My Brother's Famous Bottom Goes Camping

by Jeremy Strong

  A WINDOW?!

  IT WASN’T MR TUGG AT ALL!

  IT WAS A THIEF!

  I was about to rush upstairs to wake Dad when the burglar alarm went off. At least what actually happened was that the chickens went off. They were the alarm! They suddenly went berserk, led by their choirmaster, Captain Birdseye. You should have heard the shrieks!

  A moment later Mr Tugg’s searchlights fizzed on and the gardens were flooded with light. The burglar froze in panic, staring all around and then decided to make a run for it in our direction. With one bound he cleared the fence and began to sprint across our vegetable patch before he skidded to a halt and stared in horror at the creature in front of him.

  It was the fox! The fox had returned for the hens and now the burglar had caught the fox red-handed and the fox had caught the burglar red-handed and the pair of them stood and stared at each other, with the fox snarling and spitting furiously, showing all his very sharp teeth.

  The burglar decided to beat a hasty retreat.

  He charged back towards Mr Tugg’s garden, leaping our fence for the third time, and landed – SPLASH – in the middle of the Tuggs’ pond.

  He crawled out only to find Mr Tugg standing over him, blowing his whistle and waving his Neighbourhood Watch badge at him.

  Seconds later my mum and dad appeared in the garden, wondering what was going on, and then Mrs Tugg came hurrying out from next door. She threw her arms round her husband and said that she had never seen such bravery. Mr Tugg went red with embarrassment.

  ‘What happened?’ asked my dad, still half asleep.

  Mr Tugg smiled. Whoopee! It felt like Christmas! Mr Tugg actually looks quite cuddly when he smiles. ‘Just for once you haven’t been the cause of all this mayhem,’ he said with some satisfaction. ‘I have just caught a burglar. The police are already on their way. It’s quite safe now,’ he went on airily. ‘You can go back to your beds and sleep soundly. Everything’s under control.’ Mr Tugg drew himself up to his full height and gave a self-satisfied nod. ‘All under control.’

  Dad shook his head and turned to go back indoors. ‘That’s fine then. Goodnight, officer.’

  ‘Goodnight,’ nodded Mr Tugg.

  We got back inside and I had to tell Mum and Dad every detail of what had happened. My parents had big bowls of cereal while I told them because by this time they were hungry too. (And I had another bowl because, if you remember, most of my first bowl was sprinkled across the kitchen floor.) We went back to bed and I slept in until ten o’clock in the morning. Brilliant!

  We had to get Granny and Lancelot round so we could tell them in the morning. We were halfway through all that when the doorbell rang.

  It was the inspector from the council.

  She’d come to inspect our garden – and we’d clean forgotten all about it because of last night.

  ‘There have been several complaints from your neighbour Mr Tugg,’ said Miss Rice, with a sniff.

  ‘What a surprise,’ muttered Dad.

  ‘I understand you keep hens here, and a goat and a tortoise?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I’d like to see them, please.’

  Tomato suddenly burst into the room, waving a rather mangled carrot. ‘Cecily Sprout fell down the stairs and she’s brokened her leg!’ she cried.

  ‘Oh dear, that is sad,’ murmured Mum soothingly.

  ‘Look!’ said my sister, holding up her doll.

  One of the carrot’s two pointy legs had snapped right off. Her green hair had gone rather limp and brown too.

  ‘A carrot has a broken leg?’ Miss Rice gave my father such a look of alarm that he quickly steered her outside and showed her the garden.

  ‘It’s quite a little farm you have here,’ Miss Rice said with surprise. ‘Now tell me, how loud are your animals?’

  Dad shrugged. ‘The hens cluck, Captain Birdseye crows, Rubbish bleats and the tortoise keeps himself to himself.’

  ‘Yes, but how loud are they? Can you make them squeak for me?’

  ‘Not really, no,’ answered Dad. ‘It’s not the sort of thing you do with farm animals – make them squeak. Normally you just feed them, milk them or collect eggs.’

  Miss Rice shook her head. ‘That’s not good enough. I need to hear how loudly they squeak. Can’t you poke them?’

  ‘Poke them?’ echoed Dad. ‘Are you mad?’

  Oh dear. I could see which way things were going and I desperately hoped Dad would keep his cool. It wasn’t going to happen, of course.

  ‘No, I am not mad at all. I need to hear your animals being noisy. That’s my job. If you won’t poke them, I will. Give me that stick.’

  ‘No, I shan’t,’ said Dad. ‘Nobody is allowed to poke my animals, not even me. How would you like it if I poked you?’ Dad grabbed the stick.

  Oh no! I shut my eyes. I knew what was going to happen next.

  ‘Just a moment!’ a voice bellowed. I opened my eyes again. It was Mr Tugg. He called over the fence. ‘Miss Rice! How lovely to see you. Before you go any further I wonder if I might have a word? I’m the one who has complained about these animals. Now, as captain of the local Neighbourhood Watch, some recent developments have come to my attention.’

  ‘Oh, you’d like to add to your complaints, would you?’ asked Miss Rice, getting out a notebook.

  ‘No, not exactly.’ Mr Tugg began to scratch his head as if he had taken himself by surprise. ‘In fact I would like to withdraw all my complaints.’

  ‘All of them?’ chorused Miss Rice and Dad, for quite different reasons.

  ‘Yes. Last night I caught a burglar, and it was entirely because of these hens. If they hadn’t made such a fuss I wouldn’t have woken up. You see, the hens acted as a burglar alarm. Without them, the thief would have broken into our homes. I’m very grateful to them.’

  ‘Really?’ chorused Dad and Miss Rice, for quite different reasons again.

  ‘Oh yes. So please drop the matter,’ smiled Mr Tugg. ‘In fact I’d like to make the hens my official nightwatchmen, or rather nightwatch-hens.’

  And that was that! Miss Rice has gone and we can keep Rubbish and Schumacher and, of course, Captain Birdseye, Mavis Moppet, Beaky, Leaky and Poop. It’s brilliant! And the biggest surprise of all came when Mum went to the hen house a bit later.

  ‘The hens have laid!’ she yelled back to the house. ‘They’ve all laid eggs, every one of them!’

  So that made it double brilliant. And guess what? We’re going camping again in a couple of weeks. Dad says we’ll go to a different campsite, and we’re not going to take any animals. Tomato seems to have forgotten all about Cecily Sprout. She’s now waiting excitedly for the eggs to hatch. She seems to think that they are going to produce kittens.

  ‘Because that’s what I want,’ she told me. ‘Four kittens – a tabby, a ginger one, a white one and a pink one.’

  ‘Pink?’ I repeated.

  ‘Yes. And I’m going to call it Pink-Poop, because I like pink and I like Poop.’

  I guess that once you’ve lived with a carrot called Cecily Sprout, Pink-Poop seems like a pretty good name.