Noosum Foosum

by J. M. Harris

  ‘I thought you said they were weevils,’ said Danny, confused.

  ‘She means they only come out at night, silly,’ explained Katie, ‘you know, like owls and hidge hegs … I mean hodge higs … Oh, you know!’ she added with a giggle.

  ‘Oh!’ said Danny, now understanding, adding, ‘and what do they do – these weevils?’

  ‘Oh, upon my baking tray – what don’t they do!’ exclaimed Ma, throwing up her hands. ‘They will eat their way through absolutely anything. They get stuck onto all the floors, walls, beams and surfaces all over the house. I don’t know what they think they’re doing, but each morning I come down to find one awful mess and half my food eaten. I’m at my very wit’s end!’ she repeated.

  ‘Hmm, so they stick to everything you say?’ asked Danny thoughtfully. Katie cast him a knowing look, guessing immediately what he was thinking.

  ‘Yes! Awful little things, just sticking to everything and munching through all my food,’ replied Ma crossly. Then – ‘Oh my goodness! Whatever’s that!?’

  They heard violent splashing sounds coming from the mill room. Ma and the children dashed from the kitchen where they’d been chatting, down the hall to the mill room and then down the stone steps that led to the reservoir pool and mill race. There, splashing and frolicking in the pool and wriggling like crazy up and down the race, were Itsy, Bitsy and Mew!

  ‘Well, if that isn’t just the merry biscuit!’ declared Ma. ‘Tadpoles!’

  ‘Not just any old tadpoles,’ corrected Katie – and then politely, ‘allow me to intr’duce them to you.’ She found a stick on the mill room floor and then started flicking at the tadpoles in turn, saying ‘Go on now!’ or ‘Up boy!’ The tadpoles were beside themselves with delight as, with each flick of her stick, they performed one trick or another, flopping up onto the poolside and flopping back down again, or spinning round and round in the water – Itsy and Bitsy still with their coloured collars on, which twirled luridly with them.

  Ma’s expression instantly changed from one of curiosity to one of express delight! ‘Oh, the little darlings,’ she cooed, hands clasped tightly together, and, ‘bless their little heads and noses. Aren’t they clever? Aren’t they wonderful!’

  It seems that the tadpoles had woken up from underneath the jetty, realised that the children had gone on without them, discovered where the cottage’s little stream ran into the estuary and had swum right on up it!

  Just then, Mew disappeared down to the bottom of the reservoir pool, popping up a moment later with something brown and rusty in his mouth which he spat out onto the mill room floor. Ma picked it up, examined it closely, then declared, ‘It’s the key to the shed! The clever little dear, I lost that months ago!’ She flung her arms around Mew’s glistening body in appreciation, while Mew nuzzled against her.

  Bitsy had been observing the scene and, when he saw Mew receive such unbridled affection from Ma, he disappeared back down into the water, reappearing a moment later with something in his mouth. Mirroring Mew, he spat it out onto the floor and waited for a similar display of praise and affection. Ma leant over to see what it was that Bitsy had retrieved – it was a slimy piece of seaweed from the bottom of the pool! Ma managed to look not at all disappointed with Bitsy’s find and made sure that his cuddle was just as good as Mew’s.

  While it is hard to read the expression of a tadpole, if a tadpole could look proud, then that is how Bitsy looked.

  The tadpoles danced and spun and raced and turned, Katie flicked and called, tapped and clapped and Ma cooed and gushed and egged them on. Danny produced a tennis ball from his pocket and was throwing it into the now foamy water of the mill race, seeing how close to the wheel he could get it, whilst still allowing Itsy or Bitsy to retrieve it.

  Everyone was having a lovely time.

  Chapter 2

  ‘Hello-o!’ called Noosum Foosum as he poked his head round the open door of the cottage.

  ‘In here!’ answered the children in unison.

  Noosum Foosum found them in the mill room and soon joined in the laughter at the ongoing shenanigans. ‘Well I never! Is there no end to what these tadpoles get up to?’

  ‘Noosum Foosum, this is Ma,’ Danny shouted, realising that introductions were required but unwilling to break off his game of fetch. (Itsy was now so good, she could snatch the ball back from the very mouth of each of the water wheel’s buckets.)

  Noosum Foosum introduced himself to Ma, they shook hands and Ma suggested that the tadpoles might like to rest in the pool, while everyone else went back to the kitchen for refreshments. Katie went tap, tap, tap, very gently on each of the tadpoles’ heads with her stick and they obediently slipped down into the restful depths of the pool as Ma led everyone back to the kitchen.

  Ma and Noosum Foosum chatted and drank tea and the children munched biscuits and listened. Ma told Noosum all about her weevil problem and he nodded understandingly. Suddenly Danny, who had been listening thoughtfully all the while to Ma’s problem, jumped up with an ‘of course!’ Noosum Foosum and Ma stared at him, wondering what had gotten into him.

  ‘Noosum Foosum, can I run and get Choosum’s attract and repel spray from the boat please?’ Danny asked. Noosum nodded in reply and Danny raced down to the boat to return a minute later, puffing and panting, with Choosum’s spray in his hand.

  ‘Ma, look! This is a special spray. It stops things sticking to other things. I think we could stop your weevils from sticking to the beams and everything with it. Look!’ and with that he sprayed a little repel onto the kitchen table and instantly the biscuit crumbs from earlier levitated magically off the surface.

  Ma stared on in disbelief, ‘well, bless my baking powder!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘If I spray this everywhere,’ Danny continued, obviously pleased with Ma’s remarks, ‘the weevils won’t have anywhere they can go; they’ll soon get bored and find some other place to munch. Can I do it?’ he asked, eyes shining, as he really wanted with all his heart to help Ma with her problem.

  ‘Well, why ever not!’ agreed Ma, and, no sooner than she had, Danny was whistling here there and everywhere, spraying the table, the chairs, the surfaces, the walls, the ceiling – all the while taking care to only use enough strength to repel something the size of a weevil. Pretty soon he had covered every room, with the exception of the mill room itself.

  Returning exhausted to the kitchen (the others had been unable to follow his frenetic pace about the house) he said, ‘now we just need to wait and see…’

  Chapter 3

  Everyone was sat by the fire in the scullery; the children in their pyjamas, Noosum Foosum puffing on a pipe and Ma clacking away at her knitting. They were waiting for the last rays of the sun to leave the room, as Ma had explained that this would herald the arrival of the weevils. Ma had insisted that they all spent the night in her cottage instead of ‘cooped up in that boat of yours,’ as she put it and so the children had found twin beds in one of the highest and snuggest bedrooms and Noosum Foosum had a put-you-up bed in the attic. Ma was pleased as punch to have company for the evening.

  Suddenly, she pointed.

  ‘There!’ she said, and sure enough, right on cue, just as the last light of day faded from the room, the first weevil could be seen scuttling out of the shadows. It was soon followed by another, then another – then another.

  ‘They always come in through the scullery my dears,’ Ma whispered conspiratorially, as everyone sat motionless, breaths held, waiting to see whether Danny’s plan would work.

  They watched as the first few weevils rounded the pantry door and headed for Ma’s recently made apple pie. As soon as the first ones got near to it, they began to pile up, as if held in place by some invisible barrier – which was, in fact, exactly what was happening! They spilled over each other and tumbled down towards the floor, only to find themselves hovering helplessly above it!

  ‘It’s working!’ breathed Noosum Foosum.

  Other weevils started appearing on the wi
ndow sill and the friends watched as they too started to pile up, unable to overcome the repel that Danny had sprayed there.

  The children tiptoed carefully up the scullery steps to the kitchen to find the same scene being played out, as the magic of the repel continued. Weevils upon weevils were emerging from their daytime hiding places, only to pile up and then fall onto the floor – which they couldn’t actually hit because of the repel, so were just left dangling in the air, legs flaying wildly! Ma and Noosum Foosum followed the children from kitchen to living room, living room to hallway, hallway to the bedrooms and from the bedrooms to the attic – each room with its own piles of stranded, hovering weevils!

  ‘Right.’ said Noosum Foosum decisively, ‘all we need now is some way to gather them up.’ Turning to Ma, ‘Ma, have you any nets or bags or some such that we could gather the weevils in?’ Ma nodded and disappeared to get them.

  A short while later, Noosum Foosum, Ma and the children, each armed with a bag or a net, were tramping around the house, joyfully swoosh-ing their respective weevil receptacles at the floating piles of hapless insects.

  ‘Empty your bags out here!’ shouted Noosum Foosum above the noise of the swooshing and thumping and banging from the others as they careened around the house.

  Katie dashed out onto the porch and emptied her net at his feet, the weevils dropping readily to the ground and scurrying off, grateful to feel their feet once more in contact with the floor. Danny, who hadn’t heard Noosum Foosum’s instruction, proceeded to empty his bag from the bedroom window directly above where Noosum Foosum was standing. Noosum Foosum’s head then received a thorough dusting of weevils, accompanied by a distant shout of ‘So-rry!’

  They ran in and out, up and down, swooshing and swishing, collecting and bagging, emptying and heaping, until all four of them were sat exhausted on the porch steps, panting.

  ‘There must be an easier way, my dears!’ declared Ma, in between puffs, while she watched the pile of weevils that she had just deposited scurry off into the darkness. ‘I can’t help feeling that the cunning little critters are going right back in through the scullery window as soon as we drop them off!’ Noosum Foosum nodded in agreement; it did seem as if there were still just as many inside as when they had first started.

  As they sat pondering, the quiet was suddenly broken by a loud, mewling, crying kind-of sound; a vaguely familiar mewing sound but with an unfamiliar crying sort-of sound added to it. Katie looked at Danny – ‘Mew!’ they shouted at each other in unison.

  ‘But where is he?’ asked Ma fretfully.

  ‘In the mill room pool!’ Katie shouted as she jumped to her feet.

  Noosum Foosum quickly asked, ‘Danny, can you remember where you left Choosum’s attact/repel spray?’

  Danny looked down at the weevil-catching net in his hands and looked all around him for signs of the missing spray, then looking at Noosum with sudden realisation and rising panic, said ‘I left it in the mill room!’

  ‘Me -ew! We’re co-ming…!’ yelled Katie as she ran back inside, through the hall and towards the mill room, followed quickly by the others.

  Chapter 4

  Now, all the while that Ma and Noosum Foosum and the children had been busily running around the house trying to catch the errant weevils, Mew had started to get bored just mooching around at the bottom of the mill room pool and had decided to discover where everyone was. He squirmed up onto the smooth concrete of the mill room floor and peered around to see if he could see anyone to play with. He flopped around seal-like on the floor, jiggling about and straining his neck to see up the steps to the hallway and beyond. But unbeknownst to Mew, Danny had left the repel/attract spray on the mill room floor. And also unbeknown to Mew, as he stretched his body left and right attempting to catch a glimpse of Katie again, his tail had inadvertently alighted on the spray! Inadvertently alighted, inadvertently knocked the dial over to attract and inadvertently sprayed it onto his tail! Luckily for Mew, Danny had left the strength dial turned down low and so he just received a gentle dose of attract. Not so luckily for Mew was that, when he heard the funny hissing sound of the spray coming from behind him, he whirled around, knocking the dial on the spray as he did so and ending up sitting directly on top of it. As he looked down to see what it was he was sitting on, his head received a massive blast of repel!

  Immediately, he rocketed upwards as the huge dose of repel threw him off the floor and towards the ceiling. But, of course, on nearing the ceiling, his head also began to repel that! He started decelerating rapidly, being thrown with an equal force back down towards the floor once more! The floor then, of course, began to repel him back upwards again and before he knew it, poor Mew was bouncing from floor to ceiling, ceiling to floor, over and over again, each oscillation slightly less energetic than the last. (He was in fact mimicking precisely the action of what Noosum Foosum would have called a damped simple harmonic oscillator.) Then, at last, he settled – petrified, confused and rather dizzy, floating helplessly in mid-air halfway between floor and ceiling!

  Meanwhile, the children’s battle with the weevils was in full swing and the weevils were now starting to appear at the mill room door and were inching their way both down the stone steps and up onto the warped rafters of the ceiling. Pretty soon, the weevils had swarmed over the floor and ceiling of the mill room, and the only weevil-free areas were a circle on the ceiling above Mew’s head and a matching one below, where the repel was preventing them from getting any closer to him. As the weevils piled ever deeper and spilled out towards the back of the mill room, the weak dose of attract that Mew’s tail had received earlier began to take effect. Even though the strength was far less than the repel on his head, it was still quite enough to attract the weevils; and attract them it did as, one by one, the weevils were caught up in the air and sucked across the room, adhering themselves to the tail of the poor transfigured Mew!

  And so it was, that when the children, Ma and Noosum Foosum dashed into the mill room, they beheld poor Mew, yowling and squirming, yet held fast by the invisible magic force of the repel spray and crying pitifully. Katie ran up to him but was repelled from his head and so was forced to attend to his tail end, picking off the weevils one by one and gently pouring water over him to ease Mew’s obvious distress. This helped to calm Mew a great deal, who reduced his crying to an occasional whimper. The others watched while Katie continued to pick off the weevils which were immediately attracted right back on again. As they watched, an idea came to Danny. He whispered something into Ma’s ear, and she smiled and nodded in agreement.

  Danny grabbed Choosum’s spray from the floor and gave the net he was carrying a strong dose of attract. He then went over to the hovering Mew – he couldn’t get right up close to his head on account of the repel – but he patted him on the back as best he could and looked at him with love in his eyes and reassured him that everything would be just fine; that he had a plan to fix everything and if Mew was able to trust him he would be back in the water again very soon. While he didn’t show it in the same way as Katie, the truth was that Danny loved Mew very much.

  Danny carefully brought the net up level with Mew’s head and started to gently bob it back and forth. Just as he had hoped, the attraction of the net was working, for Mew’s head (and for that matter the rest of him) moved in precise concert with the net – as if joined by an invisible but very strong cord! Slowly and carefully, as if manoeuvring a space ship in to dock at a space station, Danny moved his net so as to choreograph Mew gracefully across the room and towards the door, followed closely behind by Katie – still picking the weevils off his tail. Noosum Foosum, who now realised what Danny had planned, took Katie by the arm and with a smile said, ‘leave the weevils on there – your Mew is about to become a hero!’

  And so it came to pass that the poor be-weeviled Mew found himself being led from room to room, Danny with his net in front, Katie behind – an unwitting tadpole ‘weevil-trawler!’ It was a new occupation for Mew and on
e for which he was demonstrating a superb proficiency, as weevils from left and right, from above and below, gently affixed themselves around the length and breadth of his tail. He passed from one room to the next accumulating a fuzzy weevily mass as he went and leaving a spotless weevil-less wake behind!

  Upstairs and downstairs, from attic to scullery, the unlikely procession continued. The unwanted weevils came shooting out from all quarters, legs wriggling furiously! From the undersides of the beams in the ceilings, from under antique sideboards and old oak dressers, from dining tables and occasional chairs; all the while clumping around Mew’s rapidly growing tail. When all the rooms had been visited, Danny drew Mew’s head towards the front door of the cottage and they emerged victorious. Mew: first his head, then his body and lastly his tail and every last weevil! No queerer sight had ever been seen emerging from the door of the cottage before, nor was ever likely to be seen again – that of a now smiling tadpole’s head followed by a body that was nearly spherical and comprised almost entirely of weevils!

  Mew found himself being led from room to room,

  Danny with his net in front, Katie behind – an

  unwitting tadpole ‘weevil-trawler!’

  Danny led Mew down the path, around the side of the cottage and away into a little copse of trees – a distance far enough away that the weevils would be sure not to return. He gave Mew a blast of repel to his tail, which allowed the weevils to drop from his back at last and scurry away into the trees. He then led Mew back towards the cottage and down to the jetty just in time – for the effect of the spray wore off almost the moment Mew was above water once again. He landed with a resounding splash and swam around and around and around – never had a tadpole been so glad to be swimming! Itsy and Bitsy were there waiting for him and the three nuzzled each other and made grateful mewling sounds as they swam joyously around the legs of the jetty once again.