Squiggle (3 page)

 

6

It was still early in the morning. Nobody saw the little monkey galloping down the sidewalk except for the mailman, who thought it was a cat. After a few blocks Lobelia reached the entrance to a park where she ran inside, darted behind a hedge, and stopped to catch her breath. She put her furry little face in her paws and burst into tears. At least, that's what she wanted to do, but monkeys don't cry. No tears came out of her eyes, and that made her feel even worse. At that moment she was the most miserable little ball of monkey in the entire world.

Up until now, Lobelia had always gotten everything she wanted just by screaming. If screaming didn't work, then throwing something usually did the trick. Now, even though there was nobody to scream at, she threw a colossal temper tantrum anyway because that was all she could think of to do. It was her last resort. She rolled around in the dirt under the shrub and kicked and squalled in her new, tiny, whispery voice. She tried to shout as loud as she could, but it wouldn't come out of her throat. She picked up clumps of dirt and pebbles in her paws and threw them all directions.

Nothing happened. Nobody came to help her. The Bureau of Emergency Magic did not monitor the wishes of little synthetic monkeys.

After a while she was too tired to kick anymore. She lay still, panting, a sorry sight, her fur ruffled and covered in dust. Dismal thoughts and pictures went through her mind.

Everyone is faced with a similar moment sometime or other, when you realize that the next thing to do is up to you, and not up to somebody else. Either Lobelia could lie there under the bush, helpless, until it rained and she got soggy, or she could get up and do something. After a while, when a passing beetle tickled her toes and a pebble began to dig into her back, and the sun got into her eyes through a gap in the leaves, she sat up and began to brush off the dirt.

She felt better right away.

She gritted her little teeth in determination and sai
d to herself, “My name is Squiggle. I am a monkey. I'll go to the zoo and find out what monkeys
eat.”

“I hope,” she thought, “that monkeys don't eat awful things like bugs.”

By this time lots of people were walking through the park along the gravel paths. It was a warm day and everyone had on shorts and T-shirts. Right in front of Squiggle's hedge, two nice-looking women stopped to talk to each other. They weren't talking about anything in particular; they were chatting about everyday nothings. They both had baby strollers, and while they talked the babies poked their heads up over the edges of the strollers and stared at each other.

Squiggle was hardly even listening to them when suddenly one of the women said, “Baby loves the zoo. Especially the giraffes. Don't you, Baby. Aren't they your favorites?”

Baby, who didn't seem very enthusiastic about giraffes, said, “Ack.”

“You see what I mean?” the lady said. “What a nice day for us to visit the zoo.”

As soon as the lady looked away again, Squiggle leaped into the carriage and crouched down under the blanket beside the baby. The baby didn't mind at all.

“The question is,” Squiggle thought to herself, “are they going to the zoo, or coming back from it?” Since it was still very early in the morning, she thought that they must be on their way to it.

After a moment the carriage began to move, bumping and crunching over the gravel, and Squiggle, or Lobelia, or Lobiggle, or Squealia, wondered very much where she was going and what would happen to her next.

 

7

You might wonder what her parents were doing all this time? They had called the police, of course, and the officer went upstairs to the bedroom to look at the body. The cleaning lady was already in the room with a long-handled mop, scrubbing Lobelia's head off of the ceiling.

“Ma'am, you'll have to stop that,” the police officer said sternly. His name was Officer Poe. “Please leave the evidence exactly as it was. Now, what happened here?” He took out his pad.

“It was awful,” Mrs. Squagg said, trying to look depressed, while she leafed through a Paris travel brochure. “In the middle of the night, our poor daughter burped and her head exploded. I heard it, Officer, so it must be true.”

Officer Poe wrote this down carefully. When he was done he said, “Ma'am, please be calm. I know this is difficult for you. What do you think made her burp?”

“That's clear enough,” Mr. Squagg said. He was tying string around a big suitcase that wouldn't close right because it was stuffed too full. The Squaggs were in a hurry. They had already booked their flight to Paris and were planning to go that very afternoon and stay for a month. They hadn't had a vacation in nine years. “Something frightened her so much that she burped. She was frightened to death. Literally frightened to death, Officer.”

The officer wrote this down too. Then he said, “Very interesting. Yes, I've seen this situation before. And what, exactly, frightened your daughter?”

Mr. and Mrs. Squagg tried to describe the horrible animal they had found in Lobelia's bedroom. As they talked, Officer Poe remembered a famous case he had read about once. That other case was called The Murders in the Rue Morgue, and involved a lot of people getting killed by a gigantic ape. He thought and thought, and suddenly asked, “Was it ugly and covered in black hair?”

It was.

“Ah-ha!” he said, and wrote at the bottom of his pad, “A gorilla did it. Find the gorilla.” (Mr. and Mrs. Squagg had forgotten to mention that the animal was only eleven inches tall.)

“Sir, Ma'am, thank you for your help,” the officer said. “I think I know what to look for now.” He tucked the pad into his shirt pocket and hurried out to the zoo, to see if any gorillas had escaped.

 

8

The baby carriage bumped and rolled across the park and along the sidewalk. All Lobelia could think about, hidden beneath the baby's blanket, was how hungry she felt. The bumping made her stomach hurt even more. The baby, who was a very genial little creature, said “Uug,” and “Mumff,” and offered its bottle to the little monkey, but one sip almost choked her. Monkeys definitely did not drink baby formula.

After a while they got to the zoo. Lobelia had never been there before. She knew what a zoo was, of course, because she had seen them on TV lots of times. But now that she was actually at one, she found it so exciting that she almost forgot about being hungry. She managed to tent up a bit of the blanket, so that she could see out of the carriage while still being hidden from the baby's mother.

“Look Baby,” the mother said. “Look at the Effelants!” She meant to say Elephants, but had gotten into the habit of baby talk and couldn't get out of it anymore. Two huge gray elephants stared back. From their perspective in front of the baby carriage, they could see that there was a monkey in it in addition to a human baby, and this seemed to surprise the elephants very much. They couldn't make any sense out of it. Lobelia waved at them cheerfully, and they stared back.

“Why Baby,” the mother said, “you're wiggling your toes! You must like the Effelants.”

Next they saw a cage full of lions. Lobelia thought they looked extremely sleepy and cuddly and fuzzy, like great house cats asleep on a sunny windowsill. If she had not been keeping a lookout for monkeys, she might have been tempted to join them in their nap. (You probably know all about lions. But just to avoid any confusion, let me say that even though they look cute and fuzzy, they almost always get annoyed if you go into the cage to cuddle with them. They don't like it, and often eat you.) Next they passed the giraffes, who were so tall that Squiggle could see only their bulgy knees. She didn't want to risk looking up any higher and having the blanket fall off her head.

The most amazing animals of all were the people. The next time you go to the zoo, see if you don't think so too. The crowd was so thick that everyone had to walk slowly and stop a lot. Every kind of person was in that crowd. Little babies were being wheeled and carried everywhere. Little old people, at least one-hundred-and-fifty years old, crutched along on aluminum walkers. A little boy said, “Daddy, Daddy, eye wunt cot'n candy!” A little girl said, “Mommy, Mommy, lookit! Monkeys!”

The baby stroller had just reached the monkey cages. Squiggle kept a sharp watch as they went past cage after cage. She had seen herself in a mirror, and so she had a good idea of what kind of monkey to look for. But none of them seemed right. Some kinds were too big. Some kinds were too small. Most of them were brown, or white, or golden. One rare tropical kind was bright blue and had seven legs. The very last cage in the row had a sign over it that said, “Colobus Monkeys from Zaire.” Without even waiting to get a closer look at them, Squiggle leaped out of the baby carriage and jumped through the iron bars into the cage. Being a stuffed animal, she was able to squeeze between the bars quite easily.

Nobody noticed her except for Baby, who waved goodbye to her; and the twenty-seven Zairean Colobus in the cage, who went berserk. They leaped to the very top back corner of the cage where they hung in a tangle of limbs and tails, and made a horrendous sound something like, “Gaaak! Awwwk! Blaaaah!”

This is how Zairean Colobus react when something unexpected jumps into their cage. They are easily frightened. Monkeys are generally scatterbrained and nervous animals. But Squiggle didn't know this, and the reaction of the monkeys startled her.

The noise attracted the attention of everyone who was standing nearby. “Daddy, Daddy,” a little boy said, “look at the funny monkey scaring all the other ones!”

In three seconds a crowd formed in front of the cage. Everyone was shouting in excitement and having a wonderful time. Even a police officer appeared, and took out his note pad in case he had to write anything down.

A flock of zookeepers arrived. The head zookeeper shouted, “What's going on here?” He had a huge hat shaped like a
Tyrannosaurus rex
standing on its hind legs with its mouth open (although there were no tyrannosaurs at this particular zoo). When he pressed a button the tyrannosaur hat roared hugely and the eyes flashed red, like a police siren with a sore throat. “Let me through!” he shouted, pressing his hat button to help clear a path through the crowd. “What's going on?” The other zookeepers, who were less important, had smaller hats shaped like other animals.

“The monkeys are escaping!” someone shouted.

“The monkeys are eating each other!” someone else shouted.

“A gorilla got into the monkey cage!” a third person shouted. “And it's jumping up and down and squashing all the other monkeys!”

“A gorilla?” the police officer said. “Did you say a gorilla?” It was Officer Poe, of course. “Catch it! That gorilla is wanted by the law, for murdering a little girl!” He pulled out a pair of handcuffs.

The crowd surged against the bars of the cage. The people who were right up against the bars stuck their hands through and tried to grab Squiggle, but she was just out of reach. Everyone was shouting, “Catch it! He said it was a murderer! It murdered a little gorilla! No, it
is
a little gorilla! Grab it! Don't let it get out!”

Squiggle cowered on the cement floor in terror. She saw a tiny square opening at the back of the cage. She didn't know where it led, but in a panic she ran for it and whisked inside.

She scampered down a cement tunnel that smelled awful. (Actually, it smelled like monkey.) Then she turned a bend, and found herself in a different part of the cage that was inside of a building. This inside part of the cage was where the monkeys went if they wanted privacy, or wanted to sleep, or if it got too rainy and cold outside; but nobody was there now. She squeezed through the metal bars, jumped out of the cage, and ran down a corridor. The building seemed very dim after the bright sunlight outside, and very quiet, and very solemn. The only person in the building was a janitor with a broom, and Squiggle waited until he was facing the other way and then darted down a different corridor. He didn't see her, and he didn't hear her because her feet were padded and didn't make any noise on the marble floor.

At the end of the corridor she came to a huge set of double doors and was just wondering how she was going to get them open, when they suddenly flew open from the opposite side. Sunlight streamed in. The steps outside were packed with zookeepers and people and a police officer, and for one moment they all stood still and looked at the little monkey on the floor in front of them.

“There it is!” somebody shouted, and the crowd came boiling in the door. Squiggle turned and ran with the throng at her back.

They chased her down one corridor and along another one, up a flight of stairs, and down a long carpeted hallway that was lined on either side with wooden doors. It was a straight hallway, without any side branches. Squiggle realized that when she got to the end, she would be trapped. One of the doors along the hallway stood partly open and she jumped inside. Maybe she could find a place to hide before the crowd followed her in.