Beetle Blast (2 page)

“Oh
no
!” wailed Josh. “He's going to fart all the way through!”

“Ah well,” sighed Danny. “I'll just have to set up my own Wild Things gang—the Stink Bugs.”

“Just
try
to act interested,” hissed Josh as he and Danny joined the other Wild Things at the Blackthorn Wildlife Center. They met every Monday after school. They did experiments, nature hikes, and looked at things through microscopes. Today they were going pond dipping to see what they could find.

“Danny, meet Ollie, Milo, Biff, and Poppy,” said Josh. He pointed to each of his fellow bug geeks in turn. They all wore “nature freak” clothes, Danny noticed. Lots of green and brown and little vests with lots of pockets. Just like Josh. Danny, in his bright orange sweatshirt and baseball cap, looked like a traffic cone by a hedge.

“Hi, Danny,” said Biff. He had a pair of binoculars around his neck.

“Greetings,” said Ollie and Milo, together. They both had glasses and funny green hats, just like old people wore.

“Hi, Danny, nithe to meet you,” lisped Poppy. She had brown braids, freckles, and a rather alarming number of teeth. She rattled a little plastic tub at him. She whispered, “Antth' eggths!” with her eyebrows going up and down.

“Er … yeah,” said Danny, backing away.

“Look—Granddadth come to help today,” said Poppy. She pointed to a tall man in a low-brimmed hat who was standing nearby, gazing out the window. Danny noticed he had a strange, black, pointed fingernail on the little finger of his left hand. Well, weirdness obviously ran in the family.

“I think she likes you,” sniggered Josh. Poppy smiled scarily at Danny and stroked the lid of her plastic tub. “She wants to take you home…”

“Shut up!” hissed Danny. He hurried away toward some interesting buttons near a collection of wildlife pictures. They made wildlife-y noises when he pressed them.
Ribbit
. “Toad,” said Danny. Chirrup. “Grasshopper,” said Danny. Zzzzzzz. “Bluebottle.”

“See,” said Josh. “You're quite good at this stuff.”

“Only because…” said Danny, “… we've either been one of them or nearly been
eaten
by one of them.”

“Shhhh!” hissed Josh, looking around uneasily. “Don't tell everyone!”

“What? That our crazy next-door neighbor keeps turning us into creepy-crawlies?” said Danny, making no effort at all to be quiet. “Yeah, right. Everyone's going to believe
that
!”

Someone poked Danny hard in the ribs and said, “Shhhhh, you numbskull! You never know who might be listening! And I am not crazy. I am a genius!”

Danny and Josh spun around, gaping with shock. There stood Petty Potts, the old lady from next door. She was wearing a tweedy hat and glasses, carrying a straw bag and smiling sweetly. You would never guess what she truly was. A brilliant scientist with a secret laboratory hidden beneath her garden shed! Earlier that year Josh and Danny had stumbled into it. She was in the middle of one of her astonishing experiments—to change things into creepy-crawlies.

They had gotten caught up in a jet of her S.W.I.T.C.H. spray and shortly afterward morphed into spiders. That was a bit of a shock. It was a small miracle that they hadn't been squashed flat, drowned, or eaten. And since then, despite trying really hard to steer clear of any further spraying, they had each been turned into a bluebottle, a grasshopper, an ant, and a crane fly. Thankfully, only temporarily.

“What are
you
doing here?” spluttered Josh. “It's a free country!” said Petty. “I'm allowed into my local wildlife center, aren't I?”

Danny eyed her bag nervously, looking for the telltale plastic spray bottle.

“You needn't look so petrified, Danny!” she said. “I haven't got any S.W.I.T.C.H. spray with me today.”

Danny sighed with relief. It wasn't so much the “being a creepy-crawly” he minded. More the “nearly being eaten” so very often. He'd also once spent more time than he wanted to remember hiding in a cat's ear while he was a grasshopper. And he was haunted still by the things he'd eaten when he was a bluebottle.

“No,” said Petty, reaching into her bag and pulling out a small tin. “No spray today. This time it's in pellet form. I want to S.W.I.T.C.H. a rat. I need to try out more mammals—other than you two. I'm going to hide the pellets in some food!” She leaned in toward them and whispered. “Don't forget to keep looking out for the REPTOSWITCH cube! Only one more to find.” She looked edgily around her. “And never forget you might be being watched! Victor Crouch's people are everywhere!” And she strode off, before Danny or Josh could say anything else.

Josh shrugged. “Well, at least there's no chance we'll get fooled by
pellets
,” he said. “Let's just pretend we don't know her.”

“She's never going to let up about that blinkin' cube, is she?” muttered Danny. “We've found four of them, and she already had one. You'd think she'd be happy with that!”

“Yes—but without the
last
cube, she can't figure out the REPTOSWITCH code, can she?” said Josh. “And without the code she'll never be able to make the spray. And we'll never get a chance to be alligators or snakes.”

Josh and Danny looked at each other and bit their identical lips. Most of their adventures as creepy-crawlies had been terrifying. But they'd also been exciting and, at times, quite awesome. Both boys knew how it felt to fly, to leap twenty times their own body length, to run up walls, and to walk upside down along ceilings. It was just the nearly getting killed …

But being a reptile would be different! Most reptiles were tough and much, much bigger than a creepy-crawly. It would be amazing to become a big scaly predator! That was why they had agreed to help Petty find her missing cubes, so she could crack the REPTOSWITCH code.

“Come on,” said Josh. “We're not going to worry about the last cube here. She didn't hide it half a mile from her house.”

“We're not going to worry about being watched by government spies, either,” grinned Danny. “All that ‘
Victor Crouch is after me
' business!
That's
all in her head!”

The Wild Things went to scoop creatures out of the pond. Danny mooched along after them. He was bored and trying not to notice Poppy smiling and waving at him with her little glass jar on a bit of pink string. He did
not
want to get to know a dragonfly nymph or a newt—or Poppy. It was a stupid waste of time. He sat down at a picnic bench while the others squelched about by the edge of the water. They oohed and aahed about tiny splodgy brown life-forms.

Danny's stomach rumbled. He noticed a plate left on the table. On it was a sticky chocolate muffin from the wildlife center café. With just a bit broken off. A rich sweet chocolaty smell was wafting across from it. Danny's mouth watered. He looked around to see if anyone was coming to claim it. Nobody seemed to be. He peered at it a little closer. No wasps on it.

Another chocolaty waft reached him. Danny couldn't resist a moment longer. He grabbed the abandoned muffin and bit into it.

“Mmmmm,” he groaned, happily.

“Danny! Come and see this!” said Josh, who was crouching in some bog weed. The other Wild Things had wandered off to the other end of the pond on the other side of some bushes. Danny felt he could bear to show some interest with Poppy no longer goggling at him.

He took the remaining bit of muffin with him and ambled over to his brother.

“See!” said Josh, pointing at a muddy pebble. “A great crested newt!”

“Hey. Wow. I mean, that's, err, great.” Danny shrugged.

“What are you eating?” asked Josh, sniffing at his brother.

“Muffin. ‘ave some,” said Danny, handing the last chunk to his brother.

Josh held up his muddy hands. “Stick it in for me, will you?” he said, opening his mouth. Danny shoved it in.

“Mmm, nice chunky chocolate chips,” mumbled Josh.

“Hey!” said a sharp voice behind them. “Who ate my muffin?”

Danny spun around, guiltily. Standing by the picnic bench was … oh
no …
Petty Potts. Suddenly Danny had bigger things to worry about than being caught for muffin theft.