Newt Nemesis (4 page)

“You don't look all that crested to me,” observed Charlie. “You've hardly got a crest at all. I certainly wouldn't call it great.”

“Nah—not much crestage this late in the year,” shrugged Josh. “You should see a great crested in spring though—amazing! Like a mini stegosaurus!”

As they stared at Josh's not-so-great crest, a waft of misty spray hit them and they all instinctively backed away from one another. If that was the antidote, they'd be springing back up to human size any second (and it could get a bit violent). They waited a while, but nothing happened.

“Has she used them all?” wondered Charlie. “That should have been the antidote . . . shouldn't it?” Nearby, Petty's enormous hands were fumbling with the bottles (now looking the size of beer barrels), which were rolling around by her giant boots.

“She's probably just mixed them up again,” grunted Josh. “She'll find it in a minute. I don't mind being a newt for a bit. Wish I could have longer like this. I'm special, you know! Guess what? I'm protected!”

“Protected? What, with, like, an invisible force field or something?” asked Danny, sucking on a sort of gray humbug with whirring legs, which he'd failed to notice was a wood louse.

“Invisible force field? I wish!” Josh grinned. “No—I mean great crested newts are a protected
species. I'm rare! I am not allowed to be killed!”

“Eeeerm,” croaked Charlie. “You might want to tell that to . . . him . . .” Her pop-up froggy eyes had suddenly got so poppy-uppy they looked as if they might ping out of her head like marbles. She was keeping very still, but the little patch of skin under her throat was quivering fast. Danny and Josh followed the direction of her glassy stare and tried not to scream.

Staring right at them from the foot of the compost bin, its long forked tongue quivering in the air, was a HUGE snake.

“Oh pee, porridge, and poo!” cursed Petty. The last spray had done nothing. It should have been either ToadSWITCH or the antidote, but so far the two frogs and the great crested newt were still sitting there, having a little chat and most definitely not S.W.I.T.C.H.ing back to two boys and a girl.

She shook the bottle and peered at it in annoyance, squinting through the smears on her glasses. What was it? Then she unscrewed the top and peered inside. From the outside, all the bottles looked the same—but inside she noticed it wasn't quite the same color as usual...it looked a little...blue.

“Oh, Petty! You turbo-boosted, fuel-injected, twin-engined FOOL!” she snapped. “This isn't S.W.I.T.C.H. formula! It's your spectacles cleaning spray!”

Petty took off her spectacles and sprayed them, gave them a thorough wiping with her hanky, and then put them back on. “That's much better,” she remarked to the much more clearly viewed frogs and newt. “Aaah. But now we have a problem . . .”

How was she going to get them S.W.I.T.C.H.ed back in time for the show? With NO antidote at all?

And then that little problem was upstaged by a much bigger one. A much longer one too. Through her sparkly clean lenses, Petty suddenly noticed that Josh, Danny, and Charlie were all sitting very, very still and their little eyes were bulging and their little throats were quivering.

Then the long problem coiled its zigzag-patterned body, raised its head, and sent out a flickering forked tongue, tasting the air. Its scaly face drifted from side to side. Once, twice, three times. And then its almond-shaped eyes gleamed as it caught the unmistakable scent of PREY. The head turned smoothly in the direction of Danny, Josh, and Charlie and locked on to them. The tongue flickered once again.

And then it struck.

The movement was as fast as lightning, and the frogs shot into the air at top speed. Charlie and Danny were gone in a heartbeat, but Josh . . . Josh was a newt! Newts weren't exactly speedy even in water . . . much less on dry land! Josh was trying to struggle away across the mulchy stuff that had spilled from the compost bin, but the snake was rearing up its head, ready to strike again, and Josh had NO CHANCE.

Petty flung herself toward the snake, meaning to grab it from behind and pin it down. For a broad-bottomed lady in her seventies, she moved pretty fast—but not fast enough. In a flash, the snake whipped its head around.

And drove its fangs right into her leg.

For a few seconds, Josh just stood on a leaf, too shocked to move. As soon as the adder (he'd recognized its distinctive black zigzag-patterned skin immediately) had reared up, he'd known this was the end. Danny and Charlie had leapt away in half a second. They weren't abandoning him; they'd just done it out of pure instinct, forgetting that Josh was a newt—a slow, ungainly creature on land with no hope of escape.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he remembered that adders preferred mammals to amphibians . . . but by the way this one was looking at him, he was sure it was about to make an exception. The strike would come in a blur. The adder's fangs would inject venom in a second. It might try to swallow him there and then, but more likely, it would just rest its cold brick-red eyes on him for a while as he tried to crawl away, waiting for his limbs to stop working as the paralyzing agent in the venom took effect. Josh knew snakes preferred to digest their live prey when it wasn't kicking and screaming too much.

All this information occurred to Josh in about
three seconds. Only yesterday Charlie had nearly been eaten—and this summer, he and Danny had been on the menu for too many creatures to mention—but now it really did look like the end. A heron would have been better. Quicker.

And then there was a dark shadow, and Petty's walking boot crashed down a few inches away from him. A moment later, the adder struck; Josh saw its jaws open wide and white fangs suddenly emerge as if on springs. And it drove them right into Petty's leg.

Petty gave a shriek and landed with an earth-shuddering thud on her ample backside. The snake fled back into the compost bin. As Josh stayed frozen on his leaf, staring at the gigantic heap of Petty Potts, two frogs leapt back in front of him.

“What happened?” gasped Charlie. “We thought you were snake dinner!”

“No—it just had a munch of Petty instead,” said Josh, finally able to move again now that the terrifying predator had gone. At any other time, he would have been thrilled to see an adder—but as a tiny newt, it had been utterly horrendous.

“She's been bitten?” gasped Danny. “That's bad, isn't it?”

A very loud “OW! OW! OW!” rang through the hot air above them. Petty was examining her calf. Two ruby-red beads of blood were standing out on it through her thick beige tights.

“It's an adder,” said Josh. “They are Britain's only venomous snake, but they can't kill you.” Another stream of ows erupted from Petty, whose face had gone rather red.

“Well,” went on Josh, “not usually. I mean . . . death is very rare in humans.”

Petty suddenly rolled toward them, and her big, big, BIG face loomed up close. “Now listen!” she said, in a harsh whisper, the hairs in her foxhole-sized nostrils trembling. “I know you can't talk back,
but wave your right . . . er ... hands ... if you can understand me.”

They all waved their right hands—two webbed green ones and one orange fingered one—and Petty nodded and puffed, “Good. Well that's useful. Now . . . the bad news is that none of the bottles contains the antidote. That last one was actually my glasses cleaning spray. The nearest antidote is back in my lab, ten miles away. You're just going to have to wait for this S.W.I.T.C.H. to wear off.”

“That was the BAD news,” said Danny. “So what's the good news? The good news?”

All of this came out as amphibious waving and twitching to Petty, but she worked it out from the frog's hopeful grin. Nodding and squinting down at them through rather puffy eyes, she went on. “The good news is . . . oh wait. There isn't any good news. There's just badder news. I mean worse news. I've been bitten by an adder.”

Josh sat back on his tail and pulled his speckly shoulders into an elaborate shrug. He wanted Petty to understand that though it might hurt, an adder bite wasn't any more dangerous than a bee sting.