Panda Panic (3 page)

After five minutes of warming up he was in trouble. Bending at the waist, he had threaded both of his arms between his legs from behind, grabbed onto his ankles, and then tried to stand up. But when he tried to pull his arms back again, they were knotted around his knees. He slowly toppled forward until his forehead was resting on the ground. With his black and white bottom sticking up in the air and his head curled under his tummy he looked like a rolled-up pill bug. Now what was he going to do? Unfortunately this decision was taken out of his hands, because just then, with whoops and mocking cheers, the golden monkeys arrived to poke fun at poor Ping.

“Oh, look,” screamed Choo, their oh-so-witty leader. “A weird new animal's come to live in the forest. It's a giant black and white snail.” The other monkeys laughed, while a cocky young monkey named Foo approached Ping and sniffed him.

“It smells like a panda,” he said. “But it can't be a panda, because pandas only ever do three things—eat bamboo, poo forty-seven times a day, and pose for tourists' cameras—and this one,” he said, running his finger down Ping's curved back, “is trying to be a ski slope!”

“You know very well I'm a panda,” said Ping.

The monkeys leaped backward on their branches pretending to be shocked.

“A snail that can TALK!” they yelled, bursting into another chatter of laughter.

“Can you un-knot me, please?” Ping asked.

“My pleasure,” said Choo, dropping to the ground and delivering a light kick to the panda cub's bottom. Ping rolled forward into the water and uncurled with a splash.

“Thank you,” he said, getting to his feet with as much dignity as he could muster. “Now if you'll excuse me, I'm busy.”

“You! Busy!” snickered Choo. “The last time I saw a busy panda was
never
!”

“He's busy paddling in the water,” snorted Foo.

“Paddling's for babies,” Choo roared. “Are you sure you shouldn't be wearing floaties?”

“I am not paddling,” said Ping. “I am surfing.”

Never before had the monkeys laughed so hard. Their jags of laughter skimmed across the surface of the water like sharp stones.

“We've seen your surfing before, Ping, and there is only one way to describe it,” snickered Choo. “It STINKS! Speaking of which, we've got a new name for you— Ping PONG!”

This time the monkeys laughed so hard that they couldn't catch their breath.

Ping had had enough of their jibes. He'd show these stupid monkeys. He waded out into the middle of the river, which was running a whole lot faster than he had thought, and hopped up onto his board. At first he found it almost impossible to get his balance. His arms whirled, his knees buckled, and he wobbled around like a jack-in-the-box on a spring, but then he bent his knees, spread out his arms, and sat back on his haunches—and suddenly he was in control. The current grabbed hold of his board and, with a kick like an outboard motor, whooshed him off downriver.

“Wooooohooooo!” Ping yelled. “I'm doing it! I'm the King of the Surf!” He couldn't see them, but he could hear distinctly that the monkeys had stopped laughing. The river bent sharply to the right, allowing Ping to glance back over his shoulder, where, to his delight, he saw that the monkeys were so shocked to see him surfing that they had fallen out of their trees and were thrashing around in the water trying to get out.

“You should have had some floaties!” hollered Ping. “So long, suckers!” And with a final cry of, “Now you see me, now you don't!” he disappeared around the bend.

The River Trickle twisted and turned through the Wolagong Nature Reserve like a miniature train in a zoo. It carried Ping past all of the other pandas, who seemed strangely unperturbed by the extraordinary sight, as if a panda on a surfboard was something they saw every day. They turned their gentle eyes to watch him pass, but not once did they stop chewing.

Ping floated past the tall ranger, who was searching for something in the garden outside his office. Upon hearing Ping's cry of “Cowabunga!” the tall ranger lifted his head out of a bush and pointed at Ping's surfboard.

“There it is!” he screamed. “There's my back door!”

“Back door!” gulped Ping, looking down at the board beneath his feet. Now that he studied it more closely he noticed that it had a handle and a cat flap. The tall ranger loved his cats.

“And the paint's wet!” shouted the tall ranger.

Nothing I can do about that
, thought Ping.
That's the problem with surfing—everything gets wet… my face, my legs, my feet, the board, the paint
. He noticed that the tall ranger was waving a paintbrush. “Oh, I see what you mean!” gasped Ping, lifting up his feet to discover that underneath they were bright green. “You mean the paint's still wet. Sorry!” he cried as he sailed past. “I'll have the door back in two shakes of a cat's tail.”

But the cats would have to wait a little longer than that, because Ping's bright-green door-board showed no sign of stopping.

“Look at meeeeeeee!” Ping screamed, punching the air for all he was worth. “I'm living the dream!”

An hour later, swept along by the roaring river, Ping was miles away from home, in a part of the reserve he had never been to before. At last, he was in the middle of his own adventure. It was all he'd ever wanted. And it felt good.

CHAPTER THREE

T
he farther downriver Ping went, the more he discovered that there was nothing about surfing that he did not love—the spray in his eyes, the wind in his ears, the zip of his board across the water, and the thrill of knowing that at any moment he might wipe out and crash in a waterball of arms and legs. He even liked it when frogs jumped off the bank and joined him on the tall ranger's back door. They would sit at his feet and together they would make up songs about surfing and sing them at the top of their lungs while the water roared around them.

We're brave, we're brave, we're on a wave,

We're wet the whole way through.

We're great, we're great, when we do skate

On rivers deep and blue.

Our floor, our floor, is the ranger's door,

No time to eat bamboo.

The rocks, the rocks scare off our socks,

I really need a poo!

Ping sang the last line on his own. The frogs stopped the moment they heard the words and looked at Ping with their wide mouths wide open.

“That is the rudest thing I have ever heard,” croaked a matronly frog called Lu Chu. “What possessed you to sing it?”

“I need a poo,” said Ping matter-of-factly. “It's no big deal. We pandas poo forty-seven times a day. We talk about it all the time.”

“Well, we DON'T!” harrumphed Lu Chu. “Our best friends are the high-born emperor ducks, and if they were ever to hear us croaking such crudities, they would terminate our friendship immediately!” And with that she belly-flopped into the water and disappeared in a ripple of red rage.