They turned round to see the Komodo dragon doing her best dinosaur impression.
“ARRRGGH!” screamed the boys again.
As the trio backed away from the dragon, the umbrellabird attacked from above, whacking them on the back of their heads with his long wattle.
Despite priding themselves on being the toughest children in the school, the bullies all screamed,
But no help came.
It was as if Sir Basil was a conductor and the animals were his orchestra.
Next, the marabou stork took to the air, with three friends on board. The star-nosed mole was clinging on to one foot. The pig-nosed frog was gripping on to the other. The proboscis monkey was dingle-dangling from the stork’s dingly-dangly neck.
boomed Sir Basil.
The three animals let go of the bird and fell through the air, landing one by one on top of the bullies’ heads.
It was the attack of the noses!
The star-nosed mole tickled under Baz’s chin with his wormy bits.
“HA! HA!” the boy laughed. But it was an agonising laugh. A laugh of pain. “No, no! I’m going to wet myself!”
The pig-nosed frog did a sneeze with her snout …
… and snotted into Gaz’s face.
“AAAH! I can’t see! I have frog snot in my eyes!”
Finally, the proboscis monkey his head from side to side, bashing Stubbs in the face with his long red hooter.
“OW! OW! OW!” screamed Stubbs.
The children all with laughter.
“HA! HA! HA!”
But no one laughed louder than Bob.
“HA! HA! HA! HA! HA!”
“NO!” cried the headmistress. “THIS IS THE WORST SCHOOL TRIP EVER!”
But she was wrong. This was the best school trip ever.
The three bullies stumbled around the zoo, desperate to find a way out. The dugong climbed the rocks at the side of her tank and took a giant leap into the water.
The trio were soaked.
Baz started blubbing. “Why are all the animals picking on us?”
“NOW!” boomed Sir Basil again from the top of the aviary. Winston cleared the way through the crowds for the sloth, who for the first time ever was riding on the back of the tapir. Slowly but surely, the sloth slapped the tapir’s bottom. As the tapir charged at the boys, the sloth looked very startled. She had never gone so fast in all her life.
The bullies retreated, only to be tripped up by the snapping turtle’s shell. The three tumbled backwards, the turtle snapping at their heels as they fell.
Gaz’s bottom landed on the spikes on the echidna’s back.
the boy wailed.
Baz’s bottom landed on the sharp tusks of the warthog. One tusk for each cheek.
Stubbs glanced behind him. There was nothing for him to fall back on, so he looked smug. However, the hamadryas baboon leaped off the top of her enclosure and landed on the hooded seal’s balloon-like nose.
The baboon bounced up into the air …
Her bright red bottom went flying straight towards Stubbs’s face …
If you’ve never had a baboon’s bottom in your face, I wouldn’t recommend it. It’s very overrated.
Gaz and Baz snorted with laughter.
“HO! HO! HO!”
The two henchmen thought they’d got away. They were wrong.
The elephant seal lolloped across the ground. Using his stumpy trunk, he scooped the three boys up one by one. As they desperately clung to the giant animal’s back, he used his huge flippers to leap up into the air.
screamed the boys.
The elephant seal landed in a water tank with a ginormous
As the three boys’ heads bobbed up, the spotted handfish swam towards them. The half-hand/half-fish shot out of the water and, with a series of leaps, slapped each one of the bullies around the face.
All three had big red handfish marks across their cheeks.
You might have thought this was plenty of humiliation, but no. There was still one more creature waiting for his chance to avenge Bob.
His friend Blob.
Bob beamed as he saw his special friend the blobfish leap from his tank into the spotted handfish’s.
Stubbs, Baz and Gaz screamed in terror as the world’s ugliest creature swam straight towards them.
The other children all looked on with interest. What was this fish, that looked like a dropped blancmange, going to do?
“GET AWAY FROM US!” cried the boys in terror.
“NOW!” ordered Sir Basil one last time.
First the blobfish swam up to Gaz, and gave him a big kiss on the lips.
uttered the boy.
Next the blobfish swam up to Baz, and gave him an even bigger kiss on the lips.
Stubbs desperately tried to escape. He swam as far away as he could, and clung to the side of the tank.
One by one, the spotted handfish bent back the boy’s fingers. Then the elephant seal hooked his trunk round the back of the boy’s trousers and dragged him back into the middle of the tank.
Finally, the blobfish took a long swim-upfn1 and sped through the water towards Stubbs. The boy tried to cry out, but it was impossible to make a sound. The blobfish had pushed his big, pink, blubbery lips right up against the boy’s.
Their kiss made a noise like air slowly escaping from a balloon.
The kiss was so strong that Stubbs passed out.
The boy lay motionless in the water.
“NOOOO!” cried Miss Veer.
fn1 a fishy term for run-up
“This will not look good for Grottington!” spluttered the headmistress. “This will not look good at all. And we have the school inspectors coming next week! They’re bound to notice if a child is missing!”
Winston tried to clamber up into the tank, but he lost his footing and landed in a heap in the mud.
As much as Bob didn’t like the bully, he didn’t want to see him drown. He had to think fast.
He saw that the Komodo dragon was standing by Blob’s tank. Remembering the time when the bullies had made him walk up a dinosaur’s skeleton, he ran up the back of the Komodo dragon.
Then the boy leaped off the creature’s head into the tank below.
Bob grabbed Stubbs under the chin and swam to the side of the tank. Gaz and Baz helped push their friend out of the water, and clambered to safety.
All the schoolchildren lifted Stubbs and laid him gently on the ground. Now they felt sorry for him. He was just a short little boy, after all.
The pangolin, no longer rolled up into a ball, pushed past the crowd. She stuck out her long, sticky tongue …
… and licked the boy back to life.
Slowly Stubbs came round. The bully opened his eyes, and looked surprised to see it was Bob who was helping him.
“Blob?” murmured Stubbs.
“It’s Bob,” corrected Bob.
“Sorry,” said Stubbs, looking sheepish. “Thank you, Bob.”
Bob helped Stubbs to his feet, and the two boys smiled at each other.
“What an absolutely splendid day out!” announced Miss Veer cheerily, trying to lighten the mood. “Children, I beg of you, please don’t mention a word of this to your parents. I am only a year off retirement.”
The children all nodded their heads and smirked. This had been the best day out.
“Now, no more bullying from you three,” said Bob to Stubbs’s gang. “Or you’ll have this lot to answer to.”
The boy indicated his army of animal friends, who all gathered together and scowled at the three bullies.
“We won’t,” said Stubbs, looking ashamed of himself.
“Definitely won’t!” added Gaz.
“Won’t what?” asked Baz.
A little while later, Miss Veer was leading her Grottington pupils out of the zoo. “Another completely incident-free school trip!” she said brightly.
Just as the party reached the gate, Sir Basil called Bob back.
“Bob!” The man w
as back on the ground now.
“Yes, sir?” replied the boy.
“I have a present for you. Winston?”
The zookeeper appeared with something hidden behind his back.
“What is it?” asked Bob excitedly.
“It’s Blob!” announced Winston, as he revealed the funny-faced fish in a tank.
“BLOB!” shouted the boy, as he ran towards his friend and wrapped his arms round the tank.
Blob swam up to the glass and squashed his already squashed-up face against it.
“Now, young Bob, you need to promise me you’ll take good care of him,” said the zoo owner.
“So I can take him home?!” asked Bob.
“Yes,” replied Sir Basil. “I know he’ll be happiest with you, his best friend in all the world.”
“Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” exclaimed the boy.
“Animals can’t talk,” said Winston. “Well, not to us humans at least, but if Blob could, I know he’d be saying …”
“What?”
“‘… I love you.’”
Bob looked at his new pet. “I wish I could tell him I love him too.”
“He knows,” replied Winston, with a smile.
Bob put Blob’s tank in pride of place in his bedroom, on a box next to his bed.
Blob became part of the family. He ate his meals at the kitchen table with Bob and Grandpa. Sometimes Winston and Sir Basil would join them too.
On Sunday nights, Bob and Blob would even have a bath together.
Bob and Grandpa often took the fish out for a spin on the old man’s mobility scooter.
Every afternoon after school, Grandpa would take his two grandsons, Bob and Blob, to the zoo. They had free entry for life. Blob always looked happy to see his animal friends and Winston again.
Every night the boy went to sleep staring at his friend.
They both had funny faces. It was the best thing in the world.
Footnote
About the Book
fn1 €1.50 in Ireland
All the animals in this story are real. You can learn more about them here.
AYE-AYE: is a type of lemur. It’s nocturnal, which means it likes to come out at night.
BLOBFISH: lives at depths of between 2,000 to 4,000 metres. Its body is jelly-like so it can survive so far underwater without being crushed. It looks very different at the surface than it would do at the bottom of the sea, because down there the weight of the water squashes it into a more fishlike shape. It was recently voted the world’s ugliest animal.
DUGONG: is called a “sea cow” as it feeds mainly on seagrass. It has been hunted by humans for centuries, and now faces extinction.
ECHIDNA: eats ants and termites, and is one of only two mammals that lay eggs.
ELEPHANT SEAL: is a large earless seal that lives in the ocean. It can hold its breath for a hundred minutes!
HAMADRYAS BABOON: was a sacred animal to the ancient Egyptians. It’s sometimes called the “sacred baboon”. You can tell a male from a female as only males have a fur cape.
HOODED SEAL: feeds in very deep waters, sometimes between 100 and 600 metres down, and spends most of its time in the sea. The male has an inflatable hood that it uses for communication and showing off.
KOMODO DRAGON: is actually a very big lizard. It eats mainly meat – like deer – and has been known to attack humans.
MARABOU STORK: has one of the largest wingspans of any bird – nearly three metres. It eats fish, frogs and even crocodile eggs.
PANGOLIN: has large protective scales all over its skin. It lives in hollow trees or burrows under the ground. It only comes out at night, and eats mostly ants and termites.
PROBOSCIS MONKEY: communicates using honks. There is a special honk to reassure baby proboscis monkeys. “Proboscis” is a scientific word for nose.
PURPLE PIG-NOSED FROG: can be found in India. It’s much rounder than other frogs. It spends most of its life underground, but comes up at monsoon (rainstorm) time for mating.
SLOTH: is so slow that it likes to stay up trees where it is safer. It is one of the sleepiest animals in the world, napping for between fifteen to twenty hours a day.
SNAPPING TURTLE: is so called for its beak-like jaws. It tends to hide quietly when in the water, but often snaps when out of it.
SPOTTED HANDFISH: is a very rare type of fish found in the seas around Tasmania. It prefers to walk on the seabed rather than swim.
STAR-NOSED MOLE: uses those twenty-two appendages as an eye to find its way around. You might see one in North America.
TAPIR: lives in jungles and forests. It likes to cool off in water, and can happily walk along a riverbed underwater.
UMBRELLABIRD: is found in the rainforests of Central and South America. The wattle on its neck makes its booming calls louder.
WARTHOG: is a type of pig that you would find in Africa. It eats mainly plants and bugs.
Previously written by David Walliams:
THE BOY IN THE DRESS
MR STINK
BILLIONAIRE BOY
GANGSTA GRANNY
RATBURGER
DEMON DENTIST
AWFUL AUNTIE
GRANDPA’S GREAT ESCAPE
THE WORLD’S WORST CHILDREN
THE MIDNIGHT GANG
Also available in picture book:
THE SLIGHTLY ANNOYING ELEPHANT
THE FIRST HIPPO ON THE MOON
THE QUEEN’S ORANG-UTAN
THE BEAR WHO WENT BOO!
THERE’S A SNAKE IN MY SCHOOL!
About the Publisher
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Toronto, ON, M4W, 1A8, Canada
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Auckland, New Zealand
http://www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
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London, SE1 9GF
http://www.harpercollins.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
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New York, NY 10007
http://www.harpercollins.com
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