Ms. Krup Cracks Me Up!

by Dan Gutman

  No, it wasn’t another candy machine.

  It was the missing Tyrannosaurus rex!

  “Aha!” said Ms. Krup. “There he is! Rexy, you are a naughty boy!”

  “WOW!” we all said, which is “MOM” upside-down.

  Rexy was AMAZING. Ms. Krup told us that Tyrannosaurus rex means “tyrant lizard king.” She also told us that Rexy is twenty feet tall, but his arms are shorter than ours. And he only has two fingers on each hand.

  “Look at his teeth!” said Ryan.

  “They could crunch through bone,” Ms. Krup told us.

  “That thing would bite your head off in a minute,” I said.

  “Hey,” Ryan said, “if T. rex and Giganotosaurus got into a fight, who do you think would win?”

  “Giganotosaurus would kick T. rex ’s butt,” said Michael.

  “No way,” said Neil. “T. rex would kick Giganotosaurus’s butt.”

  “Neither of you is right,” Ms. Krup said. “These two meat eaters would never fight. They lived millions of years apart.”

  “I still say T. rex would kick his butt,” said Neil the nude kid.

  There was a model T. rex skull that we could look at close-up. I put my head in its mouth, and Ryan took a picture with his camera. It was a real Kodak moment. Then all the other copycats put their heads in T. rex ’s mouth for the fun of it. Well, except for Emily, who was too scared.

  The room was called the Hall of Dinosaurs. We got to see a stegosaurus and a triceratops, and some other dinosaurs too. We learned all kinds of cool stuff. Did you know that some dinosaurs swallowed rocks to break up the food in their stomach? Yuck!

  We saw real dinosaur eggs and footprints too. Ms. Krup showed us how to make fossil rubbings that we could take home. She let us hunt for dinosaur bones in a big sandbox, but I didn’t find any. Then she gave us dinosaur-shaped graham crackers for a snack.

  “Dinosaurs are the coolest animals in the history of the world,” I told everybody. “And we got to see them dead and in person.”

  “Kids can learn a lot from dead animals,” Ms. Krup said. “But we also have live animals at the museum.”

  “Live animals?!” Emily said, looking all scared.

  “Sure,” said Ms. Krup. “Follow me!”*

  7

  It’s Alive!

  Ms. Krup led us to a room with a sign over the door that said IT’S ALIVE! We went inside and saw lots of animals in cages: snakes, tortoises, South American poison dart frogs, and a blue-tongued skink. They were awesome.

  “These animal friends help us teach people about conservation and the environment,” Ms. Krup told us. “They also help us learn to respect wildlife.”

  Ms. Krup led us into another room that was really cool because there were butterflies all over the place.

  “Look! A Giant Swallowtail!” Ms. Krup said. “And there’s a California Dogface! We have thirty different species. In here the butterflies are free.”

  “Great!” I said. “I’ll take ten of them.”

  “That means they’re free to fly wherever they want, Arlo,” said Andrea, rolling her eyes.

  “I knew that,” I lied. Bummer. I thought they were giving butterflies away.

  Next, Ms. Krup took us to the Creepy Critters Room. She was all excited, running from cage to cage to tell us about the Giant Desert Hairy Scorpion, the Funnel-web Spider, the velvet ant, and the Mexican Red Knee Tarantula. They were gross, but cool. I kept an eye on Mr. Docker, to see if he was going to eat any of the bugs.

  “Eighty percent of the earth’s living creatures are insects,” Ms. Krup told us.

  “So you’re in good company, Arlo,” Andrea said.

  I was going to say something mean back to Andrea, but I didn’t get the chance because Ms. Krup pulled this disgusting brown thing with wings out of a cage and held it up for us to see. It was about four inches long.

  “This is General Muffin,” she said. “He’s a very rare hissing cockroach from Madagascar.”

  “WOW!” we all said, which is “MOM” upside-down.

  Ms. Krup told us that most cockroaches have eighteen knees. And they can live for a week after their head is cut off.

  “What do they eat?” asked Emily.

  “They eat girls named Emily,” I said, and everybody laughed. Well, except for Emily.

  “Cockroaches will eat almost anything,” Ms. Krup said. “General Muffin even likes to eat candy.”

  “Why is he called a hissing cockroach?” asked Andrea, who has to know everything.

  “Because General Muffin can hiss by pushing air through a hole in his tummy,” said Ms. Krup.

  “Make him hiss!” we all chanted. “Make him hiss!”

  “The general only hisses when he’s disturbed,” said Ms. Krup. “But he’s so used to being handled that he hardly ever hisses. Would anyone like to hold General Muffin?”

  “No way!” we all shouted.

  “Psssst! A.J.!” Michael whispered. “I dare you to hold the cockroach.”

  “Forget it,” I said. “I’m not touching that thing!”

  “A.J., if you don’t hold the cockroach, it means you love Andrea.”

  “WHAT?” I said.

  I didn’t see what holding a cockroach had to do with Andrea, except that they were both gross. I sure didn’t want to hold a disgusting cockroach. But I didn’t want anybody to think I loved Andrea, either.

  I was faced with the hardest decision of my life. If I didn’t hold the cockroach, the guys would think I loved Andrea. But if I held the cockroach, then…well, I would have to hold a disgusting cockroach!

  I couldn’t decide what to do. I thought so hard that my brain hurt.

  “I’ll hold it,” I finally said.

  Everybody cheered. Ms. Krup told me to put my palm out flat. Then she placed General Muffin on it.

  Ew! Yuck! There was a giant hissing cockroach sitting on my hand! I thought I was gonna throw up.

  And that’s when the most amazing thing in the history of the world happened.

  General Muffin jumped off my hand!

  8

  We Have a Problem

  “EEEEEEEEEEEEEEKKKKKKKKKK!”

  “He’s getting away!”

  “Run for your lives!” said Neil the nude kid.

  After General Muffin jumped off my hand, he ran under a table, so we lost sight of him. Everybody was yelling and screaming and freaking out. You should have been there.

  “Now look what you’ve done, Arlo!” shouted Andrea.

  “I didn’t do anything!” I shouted back at her.

  Ms. Krup pulled out her walkie-talkie.

  “Chief! We have a problem!” she shouted. “General Muffin is missing!”

  “General Muffin is hissing?” a voice replied. “So what?”

  “Not hissing!” Ms. Krup said. “Missing!”

  We all hid in the corner while Ms. Krup searched for General Muffin on her hands and knees. She couldn’t find him anywhere.

  “I don’t like this place,” Emily whimpered. “I want to go home.”

  For once I agreed with her. I didn’t want a missing hissing cockroach crawling up my leg.

  The grown-ups led us down the hall into an auditorium.

  “You’ll be safe in here,” Ryan’s mom told us. “They’re going to show you a video. We’ll find General Muffin.”

  We watched a movie called Our Reptile Friends. We learned lots of stuff about reptiles. Like, snakes can still hear even though they don’t have ears! So be careful what you say around snakes!

  The video was pretty cool, but I still don’t want to make friends with any reptiles.

  I was getting tired. Some of the kids fell asleep in the middle of the video. When it was over, the grown-ups came back to get us.

  “Did you catch General Muffin?” we all asked.

  “He’s in a safe place,” Ms. Krup said.

  Whew! That was a relief. There was no way I would be able to sleep, knowing a giant hissing cockroach from Madagasca
r was running around.

  Ms. Krup and the other grown-ups walked us back down to the first floor. Our sleeping bags were spread out under Giganotosaurus, right next to the giant bear. It was gonna be cool to sleep next to a bear and under a dinosaur. And the best part was that we didn’t have to brush our teeth.

  The grown-ups drank some coffee and talked about the weather for a few minutes. Then they climbed into their sleeping bags too.

  “Good night, everyone!” said Ms. Krup. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Good night,” we all said.

  “I’m scared,” said that crybaby Emily.

  “Don’t worry,” Ryan’s mom said. “Giganotosaurus will protect you.”

  I didn’t see how something that died ninety-five million years ago was going to protect anybody. But that was Emily’s problem.

  I climbed into my Batman sleeping bag. The floor was hard and cold. I started thinking about Batman. I wondered if the opposite of “Batman” is “Manbat” or “Namtab.” Or maybe the opposite of “Batman” is “NotBatman.”

  I couldn’t fall asleep. It was creepy looking up at Giganotosaurus in the dark.

  So I thought about the cool dead and live animals we had seen. I thought about The Secret Room and wondered what was in it.

  “Psssst! Ryan!” I whispered.

  Ryan didn’t answer. He was asleep. Everybody was quiet. You could hear a pin drop in the museum. I think I was the only one who was still awake.

  That’s when I heard it. A horrible noise! It was some kind of a monster! And it was right near me! It sounded like a giant nocturnal meat eater! And it was about to eat me alive!

  9

  Slinking Around

  The horrible sound got louder and louder! It got deeper and deeper. I thought I was gonna die. Finally, I climbed out of my sleeping bag to see what was making all that noise.

  It was Mr. Docker and Mr. Macky! They were snoring!

  I thought I was in the middle of a herd of hippos! Man, what is the problem with grown-ups? Kids don’t snore like that. It must have something to do with the hair growing out of their noses. I hope I never grow up to be a grown-up.

  “Pssssst! A.J.!” Michael whispered. “Are you up?”

  “Yeah!”

  “I can’t sleep with all this snoring,” Michael said.

  “Me neither.”

  That’s when I got the greatest idea in the history of the world.

  “Hey,” I said. “You wanna go get candy?”

  “Do you have any money?” Michael asked.

  “No. Do you?”

  “No.”

  Bummer in the summer! I really wanted candy.

  “Let’s go get a drink from the water fountain,” Michael whispered.

  “Okay!”

  I stepped over a few kids in sleeping bags, and then my foot bumped into something hard.

  “Owwww!” somebody yelled. “You kicked me in the head, Arlo!”

  Ugh, it was Andrea!

  “SOR-reeee!” I said.

  Whenever you have to say you’re sorry to someone but you don’t really feel sorry, just say “SOR-reeee.” Because “SOR-reeee” is the opposite of “sorry.” When you say “SOR-reeee,” it means you’re not sorry at all. But nobody can punish you, because at least you did say you were sorry. So it’s a win-win! That’s the first rule of being a kid.

  “Do you have any money?” Michael asked Andrea.

  “Of course,” she replied. “My mother gave me a ten-dollar bill to buy something educational at the gift shop.”

  Everything Andrea does is educational. When she blows her nose, she probably writes an essay about boogers for extra credit.

  “Can we borrow some of your money?” I asked. “We wanna get candy.”

  “Only if I can get some, too,” she replied.

  I didn’t want Andrea coming with us to the candy machine, but I did want candy.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “I have money too,” a voice whispered. “I want to come.”

  Oh, man! It was that crybaby Emily. This thing was turning into a party.

  The four of us grabbed our flashlights and tiptoed around the other sleeping bags.

  “Hey, you know what would be cool?” I said. “We should pick up one of the snoring grown-ups and put them in a diorama! Can you imagine Mr. Docker or Mr. Macky waking up next to a wild yak?”

  “That would be hilarious,” Michael agreed. “But I don’t think we could pick them up.”

  “We could if they went to Weight Watchers,” I told him.

  “Can we go already?” said Andrea.

  The four of us slinked around in the dark like secret agents.

  “How come they don’t have a security guard?” Emily whispered. “Anybody could come in here and murder us.”

  “The doors are locked, dumbhead,” I told her. “They have chains on them.”

  “If there are chains on the door,” Michael whispered, “that means we can’t get out, either.”

  We all looked at each other. I thought I heard scary music playing again.

  “Relax,” I finally said. “Who’s gonna murder us? The dead animals?”

  We slinked over to the candy machine. Awesome! It had all my favorite candy bars. This was the best night of my life!

  Andrea put her ten-dollar bill in the slot, but it popped back out. She tried it again, and it popped out again.

  “The machine doesn’t take ten-dollar bills,” Andrea said.

  This was the worst night of my life!

  “Hey, look!” Michael said, pointing to some boxes that were stacked next to the candy machine.

  “They’re boxes of candy!” said Emily.

  “Great!” Michael said. “The candy is free!”

  “You mean it can fly wherever it wants?” I asked.

  “No, dumbhead,” Andrea told me. “It means they’re giving the candy away.”

  All right! I was so happy, I didn’t even bother saying anything mean to Andrea. We all grabbed the candy and started stuffing it in our mouths. I ate about a million hundred candy bars.

  It was the greatest night of my life.

  10

  Penguins Are Cool

  It was dark and quiet. The little hand on the clock was past twelve, so I knew it was after midnight. But I ate so much sugar, there was no way I was going to get to sleep.

  “Let’s slink around by the animals!” I suggested.

  “Yeah!” agreed Michael.

  “You’re going to get in trouble,” Andrea said.

  “I’m going to tell Mrs. Daisy,” said Emily.

  “Fine,” I said. “Tell her. And I’ll tell her that you ate all that candy.”

  Me and Michael slinked around the first floor like secret agents. Andrea and Emily, the big copycats, followed us. We looked at the moose again, and the buffalo and the gorillas. The animals looked even more real late at night.

  That’s when I saw it. The most amazing thing in the history of the world.

  But I’m not going to tell you what it was.

  Okay, okay, I’ll tell you. And you don’t even have to read the next chapter.

  It was a diorama filled with penguins!

  Penguins! I must have missed this before. I’m sure I would have remembered it.

  I pressed my nose against the glass. Ever since I was little, I loved penguins. I slept with a stuffed penguin in my crib when I was a baby. I dressed up like a penguin for Halloween. I used to have an imaginary penguin friend. I saw every penguin movie there was to see.

  Looking at those penguins close-up, I was hypnotized. I could almost hear them speaking to me.

  “Come with us, A.J.!” one of the penguins said. “We’ll go to Antarctica! You can play with us forever and ever and ever.”

  “Kids don’t have to go to school in Antarctica,” said the second penguin. “There are no teachers to tell you what to do. There are no parents to yell at you. There are no problems. It’s paradise.”

 
“In Antarctica we don’t care if you secretly love Andrea,” said the third penguin.

  “Come with us and live in peace,” said the fourth penguin. “We’ll slide around on the ice all day. It’ll be fun.”

  “I’m coming,” I told the penguins. “I’m coming with you….”

  Suddenly, I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Michael’s.

  “A.J., are you okay?” he asked. “Who are you talking to, man?”

  “Uh, nobody.”

  It must have been the sugar.

  11

  How to Stuff Stuff

  We slinked around some more, and then I came up with the greatest idea in the history of the world.

  “Hey!” I said. “Let’s see what’s in The Secret Room!”

  “A.J., you’re a genius!” Michael said.

  Andrea and Emily said we would get in trouble. But me and Michael slinked over to The Secret Room, and the copycat sisters followed us.

  Michael put his hand on the doorknob.

  “Don’t open that door!” I warned.

  “Why not?”

  “Because when you open a door to a scary place at night, a horrible creature is waiting to jump out and kill you,” I told him. “I saw that in a movie once.”

  “That’s silly,” Andrea said. She grabbed the knob and pulled open the door.

  You’ll never believe in a million hundred years what was in The Secret Room.

  It was Ms. Krup! She was holding that wild yak fur.

  “What are you kids doing here?” she asked.

  I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what to do. I had to think fast.

  “We’re…uh…sleepwalking,” I said.

  “All of you?”

  “It’s dangerous to sleepwalk alone,” I explained.

  “Are we in trouble?” asked Andrea, who I’m sure has never been in trouble in her whole life.

  “Of course not,” Ms. Krup said. “You kids must love natural history, just like I do. When I was your age, I snuck into a zoo one night.”