by Duncan Ball
For Ian, who knows Selby
as well as anyone
CONTENTS
Cover
Pink Panic
Selby Gets Dr Trifle’s GOTE
The Incredible Shrinking Dog
Terrible Tina, Two-Tooth Tiger
The Diabolical Disappearing Dog
Selby’s Lucky Star
The Screaming Mimis
Famous Dead Poets
Selby Soars to New Heights
The Star of Lahtidoh
Trying to Diet but Dying to Try It
Up the Creek Without a Dog Paddle
In the Spirit of Things
A Tip for Selby
Selby Gagged
Something Fishy at Bunya-Bunya Crescent
Fool of Fortune
Selby Cracks a Case
Backword
PIGGOTT PLACE
PIGGOTTS IN PERIL
About the Author
By the Same Author
Copyright
Pink Panic
Selby was the only talking dog in Australia. For all he knew he was the only talking dog in the whole world. He was born an ordinary dog but had learned to talk while watching TV with his owners, Dr and Mrs Trifle, in their home in the little town of Bogusville.
It all began one day when Selby realised that he could understand everything that was being said on TV. Learning to talk was another matter. Selby spent hours and hours when the Trifles were out of the house repeating what the people on television were saying until, finally, he could speak perfectly. But before the thrill of learning to talk had worn off, Selby panicked. What would happen when people discovered that he could talk? At first the Trifles would be happy to have a talking dog for a pet, but soon they’d ask him to do things around the house. They’d have him answering the telephone or mowing the lawn or even going out to the shops.
“I don’t want to be their servant,” Selby thought. “I want to be their pet.”
It could even be worse: the Trifles might send him off to a laboratory where he would spend the rest of his life answering scientists’ stupid questions. And that would never do.
“I like my life just the way it is,” he thought, “and I’m going to keep my talking a secret even if it kills me!”
Selby almost gave away his secret many times. One of the closest calls was the day he was swinging on branches and vines through the jungle when suddenly a branch broke and he fell and was grabbed by cannibals and thrown into a pot. But just as he splashed into the lukewarm water he woke up screaming, “No! No! Don’t cook me! I’m Selby, the only talking dog in the world!” It was only when he looked around him and saw that he was lying safely on a carpet in the Trifles’ house in Bogusville that he realised he’d been having a bad dream.
“I probably ate too many of those awful Dry-Mouth Dog Biscuits Mrs Trifle keeps feeding me. They always upset my stomach and give me nightmares,” Selby thought as he dashed to the front window, opened it, and saw that the car was gone. “Thank goodness the Trifles have gone out. I’m just lucky they didn’t hear me talking.”
In fact the only one who had heard Selby talk was Pinky, a pet galah which the Trifles were minding for Mrs Trifle’s cousin Wilhemina.
Selby put his paws up on the tall cage and stared at the little bird.
“Hello Pinks. Say something to me. Say, ‘Hello, Selby my good friend,'” Selby said, knowing full well that the only thing Pinky ever said was, “Help! I’m drowning!” — exactly what Cousin Wil had screamed when she fell in a fish pond during a garden party ten years before. “'Help! I’m drowning!‘ is a strange thing for a galah to say,” Selby added. “I suspect Cousin Wil screamed so loud that it got stuck in your little pea-brain. Go ahead, my little panic merchant, say it. Say, ‘Help! I’m drowning!'”
“I’m Selby,” Pinky screeched, “the only talking dog in the world!”
Selby froze like a statue.
“What did you say?” he asked.
“I’m Selby, the only talking dog in the world!” Pinky squawked again.
“That’s what I thought you said,” Selby said. “Now, you aren’t Selby, I am. So shut your beak before you give away my secret and ruin my life forever.”
“I’m Selby,” Pinky screeched even louder, “the only talking dog in the world! Squawk.”
“You’re supposed to say, ‘Help! I’m drowninng!’” Selby yelled as he wondered how long it would be till the Trifles returned.
“I’m Selby, squawk, the only talking dog in the world!”
“I’ve got it,” Selby thought as he put his face up to the cage. “Maybe if I scream really loud he’ll repeat what I say. Help! I’m drowning!” Selby cried at the top of his lungs.
Pinky’s eyes popped open at the sight of the screaming dog. In a fright he flew against the side of the cage, knocking it to the ground. All of which would have been okay if the cage hadn’t broken in two. In a second Pinky was free and flying around the room.
“Come back here you silly seed-swallower!” Selby yelled, chasing him. “You’re not supposed to be flying around loose!”
“I’m Selby, the only talking dog in the world!” Pinky squawked and, before Selby could head him off, Pinky had disappeared out the window and into the cold night air.
“Come back here you little twittering tattle-tale!” Selby yelled. “You can’t survive out there! It’s too cold. And besides, you don’t know how to find food! You’ve been in a cage all your life! Why am I wasting my breath talking to a bird?” he asked himself.
Selby stared out into the darkness for a glimpse of Pinky.
“This is terrible,” Selby said, feeling suddenly sad. “The Trifles will be awfully upset when they come home and find Pinky gone. Of course, they won’t know it’s all my fault. They’ll think Pinky knocked his cage over and broke it — which is true. And they’ll think they left the window open — because they’re kind of absent-minded about those things. Pinky will fly away and freeze or starve to death. This is awful,” Selby said, blinking back a tear. “But I guess he won’t be blabbing out my secret.”
Then, from the top branches of the silky oak in the front yard, came a terrible cry which pierced the night air:
“I’m Selby, squawk, the only talking dog in the world!”
“All right, big mouth!” Selby yelled as he jumped out the window and looked up at Pinky. “Shut up or everyone in Bogusville will hear you!”
Suddenly Selby remembered his swinging-through-the-jungle-on-branches-and-vines dream.
“My only chance is to get to the top of that tree,” he thought. “I’ll grab little Pinky and scream ‘Help! I’m drowning!’ in his face so loud that he has to repeat it.”
Limb by limb Selby crept up the tree towards the unsuspecting parrot. In a minute he was hidden in a clump of leaves on the top branch, only a leg’s length from Pinky.
“I’ll make a sudden lunge,” Selby thought, “and grab him. He won’t know what hit him.”
Selby sprang forward and grabbed the stunned Pinky with his front paws, teetering for a second on the thin branch. Then, just when Selby had screamed out the Help! part of Help! I’m drowning! there was a crack and a thwack and a twang and Selby and Pinky hurtled down through the leaves toward the ground.
“I’m falling!” Selby screamed, and before he knew it he was staggering around the front lawn. After a moment of staggering in circles, Selby fell into a bush, unconscious.
He woke a few minutes later to the sound of running feet and Mrs Trifle’s voice.
“He’s dead! He’s dead!” she yelled as she dashed down the path and picked Pinky up, not noticing Selby in the bushes. “Oh, Pinkums, how will I ever explain this to Cousin Wil?”
“I don’t think he’s dead,” Dr Trifle sai
d. “He’s just unconscious. Look he’s opening his eyes. He’s moving his beak. I think he’s about to say something.”
“Oh, no!” Selby thought, feeling suddenly happy about Pinky being alive and then instantly sad. “In a minute the news will be out. I’m done. I might as well confess. It’s better they should hear it from the dog’s mouth than from that big-beaked blabbermouth.”
Selby stepped out of the bushes and was about to say, “I confess. I can talk. I don’t care who knows it now. Go ahead and send me off to a laboratory to be asked stupid questions by scientists for the rest of my life,” when Pinky screeched:
“Help! I’m falling!”
“'Help? I’m falling?'” Mrs Trifle asked. “Did he say falling? That’s very odd.”
“I do believe he did,” Dr Trifle said thoughtfully. “Well, at least it’s a lot better than ‘Help! I’m drowning!'”
“And it’s even better than,” Selby thought as he shook himself off and started on his evening walk, “some of the other things he’s been saying lately.”
Selby Gets Dr Trifle’s GOTE
“You’ve bought a goat?” Mrs Trifle said to Dr Trifle as she finished putting the washing in the clothes basket.
“I didn’t buy it, I made it,” said Dr Trifle, who spent most of his time inventing things. “And it’s not really a goat. It’s a GOTE.”
“I see,” said Mrs Trifle, who didn’t really.
“I mean GOTE, spelled G-O-T-E,” Dr Trifle said.
Selby watched from deep within the bushes where he lay secretly reading through his collection of Wonderful Wanda comic strips as Dr Trifle carried his latest invention into the backyard and put it down on the lawn.
“GOTE stands for Gyrating Oscillating Transistorised Emulsifier,” Dr Trifle explained.
“And what exactly does a Gyrating Oscillating Transistorised Emulsifier do?” asked Mrs Trifle, who was the mayor of Bogusville and knew a lot of big words but not those particular ones.
“Just what the name says,” Dr Trifle said. “It takes bits of certain herbaceous matter and masticates them into an emulsion.”
“It whats?”
“I suppose you might call it … well, sort of a lawn-mower.”
“A lawn-mower?” Mrs Trifle asked.
“Or should I say, a lawn-muncher?” Dr Trifle said. “I’ve named this one Howard. Turn Howard on and he runs around munching away till you turn him off again. Howard is going to revolutionise grass cutting as we know it.”
“What exactly,” Mrs Trifle asked, “is wrong with grass cutting as we know it?”
“Too noisy,” Dr Trifle said. “And too monotonous. I get so bored pushing that silly lawn-mower around in circles. Howard, here, will roam around, quietly munching and crunching, like those things that run around swimming pools eating up all the muck. Besides, a properly munched lawn looks much better than a cut lawn.”
“It does?” Mrs Trifle asked.
“Well, of course it does,” Dr Trifle, who wasn’t quite sure why it did, explained. “Here. Watch this.”
Dr Trifle poured a few drops of petrol in Howard’s left ear, and turned the GOTE around, pointing it towards a patch of long grass.
“That tiny bit of petrol is enough to keep Howard running for exactly five minutes. Now for the magic words: munchum crunchum diddlie dunchum,” Dr Trifle said and Howard’s red eyes lit up as he grabbed a mouthful of grass and started to chew.
“That’s amazing!” Mrs Trifle said, nearly dropping her clean laundry. “How did you do that?”
“Howard is voice-activated,” Dr Trifle explained. “Say the right words and off he goes.”
“But why munchum crunchum?“ asked Mrs Trifle. “Why not tell him something simple like mow the lawn and you could add a please just to be polite?”
“That would be fine if we lived way off by ourselves. But we don’t, you see. We live in Bogusville where there are lots of houses all pushed in together,” said Dr Trifle, who loved to explain things. “Now, let’s pretend that all our neighbours dash out and buy one of my new And let’s pretend that all of them start when someone says, mow the lawn — adding a please to be polite. What would happen?”
“Well, I’m not sure,” said Mrs Trifle, who had begun hanging out the laundry.
“I’ll tell you what would happen: there would be pandemonium!” Dr Trifle said, waving his arms around.
“Panda what?” Mrs Trifle asked.
“Total confusion,” Dr Trifle said. “Someone would yell ‘Mow the lawn’ out the window — adding a ‘please’ to be polite — and all the GOTEs in the neighbourhood would start munching their way around the lawns, whether they needed munching or not.”
“So you’re going to give all your GOTEs different code words, so they won’t all start up at once,” said Mrs Trifle, who was every bit as smart as Dr Trifle.
“Precisely! Words we don’t use very often like munchum crunchum diddlie dunchum so there won’t be any accidental turnings-on.”
“We certainly don’t say that very often,” Mrs Trifle said.
Suddenly Howard stopped and stared down at a weed.
“Watch this,” Dr Trifle said. “This is something no ordinary lawn-mower can do.”
“Undesirable. Undesirable,” the GOTE said in a raspy robot-like voice as he pulled up a weed with his teeth and then carried it to Dr Trifle’s Automatic Weed Shredder and dropped it in. As soon as the weed fell, the shredder turned on automatically with a whirr and a grind and the weed was shredded into tiny pieces.
“Thank you, Howard,” the Automatic Weed Shredder said to the robot, as Mrs Trifle looked on in amazement.
“Howard is designed to pull up weeds and throw them in the shredder,” Dr Trifle said.
“And the shredder even said, ‘Thank you,'” Mrs Trifle said as Howard started munching grass again. “Your inventions always have such good manners, dear.”
“It doesn’t cost any more to be polite. Anyway, you see how the GOTE and the shredder work together. They’ll need some minor adjustments but new inventions always need a few minor adjustments. Oh, my goodness,” Dr Trifle said suddenly, looking at his watch. “I’d better turn Howard off or we’ll be late for your council dinner. We wouldn’t want the mayor to be late, would we now?”
“Just let me finish hanging out these clothes before we go,” Mrs Trifle added, “so they’ll be dry by tomorrow.”
“Stop chop diddlie bop!“ Dr Trifle commanded and Howard went suddenly stiff.
With the Trifles safely out of the house, Selby crept out of the bushes and had a better look at the GOTE.
“That Dr Trifle surely is a clever man,” Selby said, peering in Howard’s nose to check his oil level. “Everyone in the world will want to own a lawn-muncher like this. You were doing a great job, Howard. Go ahead, now, give us a demonstration. What were those words again? Munchum crunchum diddlie dunchum?”
Howard’s eyes flickered to life and he started munching his way through a clump of grass. But before he’d finished one mouthful he raised his head, looked over at the clothes that were drying on the clothes line and said, “Undesirable. Undesirable,” in a mechanical voice.
“Hey! Stop!” Selby said as he followed the GOTE towards the clothes. “Uh-oh, if I don’t stop him he’ll tear them off the line and throw them in the weed shredder! I’ve got to do something fast!”
“Stop mop diddlie bop! Or was it, Stop rop diddlie hop!” Selby yelled as he grabbed Howard by his short metal tail and was pulled along toward the wet clothes.
“Stop pop diddlie lop!” he shrieked, as he tried to tip the GOTE over. “I’m ordering you to stop!”
Selby ran ahead grabbing the clothes from the clothes line but soon Howard was there, reaching for a pair of dangling underpants.
“Undesirable. Undesirable,” the GOTE said.
“Get away from those!” Selby screamed, snatching the undies, three shirts, seventeen socks and a towel just as Howard was about to grab them.
“Undesirable,” Howard said again as he snapped at a purple sock just as Selby rescued it.
“I can’t stand it,” Selby said, now weighed down by a huge load of laundry. “I can’t keep ahead of this beast! Oh, no! He’s going for Mrs Trifle’s favourite floral frock!”
Selby turned to snatch the frock and felt something strange clutch his tail.
“Something strange is clutching my tail,” Selby thought. “I wonder what it could be?” he added as he grabbed the last bit of laundry. “It feels kind of like some sort of metal mouth with metal teeth. I wonder … Yoooooooooowwwwwch!“ Selby screeched, dropping the clothes as Howard’s mouth clamped shut and the GOTE began dragging Selby across the lawn. “Let go of me, you grass-munching moron!”
“Undesirable,"Howardmuttered mechanically with a mouth full of dog. “Undesirable.”
“Let go of me! I’m not a weed! I can prove it!” Selby screamed. “Hey! Where are you taking me? Not to the Automatic Weed Shredder? No, please! Howard, be reasonable! Can’t we talk this over?!”
“Undesirable,” Howard said as he lifted the struggling Selby over the shredder.
“I’m gone!” Selby screamed as he fell towards the blades of the machine, expecting them to whirr into action. But instead the shredder shook, lurched — made a noise that sounded something like a mechanical burp — and then spat him out onto the ground.
“You’re right, Howard,” the shredder said slowly. “Undesirable.”
The bewildered Selby looked up just in time to see Howard slowly come to a stop as he ran out of petrol. Blinking his red eyes, the GOTE said, “Undesirablllllllllll,” and then was silent.
“As for those minor adjustments Dr Trifle was talking about, Howard,” Selby muttered as he dashed around picking up clothes and hanging them back on the clothes line. “If you and that silly shredder can’t tell the difference between an undesirable weed and yours truly, the most desirable dog in the world, then you’re going to need more than just minor adjustments.”
The Incredible Shrinking Dog
“Help! I’m shrinking!” Selby thought. “I’m getting littler by the minute!”