Ms. Krup Cracks Me Up! (2 page)

“Bingle boo!” said our bus driver, Mrs. Kormel. “Limpus kidoodle!”

“Bingle boo!” we all said, as we piled onto the bus.

Mrs. Kormel invented her own secret language. So instead of just saying “Hello” and “Sit down,” she says “Bingle
boo” and “Limpus kidoodle.”

Mrs. Kormel is not normal.

I had to lug my sleeping bag with me, because we were going to be spending the whole night in the natural history museum. Just what I always wanted to do, sleep next to boring dead stuff.
^*
At least I had my Batman sleeping bag. Batman is cool.

There were some grown-ups on the bus with us too. Mrs. Daisy and Mr. Macky and Mr. Docker were all there. Ryan's mom, Mrs. Dole, came along as a chaperone. That's a fancy word that means “a
grown-up who hangs around with kids to make sure we don't have any fun.”

“Are we there yet?” I asked Mrs. Kormel as soon as she started driving.

“No, A.J.,” she said.

I kept asking Mrs. Kormel every five minutes if we were there yet. Any time you're in a car or bus, always ask if you're there yet—even if you know perfectly well that you're
not
there yet. That's the first rule of being a kid.

It took a million hundred hours to get to the natural history museum.

“Pinkle burflenobin!” announced Mrs. Kormel when the bus finally stopped.

That means “Everybody get off the bus”
in Mrs. Kormel's secret language.

As soon as we walked into the museum, we heard an announcement: “The museum will be closing in five minutes.”

“Yay!” I shouted. “We can go home!”

“That means everybody
else
has to go home, Arlo,” said Andrea.

“I knew that,” I lied. I hate it when Andrea calls me by my real name.

In the entrance of the museum, I looked up and saw the most amazing thing in the history of the world! It was a huge dinosaur skeleton that just about filled the whole room! Dinosaurs are cool.
^*

“WOW!” everybody said, which is “MOM” upside-down.

“It's a
Giganotosaurus
!” said Andrea. “He was one of the biggest meat-eating dinosaurs in the world—even bigger than
T. rex
!”

“That's right, Andrea!” said Mr. Docker. “How did you know that?”

“I read about the
Giganotosaurus
in my encyclopedia,” said Andrea, all proud of herself. “He weighed eight tons!”

“He should have gone to Weight Watchers,” I said. “My mom
lost twenty pounds that way.”

“Where do you think they got a
Giganotosaurus
?” asked Ryan.

“They probably went to Rent-a-Dinosaur,” Michael said. “You can rent anything.”

Next to the
Giganotosaurus
was a big bear that was standing up on its hind legs like it was about to
attack. It was cool, and scary.

Ryan's mom and the other grown-ups told us to spread out our sleeping bags on the floor underneath
Giganotosaurus
. Then they went off to do boring grownup stuff, like drink coffee and talk about the weather. What's up with that? Grown-ups are always drinking coffee and talking about the weather. I tasted coffee once, and I thought I was gonna throw up. But if they didn't drink coffee and talk about the weather, I don't know
what
grown-ups would do all day. They're weird.

Speaking of grown-ups, I wrote a poem about my dad. It goes like this:

I unrolled my sleeping bag right next to Ryan's. Then I turned around and saw…

THE COOLEST THING IN THE
HISTORY OF THE WORLD!

I'm not gonna tell you what it was.

Okay, okay, I'll tell you. But you have to read the next chapter. So nah-nah-nah boo-boo on you!

It was a candy machine!

“We want candy!” everybody started chanting. “We want candy!”

All the grown-ups came running over from wherever they were drinking coffee and talking about the weather.

“We're not here to eat candy,” Mr. Docker told us. “We're here to learn about dinosaurs and natural history.”

“I could learn a lot more about dinosaurs and natural history if I had candy,” I told him.

“No!”

Sheesh, what an old grouch! Mr. Docker probably knows a lot about dinosaurs because they were around when he was a kid.

We were all grumbling about the candy when I suddenly noticed something out of the corner of my eye. It was even
more
amazing than a candy machine. It was a big, brown, hairy animal with horns and a hump on its back! It was standing very still right next to us.

“What's that?!” Neil the nude kid asked.

“I don't know,” said Mrs. Daisy, who doesn't know anything.

“It's a wild yak!” said Andrea, who
knows everything. “I learned about it in my encyclopedia. Yaks live in Tibet.”

“That yak wasn't here a minute ago,” said Michael.

“Maybe it just walked over,” said Emily.

“It can't
walk
over, dumbhead,” I said. “It's dead.”

Emily looked like she was going to cry. That girl will cry over any old thing.

“Hey, I think that wild yak just moved,” said Neil the nude kid.

“It didn't move,” I told him. “It's stuffed, just like the bear.”

But just then the yak let out a weird yak sound.

“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!” yelled all the boys.

“EEEEEEEEEEEKKKKKKKK!!!” yelled all the girls.

I thought I was gonna die. Everybody was freaking out. That's when the wild yak threw off its wild yak fur. And do you know what was underneath?

A lady!

She had glasses, dark hair, and a pointy nose. On her belt were a walkie-talkie and a flashlight.

“You must be the students from Ella Mentry School!” said the lady. “My name is Ms. Krup. I'll be your tour guide this evening.”

“I almost peed my pants!” said Ryan.

“Sorry I scared you,” Ms. Krup said. “I'm just so excited that you came to spend the evening with me in the museum. We're going to have so much fun!”

“Why are you wearing a wild yak fur?” asked Andrea.

“Well, the wild yak wasn't using it anymore,” said Ms. Krup. “So I thought I would.”

That Ms. Krup lady is weird.

Suddenly, the lights dimmed. “The
museum is now closed,” somebody announced.

It was a little scary in the dark.

Ms. Krup turned on her flashlight. We all gathered around her.

“The museum is a magical place at night,” she whispered as she gave each of us a name tag. “I'm going to take you on a journey. We're going to encounter some amazing creatures and see some incredible
things. If you listen carefully, you can almost hear the sounds of the jungle, the forest, the desert, the mountains, and the ocean.”

“I don't hear anything,” I said.

“She said
almost
, dumbhead,” Andrea told me.

“Well, either you hear something or you don't,” I said. “You can't
almost
hear something.”

“I wish I didn't hear
you
, Arlo.”

I was going to say something mean to Andrea, but I didn't get the chance because a loud
BLEEP
came out of Ms. Krup's walkie-talkie. We all jumped.

“Ms. Krup!” a voice said. “
Tyrannosaurus
rex
is missing!”

“I'm on it, Chief!” said Ms. Krup. “Kids, we've got to find Rexy! Are you ready to go on an adventure?”

“Yes!” said all the girls.

“Can we kill it?” asked all the boys.

“It's already dead, Arlo!” said Andrea, rolling her eyes. “
Tyrannosaurus rex
has been extinct for sixty million years.”

“Your face stinks.”

I bet Ms. Krup was yanking our chain about that missing
T. rex
. Dead stuff can't run away. She was just trying to make the boring museum seem interesting.

“Follow me!” she said.

Ms. Krup took a bunch of flashlights out of a box and gave one to each of us. Then we went off to search for the missing
T. rex
. Everybody was whispering and slinking around like secret agents. It was cool. Me and the guys pointed our flashlights up from our chins and made scary faces
at the girls.

“The first floor of the museum is where we keep most of our dioramas,” said Ms. Krup.

“I had diorama once,” I told her. “My mom gave me some yucky pink medicine and it went away.”

“That's ‘diarrhea,' dumbhead!” Andrea said. “You had diarrhea.”

“So does your face,” I said.

Those diorama things were cool. Each one was a little room with animal statues and scenery behind glass. We saw pandas, gorillas, monkeys, beavers, reindeer, bighorn sheep, polar bears, and a moose.

The sign next to the moose said it weighs a half a ton and eats 20,000 leaves a day. That thing should definitely go to Weight Watchers.

But next to the moose was a buffalo, and it was even
bigger
. We pressed our noses against the glass so we could see it better.

“It looks so real,” Andrea said.

“It
is
real,” Ms. Krup told us. “These animals aren't statues. They're the real thing.”

“That means they're…
dead
?” asked Michael.

“That's right,” said Ms. Krup.

Just then I thought I heard scary music playing in the background. It was like a movie I saw once. Somebody said the
word “dead” and scary music started playing.

“I'm scared,” said Emily.

“If that thing was a zombie buffalo,” I whispered, “it could jump out at us. And then we'd become zombies, too.”

“My uncle lives in Buffalo,” said Neil the nude kid.

“Your uncle lives in a buffalo?” I asked. “Why doesn't he live in a house like a normal person?”

“It's Buffalo, New York!” said Andrea.

“I knew that,” I lied. It would be weird to live in a buffalo.

“I know a song about buffaloes,” Emily said.

“Would you like to sing it for us?” asked Ms. Krup.

Emily nodded and began to sing:

Well, everybody just about died laughing. I slapped my head.

“It's not ‘cantaloupe,' dumbhead!” I told Emily. “It's ‘
ante
lope.' Cantaloupes can't play. They're melons!”

Emily started crying, of course. What a crybaby! I bet she would've run away, too,
if there weren't scary dead animals all over the place.

Ms. Krup made us tell Emily we were sorry.

Next to the buffalo was another diorama with some skunks and an opossum in it.

“These are nocturnal animals,” Ms. Krup told us. “Does anybody know what ‘nocturnal' means?”

Needless to say, Miss Smarty-Pants-Know-It-All was waving her hand in the air.

“Nocturnal animals sleep during the day and come out at night,” Andrea said, all proud of herself.

Why doesn't a nocturnal animal fall on
her head? I hate her.

“That's right, Andrea!” said Ms. Krup. “Some people claim that our nocturnal friends walk around the museum in the middle of the night.”

“That's scary!” Emily said.

It is not. That girl thinks everything is scary.

Ms. Krup showed us the rest of the dioramas on the first floor. But we never found the missing
T. rex
.

“What's in
that
room, Ms. Krup?” Andrea asked when we passed a door next to the stairs.

“Oh, that's a
secret
room,” Ms. Krup replied.

“Ooooh, what's in The Secret Room?” we all asked.

“If I told you,” said Ms. Krup, “then it wouldn't be secret.”

“PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE?”

Any time a grown-up won't tell you something, just say “Please” until they can't stand it anymore. That's the first rule of being a kid.

“Hmmm,” Ms. Krup finally said. “Are you boys and girls really good at keeping secrets?”

“Yes!” we all shouted.

“Well,” said Ms. Krup, “so am I.”

And she started climbing up the stairs to the second floor.

Bummer in the summer!