Grasshopper Glitch (5 page)

“I'm more worried about what Miss Mellor will think. We could get detention for a week!” said Josh. He rubbed his legs nervously against his wings.

“Ooh!” Making the noise himself, it was incredibly loud and croaky. “That's how grasshoppers make their chirruping noise!”

“Careful,” said Danny, looking around. “It's bad enough being chased by stupid kids who want to squash you. You don't want to attract predators too! What eats grasshoppers, Josh?”

Josh gulped. “Well…we don't taste great. That's why we're quite bright green and shiny. It's to warn anything that wants to eat us that we're a bit—I dunno—sour. We're still not safe though. Birds, mice, snakes, spiders. All the usual ones. They'll try. We should keep moving. We need to get the antidote.”

Danny nodded. “Which way, do you think?”

“That way,” said Josh. He waved his feelers firmly to his left. He didn't know how he could be so sure. It was something to do with the way the sun was shining and the smell in the air. He felt a rumble inside him. He hadn't had much lunch.

“I'm starving,” said Danny. They catapulted themselves high into the air again. Of course, he hadn't had any lunch at all. “Wooooo-hooo! Oh yeah! No, I'm really hungry.”

“Of course,” called Josh. He flew alongside his brother with his rather dashing green cloak wings.

“Grasshoppers are big eaters. They eat at least sixteen times their own body weight—every day! I'm hungry too. But we can't stop.”

Three seconds later they stopped. They landed on a large leafy bush that grew up against a low brick wall. It smelled as good to them as a doughnut factory at snack time. Josh found himself cramming his mouth with thick, juicy chunks of green leaf.

Danny settled on a leaf next to him. He began to demolish it with loud chomping noises.

“Ooooooh, this is so good!” munched Danny. “How come we never ate leaves before? There's tons in our garden! We just ignore them…”

When the empty feeling inside him began to ease off, Josh looked up. He was surprised to see that Danny had stopped eating. Danny's big green eyes were bulging. Suddenly Danny spat out something brown and sticky right onto his lovely leaf.

“UGGGH! MANNERS, PLEASE!” said Josh. “Did you eat a gross piece?”

Danny shook his head. He stared at Josh, his enormous eyes shining like glass beads. Somewhere in his brain Josh knew that spitting brown stuff was a bad sign. It was something grasshoppers did when—

“JUMP!” yelled Danny. He pinged up into the sky. Which helped Josh to remember. Ah yes…grasshoppers chucked up brown goo out of fear. Usually fear of…PREDATORS!

All Josh saw, when he finally turned around, was a huge mouth. A gigantic pink diamond-shaped pair of jaws with sharp white fangs and a pointed pink tongue with hundreds of spikes on it. Blecch! He spat out his own brown blob.

His slingshot legs threw him high into the air. But then he collided, with a whump, against a thick furry log, which was falling from the sky.

When five razor-sharp white claws shot out of it, Josh realized that it was actually a paw.

He found himself splatted back down on the leafy wall, with a gigantic furry face pressed right against him. A moist pink nose nudged him, and a fan of fine white spiky things drooped down on either side of him. Whiskers. A gust of meaty breath blew him over.

Josh realized he was about to be eaten by a cat.

High above Josh, Danny clung to a springy twig. He stared down in horror at the enormous furry monster that was sniffing and biffing at his brother.

“JOOOOOOOOOOSH!” he bellowed. He couldn't hear anything except a scarily loud thrumming, wheezing noise. He realized it was the cat. The cat was purring! Poor Josh. He liked cats. So did Danny. Usually cats purred when they were getting some milk or being stroked. Not when they were about to bite you in half.

Danny jumped down onto the cat's head. He landed up to his armpits (or leg pits, depending on how you looked at it) in thick tabby fur. The cat's right ear flicked once. But it was so fascinated by its prey it didn't try to shake Danny off. Hanging on to the fur, Danny leaned out to see if Josh was OK.

At least he couldn't feel, hear, or—worse—smell the cat chewing on anything.

Far below he could see Josh trying to crawl away from the cat's paw, so he could jump away. But the cat kept following him along the top of the wall, keeping its paws or nose just above him, so he couldn't escape.

“JOSH!” yelled Danny, tilting his head back so he could hear better (his ears, it turned out, were on his belly). “Are you all right?”

“Yes—but I can't jump away. It's playing cat and mouse with me!” shouted back Josh.

“Maybe it won't eat you,” called Danny, trying not to squeak with fright. “Maybe it just wants to play.”

“Oh yes—that'll be it,” squawked Josh, dodging a claw as it swiped past his feelers. “It only wants to be friends! In a “slash my head off” kind of way. That's nice then.”

Danny racked his brain, trying to figure out what he could do. How could he distract the cat? He edged over its brow and wondered about jumping into its eye. But a thicket of eyebrow hairs, almost as long as its whiskers, sprouted out above the nearest glinting green orb. He'd never get past that before he got a claw stuck through his innards.

What about the ear though?

He hopped across to a triangular tent of cat skin and peered around the edge of it. It was a bit like a teepee inside, with tufts of fine fur lightly covering soft pink and gray skin. It was quite cozy, really. It was waggling about a bit as the cat's head switched from side to side, eagerly watching the tormented victim between its paws. There was even a pet in the ear tent. A surprised-looking flea was drinking what looked like juice through a straw poked somewhere down inside the tufty fur. The flea stared at Danny and paused, mid-slurp. There was a small pop and the straw snapped back into its brown shiny face. It burped. “Pardon!” it said. It waved a short, hairy, black foreleg in front of its mouthparts.

“Better out than in,” said Danny.

“EEEAAARGH!” shrieked Josh below. The cat's mouth was descending on him again. Its spiky pale pink tongue was scooping out to flip him back between its razor-sharp teeth. He could see the roof of its mouth, a dome of tough, wet, ribbed skin. He knew he would be mashed against it any second now.

Danny lost no time. He jumped into the cat's ear and started rubbing his legs and wings together in a frenzy. The noise, in the confined space, was deafening. The flea hopped out in an instant.

“MEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAH!” yowled the cat. It flipped over like a furry tiddlywink, pounding both paws against its ear. Danny shot clear with just a millisecond to spare. Josh flipped up past him, looking very…well…green.

“Th-that…was t-too…c-close,” he stuttered as they flew away. “I was just about to be cat chewing gum.”

They both shuddered with relief as they flew down over the fence around the park.

“We've got to get to Petty. We can't risk any more stops,” said Josh. He looked left and right as they glided low across the grass. “It's not safe down there!”

VROOOOOM! Danny ducked in the air. He swooped sideways as a dark shadow flitted past him. “It's not safe up here, either!” he yelled. He looked up to see a dark flash of feathers and claws zooming around in a circle above them. A starling. Its sleek oil-colored feathers glinted in the sun. It turned back to have another try at pecking him out of the air.

“DOWN!” shrieked Josh. He dropped like a stone into the grass. Danny followed. Two thuds later, they were hidden in a thicket of green that rose just above their heads. Breathlessly they crouched and waited. “Don't move!” whispered Josh. “It will only see us if we move.” The starling swooped low over the grass. It made an ear-splitting screechy noise and then flew away.

“It didn't see us!” gasped Danny. “It couldn't make us out. Look! We're exactly the same color as the grass!”

“Camouflage,” said Josh. His feelers quivered with shock. “We're meadow grasshoppers. Designed to look nearly invisible in grass.”