Mouse Noses on Toast (6 page)

F
URTHER ALONG THE TOP SHELF, IN A DARK AND DUSTY
corner, Sandra had found a box marked MOUSE NOSES WHISKERS ON. The top was open, but the box lay on its side and some of the noses had spilled out.

Paul stood with his paws on his hips, knee-deep in noses. Graham was there too. Larry had stayed under the floorboards. He had important work to do, he said, organizing the campaign.

“We should take some down for Larry,” Graham said.

“No,” Sandra said, “I have a better idea.”

A minute later, Larry looked up to see a huge sheet of cardboard drop through the floorboards. The words MOUSE NOSES WHISKERS ON were printed across it in big letters. Larry was halfway through reading the word
ON when a second sheet of cardboard landed on his head.

“They’re flaps,” Paul said.

“From a cardboard box,” Graham added.

“Graham tore them off with his bare paws,” Sandra said.

“A box?” Larry said, scratching his ears. “A box of noses?”

The second cardboard flap was blank on both sides. Graham ripped it into several cardboard squares, and Sandra glued a matchstick to each square to make them into signs. Larry wrote a message on each with a huge felt-tip pen. HANDS OFF OUR NOSES, read one. MOUSE NOSES SMELL, read another.

“That one doesn’t make sense,” Paul said.

“It’s a double meaning,” Larry explained. “What’s the old joke about the dog with no nose?”

The twins knew the joke, and told it together.

“My dog has no nose.”

“How does it smell?”

“Terrible!”

Paul looked at the sign. “It still doesn’t make sense.”

The plan was to protest in the restaurant itself, to make the customers think twice before ordering mouse noses on toast. Everyone agreed that this was a good plan, but it did
have one flaw. If the chef caught them, he would chop them up with a knife.

Paul shook his head. “I don’t like the sound of this.”

Larry picked up his sign. JUST BECAUSE WE SQUEAK, it read, DOESN’T MEAN WE’RE MEEK.

“Look,” he said, “can we just get on with it? There are mouses having their noses cut off this very moment.”

Larry could be very persuasive at times, and this was one of those times. When he marched out of the dusty storeroom that warm afternoon, his sign held high above his head, the mouses followed.

It is rare to see twenty-five mouses and a Christmas-tree decoration marching across the floor of a posh restaurant chanting protest songs and waving cardboard signs. The customers carried on eating at first, not believing their eyes. Then, when they realized that the mouses were real, the restaurant erupted as customers ran screaming from the room.

For Sandra and the mouses it was as though the sky were falling in, as stilettos, shoes and boots crashed down all around.

“Back to the storeroom!” Larry yelled.

They didn’t need telling twice.

“T
HAT WAS A DISASTER
,” P
AUL SAID, SHAKING HIS SORRY EARS.

Sandra and the mouses were sprawled out in the mousehole, under the dusty storeroom. Sandra was trying to straighten her halo, which had been bent in the stampede.

“A disaster?” Larry said, standing up. “It all went perfectly to plan.”

Graham laughed. “Just like your protest in the old wooden house!”

“The protest in the house was not a complete success, I admit,” Larry said, wiping his sunglasses on his fur. “But a good leader learns from his mistakes, and I will learn from mine.”

“Then learn from this one,” Graham said, “and cancel the campaign.”

Larry was dumbstruck. “Cancel the campaign? Graham, do you realize what happened up there? We emptied the restaurant. Some of those customers will never return. A few more demonstrations like that and mouse noses on toast will be taken off the menu, for good.”

“If you think we’re going back up there,” Paul said, “you’re crazy.”

Larry was pacing the room, stepping over his exhausted friends. “Losers. That’s what you lot are. Losers.”

“I’m a loser all right,” Paul said. “A loser with a blue bottom, and bruises all the way up his tail.”

“At least you still have your nose,” Larry said. “Unlike thousands of other mouses standing noseless in some nose-removal factory.”

Larry paused for effect, then continued.

“Noses in boxes, noses in the back of a truck, noses on toast. Noses gurgling about in a horrible human tummy. It’s enough to make you sick.”

No one said anything to this. What could they say? Larry was right, and only a mouse with an apple pip for a
heart could hear his words and not feel moved.

Larry leaned against the wall, scratching his ears in thought. “What we need now,” he said, “is Direct Action. We strike, and we strike hard.”

“How do you mean?” Paul said, standing up.

“If they want noses, we give them noses. More noses than they can stomach!”

T
HEY HAD THE NOSES, A HUGE BOXFUL.
T
HE PROBLEM
was how to transport them to the room above the dining area without being seen.

“We set up a system of pulleys,” one of the mouses suggested. “Out the storeroom window, up and in.”

“Too complicated,” Larry said.

“I could carry them up,” Graham said, flexing his muscles.

“Too heavy,” Larry said.

“We throw them up the stairs one at a time,” one of the twins suggested.

“Too tiring,” Larry said.

“We eat them,” the other twin said, “scamper up the stairs and be sick.”

“Too disgusting,” Larry said.

The youngest of the mouses, a tiny, squeaky mouse named Inch, thought they should use magic.

“Too impossible,” Larry said.

“We tie the whiskers together to form a mouse-nose snake,” Paul said, “and drag them up.”

“Too stupid,” Larry said.

“We build a time machine,” said a mouse who had watched too much Cheddar Television, “and travel to a time in the future when the problem has been solved.”

“Too idiotic,” Larry said.

It was Sandra who came up with the best idea. “All we need to do,” she said cleverly, “is give the dog a bone. We buy Rowley Barker Hobbs a bone as a present, and he will carry the noses for us.”

There was one problem. They didn’t have any money, and you can’t buy a bone without money, not even in a story.

“Where is Rowley Barker Hobbs?” Larry asked.

“Out on the sidewalk,” Paul replied.

“He’s been waiting out there all this time?”

Paul nodded. He knew Rowley Barker Hobbs like the back of his paw, and he knew that the shaggy sheepdog would never wander off without saying hello.

“It seems to me,” Larry said, “that Rowley Barker Hobbs is the most patient dog in the world. I suggest we write him an IOU and buy the bone later.”

“What’s an IOU?” squeaked Inch.

“An IOU is a piece of paper that means I owe you something,” Larry explained. “The something is whatever is written on the piece of paper.”

“Or drawn on the piece of paper,” Sandra said. “Rowley Barker Hobbs can’t read.”

The next problem was how to lower the box of noses to the storeroom floor. They needed string, and they had none.

It was Graham who solved this problem. He emptied the noses onto the shelf and sent the cardboard box sailing down to the dusty storeroom floor, just as Sandra had done with the wine bottle. They only had
to shove the noses off the shelf and they would land in the box with a soggy plop.

While this was going on, Sandra set about unlocking the window. She did this by bending her halo into the shape of a key. Rowley Barker Hobbs said hello to the glass with his paws. The window swung open and in he leaped, wagging his happy tail.

“Mr. Hobbs,” said Larry, the only mouse who had remained on the storeroom floor, “we have a bone for you. Well, a picture of a bone. The real bone comes later. First, we need your help.”

“Why aren’t you shoving noses?” Paul said, tapping Larry on the shoulder.

“Someone has to keep an eye on the box,” Larry replied, and Paul had to admit, he had a point. “What about you, Paul? Why aren’t you shoving noses?”

“I was shoving noses,” Paul said. “I just came down to find out why you aren’t shoving noses.”

Graham had come down too. He stepped out from behind Paul and gave Larry an army salute. “Noses shoved, sir.”

“Right,” Larry said, clapping his paws. “Are you ready, Mr. Hobbs?”

Rowley Barker Hobbs was always ready. That was what being the most patient dog in the world was all about.