suddenly, there was a loud trumpeting, and we all spun toward the window just in time to see a giant elephant lumbering past.
“Wally,” Wall Street cried, “look what you’ve done!”
“Me?” I shouted. “You’re going to blame me for this?”
Wall Street and Opera both turned to me. I knew I had to pass the blame on to someone else. I mean, that’s the first rule of being a kid. And kids all around the world look up to me as their role model (now that’s a scary thought). Desperately, I searched the room until I found the right excuse.
“It’s not me!” I cried, pointing to the smoking pile of molten plastic. “It’s that stupid computer! It’s to blame!”
“Right,” Wall Street said, throwing me a sarcastic look. “It’s all the computer’s fault.”
Meanwhile, Opera had walked over to the desk for a better look. We watched as he stuck his finger into the melted goop, sniffed it, then suddenly stuck it in his mouth.
“OPERA!” I cried.
“Mmm.” His eyes lit up with pleasure. “Tastes just like your sister’s steamed cauliflower in mustard sauce.” (Hey, he said it, not me.)
“What are we going to do?” Wall Street demanded.
“I’m not sure,” I answered.
“We’ve got to do something!”
“How ’bout grabbing some chips,” Opera suggested. “I bet this stuff makes great dip.”
I ignored him and headed for the phone (or what was left of it). “We’ve got to call the police!” I exclaimed. “There’s no other solution.”
Wall Street nodded.
“What’s the number for 911?” I asked.
She gave me one of her famous tell-me-you’re- not-as-dumb-as-you-look looks when, suddenly, the whole office started to rattle.
“What’s that?” I cried,
“Murthmuake!” Opera yelled. (He would have yelled, ‘Earthquake!’ but it’s a little hard to yell with your mouth full of melted plastic.)
Wall Street raced back to the window to see. “No!” she shouted. “It’s a stampede!”
“A what?!”
“There must be a hundred buffalo, and they’re all heading for us!”
By now the entire building was shaking. Bits of plaster began falling from the ceiling, stuff was crashing to the floor.
“Hit the deck!” Wall Street shouted over the roar.
I didn’t have to be told twice. Not that I had much choice. The way the ground shook, I was stumbling around hitting just about everything in the room, including the deck.
Suddenly, a window exploded. I ducked and covered my head. The shaking grew worse. Another window exploded. And another. The buffalo were on all sides of the building. Any minute I expected them to break through the walls. Someone was screaming hysterically. I knew I should shout words of encouragement and comfort to whoever it was . . . until I realized that the whoever it was was me!
I don’t know how long we stayed huddled on the floor like that, but eventually things started to quiet down. Until, finally, it was over.
Slowly, I lifted my head. The good news was, the walls were still standing. The bad news was, they were about the only things standing. Every picture, every book, everything else lay broken and shattered on the floor.
With the greatest effort I staggered to my feet. As far as I could tell most of my bones were unbroken, and the majority of my internal organs were still in place. Wall Street was also getting up, dusting herself off and shaking plaster out of her hair.