The Trouble with Ants

by Claudia Mills

  “Yes,” Cammie said. “I use it to put highlights in my hair. You want some now? Anyway, that kind of highlight will look strange in dark hair like yours. It’ll make you look—”

  “Like a skunk,” Cara finished the sentence.

  Nora rolled her eyes. “Hydrogen peroxide,” she explained, “helps neutralize the smell from a skunk.”

  “Oh!” Cammie started to race inside Brody’s house to get it.

  “There’s other stuff we need, too,” Nora called after her. Cammie waited to hear the rest. “Baking soda? I think we need baking soda. And a bucket of water. And a sponge, of course, to wash him. But first we need to look up how much hydrogen peroxide we need and how much baking soda, and if there’s any other ingredients to add.”

  Cara was already searching for it on her phone. “A bottle of hydrogen peroxide. I think we have almost a full bottle. And a quarter cup of baking soda. I know my mom has some baking soda somewhere. And we need some dish detergent. And some warm water, too.”

  The sisters headed back inside together, on a mission now.

  “It’s my fault,” Brody said, in a small voice, as Dog lay whimpering beside him. “I’m the one who wanted to take him for one more walk, because it was such a nice day. He pulled away before I could get the leash on and ran after something. I thought it was a squirrel or a rabbit, and I yelled at him to stop. But…”

  He didn’t need to finish the sentence.

  Nora pulled off her hat and held it over her nose to block out some of the smell. Her eyes still stung.

  “Poor Dog,” she said. “How could Dog get skunked in January? I thought skunks weren’t very active in the winter. I read that in a library book over winter break.”

  “I guess this skunk can’t read,” Mason muttered.

  Maybe the warmer weather this past week had made the skunk think it was spring. But spring in January appeared to be over. A gust of bitter wind made Nora shiver.

  Cammie and Cara reappeared with the ingredients for Dog’s de-skunking bath and the bucket to mix them in.

  Nora took charge of the mixing. It was like an experiment with her chemistry set. The peroxide made the liquid in the bucket fizzle.

  “Okay,” she said. “It’s ready.”

  “Here, Dog,” Mason said gently. “Brody and I are going to make that awful smell go away.”

  He dipped a sponge into the peroxide mixture and started wiping Dog’s face and shoulders. Brody took a second sponge and wiped Dog from the other side.

  Dog whimpered again. He looked better now, without any of that oozy gunk on him. Nora couldn’t tell if he smelled better or not. The smell of skunk was so powerful that it wasn’t going to go away immediately, no matter how much hydrogen peroxide was rubbed on Dog.

  Feebly, Dog licked Mason’s hand, and then licked Brody’s. He seemed to know that his two masters were trying to help.

  “I’m sorry, Dog,” Brody whispered, as if he had been the one who had suggested to Dog that it would be a good idea to dash off after some strange black-and-white-striped animal.

  Headlights appeared down the road, and Brody’s parents’ car pulled into the driveway, squealing to a stop.

  “We tried to call!” Mason’s mother said, leaping out of the backseat.

  “We tried to call!” Mason shot back.

  “Well, we got your message, and we’re here now.”

  “It’s good you washed him right away,” Mason’s dad said. “What are you washing him with?”

  “Hydrogen peroxide, baking soda, some liquid detergent, and warm water,” Brody replied.

  “How on earth did you know what to do?” his mother asked.

  “Nora told us,” Brody said.

  “Nora!” all the parents exclaimed in unison.

  Nora stood, uncomfortable, as the parents continued to heap praise upon her. “I’m so glad the boys thought to call you!” “Talk about a quick mind in a crisis!” “I never would have thought of hydrogen peroxide!” “We’re so lucky you were here!” If they were this impressed that she happened to remember one simple fact about hydrogen peroxide, what would they do when they read her published article about ants?

  “Now, Mason,” Mason’s mother said, “even after this washing, he’s still going to smell for a while. You know that, don’t you?”

  Mason looked puzzled. “What if he does?”

  Mason’s mother made her voice firm: “Dog needs to sleep in the garage tonight. I can’t have him smelling up the entire house.”

  “No!” Mason and Brody cried together.

  “It’s cold in the garage!” Mason said.

  “It’s not even going to reach freezing tonight, and Dog has a nice warm fur coat,” Mrs. Dixon pointed out.

  “He’ll think he’s being punished,” Brody said. “He’ll think he did something wrong.”

  “Running after a skunk isn’t the best or smartest thing he’s ever done,” Mason’s father put in.

  “Mom, he doesn’t smell that bad,” Mason insisted. “After a while, you get used to it.”

  “I have no intention of getting used to that smell in my house.”

  This time, both boys seemed to know they were defeated.

  Then Brody’s face brightened. It never took too long for Brody’s face to brighten.

  “Can we sleep in the garage, too?” he asked.

  Even Mason’s face brightened. And it took a lot to make Mason’s face brighten. “So he’ll know we still love him?” he joined in the pleading.

  The four parents exchanged glances. The two sisters exchanged giggles.

  “They do have sleeping bags,” Mason’s mom said slowly.

  “And they can come inside if they get too cold,” Brody’s mom added.

  “Hooray!” Brody said. “Dog, we’re going to have a sleepover all night in the garage! You and Mason and me. And Nora! Nora, can you come, too?”

  Nora hesitated. She was fond of Mason. She was fond of Brody. She was fond of Dog. But friendship had its limits.

  “I think Nora has too much sense to want to sleep on a hard cement floor next to a stinking dog in an unheated garage in the middle of January,” Mrs. Dixon said. “Am I correct, Nora?”

  “I do need to get home,” Nora said, trying to sound more reluctant than she actually felt.

  Right this minute she was extra-glad that she had pets that didn’t chase after skunks and get themselves banished to spending the night outside.

  She took one last look at Brody and Mason. Both boys had laid their heads against Dog’s broad back, one on each side, apparently not minding his dampness and smell.

  Then she walked home under the golden streetlights to spend a cozy, warm evening indoors with her ants.

  “So let’s talk about persuasive speeches,” Coach Joe said in the Monday-morning huddle. “What’s the point of a persuasive speech?”

  Nora hated when teachers asked questions that had super-obvious answers. She would feel silly raising her hand and saying, “The point of a persuasive speech is to try to persuade somebody of something so that they end up persuaded.”

  Emma never minded stating the obvious. “To persuade somebody,” she said.

  “Great!”

  Emma gave a simpering little smile at Coach Joe’s recognition of her brilliance.

  “So what does that mean?” This time, fortunately, Coach Joe answered his own question. “It means that the person you’re trying to persuade isn’t yet persuaded, right? So what you’re really trying to do in a persuasive speech is to change someone’s mind. The audience for your speech is someone who isn’t already rooting for your team. You want to make new fans, not play to the same fans you’ve had all season.”

  “You’re never going to change some people’s minds,” Mason said. If Emma was the master of stating the obvious, Mason was the master of stating the negative.

  “True,” Coach Joe said. “You’re completely right, Mason. Some people are just never going to be convinced by any challenge to what
they already think. Patrick Henry and Thomas Paine, two of the best persuasive-speech writers of the American Revolution, knew they were never going to convince King George the Third or die-hard British loyalists. So who were they trying to convince?”

  Nora raised her hand this time. “People who hadn’t made up their minds yet. People who were torn between both sides.”

  “Exactly. So maybe I misspoke earlier. The goal isn’t so much to change someone’s mind; that can be pretty tough, as our friend Mason pointed out. The goal of a persuasive speech is to help someone make up her mind. But that means speaking to the part of her mind that is tempted to favor the other side.”

  Some of the kids in the huddle had tuned out. Emma was fiddling with her charm bracelet, a silver chain hung with lots of little silver cats in different poses. Dunk, still made to sit right next to Coach Joe, appeared to be sleeping. Dunk’s idea of persuading somebody would be threatening to sic his awful dog, Wolf, on them if they didn’t give in.

  “So,” Coach Joe said, clearly realizing that he was losing half his team, “step one in writing a persuasive speech is figuring out your subject. But step two is equally important: figuring out your audience. Huddle dismissed. Back to your seats. You can talk quietly to your pod mates about your ideas. Just remember to ask: Who would be disagreeing with me? And why?”

  Nora sat in a six-desk pod this month with Brody, Emma, and three other boys she didn’t know very well. Coach Joe liked to move kids around. He called it changing the lineup. Poor Mason and Amy were currently in a pod with Dunk.

  “So what do you want to write your persuasive speech about?” Nora asked. Someone needed to take charge of pod discussions, and that someone usually turned out to be her. At least it was easier to lead a discussion than it was to de-skunk a dog.

  “I don’t know,” Jack said.

  “I don’t know,” Nahil said.

  “I don’t know,” Austin said.

  Or maybe de-skunking a dog was easier.

  “I know what I’m going to write about,” Brody volunteered. “Mine is going to be great! It’s going to be terrific! If people had only heard my speech in 1775, the whole course of history would have been different!”

  Nora knew Brody well enough to know that he wasn’t really bragging, however braggy he sounded. It was just his way of being enthusiastic. It wasn’t bragging if Dog wagged his tail so hard it practically knocked someone over.

  “Do you want to know what I’m going to write about?” Brody asked the others.

  “No,” Jack, Nahil, and Austin said in unison.

  “Sure,” Nora and Emma said at the same time.

  Brody evidently preferred to listen to Nora and Emma.

  “I’m going to persuade the colonists and the British not to have a war! To work out their differences in a peaceful way! If the British would just lower taxes and not tax things the colonists really love, like tea, the colonists wouldn’t want to revolt, and the British could keep their colonies and get at least some tax money from them, which is better than none. Right? And nobody would die, which is even better. Right? And today we’d all be singing ‘God Save the Queen’ and ‘My Country, ’Tis of Thee,’ which would be perfect, because they both have the same tune anyway.”

  Brody’s face was lit up with excitement. Nora could tell that he was ready to write his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize.

  “I like it,” Emma said.

  Emma usually liked anything any boy wanted her to like, unless it was a boy she really liked, such as Dunk, and then she had to make a big show of pretending to hate it.

  Brody’s eyes sparkled from Emma’s praise. Nora could tell he was waiting for her to praise him, too.

  “Well,” she said slowly, “preventing war is definitely a good thing to do. But don’t you think the colonists already tried to make persuasive speeches to get their demands met? They didn’t start out planning to go to war. War was their last resort, wasn’t it?”

  “Of course they tried,” Brody agreed. “But I’m going to try harder. I’m going to try better.”

  “What are you going to write about?” Nora asked Emma.

  “I’m going to write about”—Emma had raised her voice, clearly so that the people in the next pod would be able to hear her—“how cats are better than dogs.”

  Dunk got up from his pod and walked over to theirs.

  “Oh yeah?” he said.

  Emma giggled.

  Dunk leaned in closer. “Well, I just decided what I’m going to write about.”

  Nora could tell that Dunk was relieved to have any idea at all.

  “I’m going to write about how dogs are better than cats.”

  Emma giggled again.

  “Dunk, back to your seat,” Coach Joe called out.

  “What do you think of my idea?” Emma asked her pod mates once Dunk had stomped away.

  Jack, Nahil, and Austin shrugged.

  “The problem with it is,” Brody said, “that cats aren’t better than dogs. Dunk is right.” Certainly, this was the first time Brody had ever given Dunk credit for being right about anything. “My dog is the best animal in the whole world. No, in the whole universe.”

  “Nora, what do you think?” Emma asked, obviously hoping that the girls could stick together.

  Nora copied her father and thought for a moment before answering.

  “Actually, I don’t think dogs are better or cats are better. Or pigs or porcupines. Animals aren’t better or worse. They just are. That’s like asking, ‘Which are better, girls or boys?’ ”

  “Girls!” Emma said, just as Jack, Nahil, and Austin said, “Boys!”

  Brody didn’t cast a vote on that one. He evidently didn’t feel as strongly about boys versus girls as he did about dogs versus cats.

  Nora shook her head. She should have realized that was a bad example.

  “Anyway,” she said, “it’s good that our pod has a dog person and a cat person. It’s like what Coach Joe said. You have to try to persuade people who don’t already agree with you. So Emma can try to persuade Brody.”

  Except that would be impossible.

  “What about you, Nora?” Brody asked. “What are you going to write about?”

  How ants are better than anything?

  How people, such as Emma, should know more about science?

  How there should be more famous women scientists, like Marie Curie? And, soon, Nora Alpers?

  “I don’t know,” Nora admitted.

  And then she realized that she sounded exactly like Jack, Nahil, and Austin.

  After school on Monday, Nora went over to Mason’s house to visit Dog and see how he was recovering from his encounter with the skunk.

  “He doesn’t smell at all anymore,” Brody assured her as the three of them walked the few blocks to Mason’s house. Mason’s mom worked at home, editing an online knitting newsletter, so she was always there to welcome Mason and his friends.

  “Well, he still smells a little bit,” Mason corrected. “My parents looked it up on the Internet, and it’s going to take a while for the skunk smell to go away completely.”

  “Like how long?” Nora asked.

  “A couple of months,” Mason admitted.

  “So not very long at all!” Brody added.

  When Dog ran up to greet them, tail wagging, Nora thought he smelled a lot.

  “I know,” Mason’s mom said, in response to Nora’s involuntarily wrinkled nose. “But I can’t make him sleep in the garage forever. The three of you must be hungry. How about some roasted red pepper hummus and pita bread?”

  “Hummus and pita sounds lovely,” Nora said politely, even though she wasn’t sure about the roasted red pepper part.

  Brody, who liked all foods, nodded in happy agreement.

  Mason had already gone to the pantry and grabbed a bag of Fig Newtons. Mason liked to eat the same foods over and over again: macaroni and cheese (from a box), peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, Cheerios (plain), and F
ig Newtons (the original figgy kind).

  “Fig Newtons, anyone?” he offered.

  “Mason,” his mother said, watching him put two Fig Newtons on a small plate and pour himself a glass of milk. “How do you know you aren’t going to like hummus if you’ve never even tried it?”

  “I don’t have to try it to know it isn’t Fig Newtons,” Mason replied. “I don’t have to try—what was that thing you tried to make me eat the other day? Baba something—baba smoosh?”

  “Baba ghanoush,” his mother said. “A delicious Middle Eastern dish of mashed eggplant and tahini.”

  “Baba whatever,” Mason said. “I rest my case. I don’t have to try mashed eggplant to know that it isn’t macaroni and cheese. Even the word eggplant gives me the creeps. Doesn’t it give you the creeps?” he asked Nora and Brody.

  “Well, no,” Nora said, even though she hated to side against Mason. Words weren’t creepy; they were just words. Besides, lots of people thought things were creepy, like worms, spiders, snakes, and even ants, just because they didn’t know anything about them. Mason’s mother was right. Mason should give hummus and baba ghanoush a chance.

  “Eggplant sounds like a plant that has eggs growing on it,” Brody said. “That’s weird, but not creepy weird, just funny weird.”

  “Mason,” his mother said sadly, “what do I have to do to persuade you to at least try something new?”

  Mason gave no reply. He just took another bite of Fig Newton.

  Aside from smelling like burnt rubber, Dog was his old self, eager to go outside and dash after the battered tennis ball they threw for him in the yard. Even if he would never break any Guinness World Records for tennis ball fetching, he darted after the ball as quickly as if he were a dog with four legs.

  “Guess what my mom is trying to make me do once basketball ends?” Mason asked. By his tone, Nora could tell he thought it was something extremely terrible.

  “Voice lessons,” Nora guessed. The music teacher at Plainfield Elementary was always telling Mason what a lovely voice he had, and Nora knew Mason lived in dread of being made to take voice lessons.