8 Class Pets + 1 Squirrel ÷ 1 Dog = Chaos (4 page)

The big noisy creature continued to follow the squirrel. The big noisy creature had something trailing from him, the way sometimes a crab will have seaweed trailing from itself. It was long and white, and it got wrapped around things, and it knocked over a big plant by the man's desk. Dirt and leaves fell out.

The big noisy creature tried to follow the squirrel up onto the man's desk, and that sent more books and papers and pencils onto the floor. A picture of the man's family fell as well, and his souvenir mug from MarineLand—which looks like a wondrous place.

The squirrel went up the stand that holds the globe. But then he stepped onto the globe. The globe
spun. The squirrel spun. The squirrel flew through the air and landed on the big noisy creature's head.

The big noisy creature was so startled, he made his own water right there on the floor.

The squirrel and his friend darted out the door.

“In a school!” we called after them.

The big noisy creature followed them.

But the long white thing that was not seaweed must have gotten wrapped around the cart that makes our pond move, the cart that the little men are not supposed to lean on.

We began to move, dragged along by the big noisy creature. Our pond swayed and bumped behind him as he ran.

We continued to swim, safe, in a school, in a school.

Hola!

That's one of my favorite words because I come from Puerto Rico, and that's how people there say “hello.” The Spanish for “please” is
por favor
, and “thank you” is
gracias
. Those three words cover a variety of situations.

Another of my favorite words is “Nevermore” because that's a refrain in a poem called “The Raven.” A refrain is a word you say over and over. I like to say words over and over.

But I don't like to say, “Polly wants a cracker.” I don't know why some people think I should.

My name isn't even Polly. My name is Lenore, and it comes from that same raven poem.

But I'm not a raven. I am a blue and gold macaw, which is a kind of parrot.

Luckily, I
love
poetry. My owner—her name is Rosa DaSilva—she says that since we both come from Puerto Rico, poetry is in our blood. (Along with our accents, I guess.) Here is a poem I have been working on:

Okay, okay, I'm still working on it.

Some of those fourth-graders, believe me, their poems aren't any better.

Good poetry or bad, I like being in school with Rosa and the kids.

When Rosa first got me, she'd leave me home while she went to the school to teach. All day long, nobody else was there: Mr. DaSilva works in a bank;
the DaSilva kids go to their own schools. Being alone made me crazy. I started to pluck my feathers. That made
Rosa
crazy. She was like, “Eeek! I'm going to end up with a bald bird!”

Now she brings me to the classroom where she teaches. The kids there call her Mrs. DaSilva instead of Rosa. When we're in school, I have to remember to call her Mrs. DaSilva, too.

This is hard to remember. I also have to remember there are other words I'm not supposed to say in school, either.

I think school has too many rules.

Sometimes if Rosa and her family have to go someplace and stay out late, she'll leave me here in the classroom overnight. That's okay; I don't mind. Once in a while.

That's how I got to meet the squirrel.

This is what happened: One day this squirrel, he comes running in—I've seen him before, but I don't
know his name—and he's got this big ugly dog chasing him.

And the dog's got a fish tank on a rolling cart chasing
him
.

The squirrel, he can't fly, but he knows
up
is safer than
down
. He goes running up the stand that holds my cage, then he sits on top and yells down to the dog, “You're ugly, and your mother has fleas.”

I don't know about the mama with the fleas, but I think to myself, Surely this dog can't argue about ugly.

Señor
Dog, he's jumping up in the air, trying to tip the cage over, and he goes, “Yeah, you rodent? You come down here and say that.”

The water in the fish tank is going
slosh! slosh!

“Whoa,
chicos!
” I tell them. “Careful of the innocent bystander!”

There's a little rat, too, but
Señor
Dog isn't interested in him—just the squirrel. The rat calls up to the squirrel, “I'll get help so there's more of us, like the fish said.”

The dog keeps barking, so I start squawking. The squirrel is making my cage sway like the boat that brought me here. I say to the squirrel, “You ever hear the term
seasick
?”

Next thing I know, the rat comes running back in with a hamster and a rabbit.

It's like a convention of small mammals.

Plus fish.

But the dog, he ignores them all and keeps yapping at the squirrel.

And those small mammal guys, they don't know what to do. They're just running around in circles. The rat squeaks, “Somebody do something!” The hamster is trying to count how many of them there are, but every time somebody moves, he loses track and has to start all over. The rabbit is full of useless advice. She's all like: “Don't let him get you!”

I think the squirrel already thought of that.

The fish look like they're beginning to get seasick, too.

Then Wham! Bam! That clumsy dog knocks my cage down.

My feathers are ruffled, but I don't get hurt, because I land on a pile of papier-mâché fruits and vegetables the kids have been making for some sort of art contest.

“Sorry!” the squirrel says to me as he dashes for the door, but the dog, he's so rude, he never says a
word of apology. He's just all: “Get back here, you . . . you . . . squirrel!”

The fish, still dragged along behind on that bumping, swaying, sloshing cart, are all like, “
Glug, glug
.”

The rat and the others, they start to follow.

I squawk:

The rat is the only one left, slowest because he's always staying close to the walls, not wanting to cross the open space of the room.

So he comes back and unlatches my cage.

Sometimes people who come to visit Mrs. Hinkle's room get confused. They ask, “Is he a turtle or a tortoise?”

Mrs. Hinkle says, “
Nancy
is a
she
, not a he. And
she
is a turtle.”

Mrs. Hinkle and I, we think there's a big difference between turtles and tortoises. We can't see how people get confused.

By the end of a year of art class, Mrs. Hinkle's students will never again be the kind of people who get confused about this.

Tortoises live on dry land, but we turtles spend most of our time in the water, but sometimes we like to have dry land to crawl up on. My beautiful glass case has both, along with a nice heat lamp to keep me warm. Mmmm. Nice and warm and cozy. Mmmmm . . .

I'm sorry. I fell asleep there under the lamp.

Where was I?

Oh yes, I am a mud turtle, so I'll never grow bigger than six inches. This makes me the right size for Mrs. Hinkle to sometimes take me out of my glass case and set me on the table so the boys and girls can see me better. “Don't poke at Nancy or try to pick her up,” Mrs. Hinkle says. “She's very shy.”

It's nice to have someone else around to explain that you're not unfriendly but only shy.

Mrs. Hinkle teaches art.

Even though I'm shy, I like that the children ask if I can come out of my case so they can use me as a model. Mrs. Hinkle gives me a piece of melon or lettuce to munch on so that I will stay still and not explore the table too much while my picture is being drawn.

I like to have my picture drawn.

But I also like to draw my own pictures.

Sometimes Mrs. Hinkle pours food coloring onto
a piece of foil and lets me walk through it. Then she sets down a piece of art paper and I walk onto that, leaving colored footprints with my little webbed feet.

“We don't put paint on a turtle's shell,” Mrs. Hinkle says. “But a little bit of food coloring won't hurt Nancy's feet.”

One afternoon, after waking up from a nap and finding that all the children—and Mrs. Hinkle, too—had left, I was admiring all the new pictures Mrs. Hinkle had hung up that day. The children had been very excited and had talked about the artist who would be visiting the next day—an artist who was going from school to school to judge pictures and give out prizes for the best pictures. I think the best pictures are the ones with me in them.

But all of a sudden there was a commotion in the hall, so I pulled myself into my shell in case there was danger.

Good thing, because the noise came into the classroom. A dog was barking, a parrot was squawking, a squirrel was shouting, “Help! Help! The nasty, smelly dog wants to eat me!” and a hamster, a rabbit, and a rat were yelling, “Run, Twitch, run!” The wheels of the cart the dog was pulling went
squeak! squeal!
And the fish in the tank on the cart were yelling in their tiny fish voices, “School! School!”