Selby Snowbound (6 page)

‘So you want me to make a statue of a dog?’ the sculptor, Sigfried Slapdash, asked Mrs Trifle when he arrived at Bogusville Town Hall.

‘Not just any dog,’ Mrs Trifle explained. ‘A very famous dog. Her name was Bogus and she was the founder of Bogusville. We want a statue of her to put in Bogusville Park.’

‘Excuse me, but did you say that this town was started by a dog? That’s absurd. Dogs can’t start towns — only people can.’

‘Bogus was owned by a man named Brumby Bill about a hundred years ago. He was sick of the city so he moved to the country to look for gold. One day Bogus wandered away from the campsite
and got lost. Brumby Bill
finally found her right here. He fell in love with this area, built himself a house, and then he and Bogus just stayed on. Gradually other people moved here and built houses and Brumby Bill named the town Bogusville, after the dog that he loved so much.’

‘Oh, isn’t that a lovely story,’ Selby thought as he lay nearby on the floor, secretly listening.

‘So what did this Bogus look like?’ the sculptor asked. ‘I can’t do a sculpture if I don’t know what she looked like.’

‘We only have this blurry old photo,’ Mrs Trifle said, showing him the picture. ‘We assume she was part dingo but you can’t see her well enough to know. It doesn’t really matter. Just make a good sculpture of a normal dog and that will be fine.’

‘I’ve never sculpted a dog before,’ the sculptor said getting a huge hunk of wax out of a bag. ‘I’ll need a model. Otherwise she might come out looking like a cat or a cow or something.’

‘I think we have just what you need,’ Mrs Trifle said pointing to Selby. ‘I brought him along today just in case you needed him. Of course I wouldn’t expect you to make your sculpure look
exactly
like Selby.’

‘Well, he’s a
boy
dog, for starters,’ the sculptor said. ‘Bogus was a … a
girl
dog.’

‘Can’t you just leave the boy bits off?’

‘If that’s what you want, sure. You’re the mayor of this town so you’re the boss.’

‘Thank you,’ Mrs Trifle said. ‘I hoped you’d see it that way.’

‘Isn’t it great that Bogusville is finally going to have a statue of Bogus!’ Selby thought. ‘And she’s going to have
my
body — only with the boy bits missing, of course.’

‘Another thing,’ Mrs Trifle said. ‘Please don’t make the statue look weird.’

‘Weird? What do you mean, weird?’ Sigfried asked. ‘My statues never look weird.’

‘Well, yes, but do you remember that statue of the scientist you did? You made his head bigger than the rest of his body.’

‘Of course, I remember. That’s one of my finest works of art! I gave him a big head to show that he was a great thinker. That’s what scientists are all about.’

‘Well, we don’t want anything like that,’ Mrs Trifle said. ‘I believe you also sculpted a racehorse with twenty legs.’

‘Rubbish!’ the sculptor said. ‘It was only sixteen legs. That was to show that the horse was running. That’s what racehorses are all about.’

‘Well we don’t want a sculpture of Bogus with sixteen legs.’

‘But sculptures are supposed to make people think,’ said Sigfried.

‘I’m afraid the people of Bogusville don’t like to think very much,’ Mrs Trifle said.

‘You don’t understand. I am an artist. I want my sculptures to
say
something to the people who look at them. I want them to look at my dog sculpture and think: “Now I know something about a dog that I never knew before”.’

‘You mean they’ll learn something? Like what?’

‘I don’t know yet but I’ll think of something.’

‘What we want is a statue of a dog that looks like a dog so that when we look at it we think: “Hey, there’s a dog!”.’

‘But that’s so boring,’ the sculptor protested.

‘We can always hire someone else to do the sculpture,’ Mrs Trifle reminded him.

‘All right,’ the sculptor sighed, ‘I’ll do what you say. If you pay, I’ll play. Are you sure this dog can stand still while I do the sculpture?’

‘Of course he can, won’t you, Selby? He’s very good at standing still. Come to think of it, standing still and lying still are the things he does best,’ Mrs Trifle said. ‘So how do you make your sculptures?’

‘Simple: first I make a model out of wax. Then I cover it all with some glurpy stuff that gets really hard. This is sent off to a foundry where they pour in hot metal and the wax melts and comes out. Then they chip off the outside part and there’s the sculpture.’

‘That sounds very complicated,’ Mrs Trifle said. ‘I’ll leave you to it. If you need me, I’ll be next door in my office.’

After Mrs Trifle had left, Selby sat perfectly still watching Sigfried Slapdash shape the lump of wax with his hands.

‘This guy’s good!’ Selby thought. ‘He’s got the legs and the tail exactly right. The real test will be the face — my face.’

Selby sat so still that he was beginning to worry about his bottom going to sleep. Then, suddenly, he felt a slight twinge in his ear.

‘Crumbs,’ he thought. ‘I’ve got a flea in my ear. I just hope he doesn’t bite me.’

‘Dogs,’ Sigfried mumbled. ‘I hate dogs. I could never stand them. They’re so smelly and bitey and everything. Yuck! Disgusting creatures. But the mayor wants a dog so I guess I have to make a dog. I only wish I could think of what makes dogs so… so doglike so that I could put a little bit of art into this sculpture. Hmmm.’

Selby felt the flea crawl out of his ear, move across his forehead and then onto his nose.

‘This flea is making me itch — but I’ve got to keep still,’ he thought. ‘This sculptor guy is very touchy. If I start moving, he might just pack up and leave and then blame it on me.’

Selby felt the flea crawl around his face as he struggled to stay still. By now there was sweat dripping from his nose.

‘It’s beginning to look like a dog,’ the sculptor muttered. ‘But it still isn’t telling me anything.’

‘I wish he’d just hurry up!’ Selby thought. Then suddenly the flea bit him — and then bit
him again. ‘I can’t stand it any longer! I’ve got to scratch!’ Selby thought as he started scratching frantically.

‘That’s it!’ the sculptor cried. ‘Dogs are
all about scratching fleas!
When I think of a dog I think of an animal that is always scratching. They are four-legged, foul smelling, scratching machines.’

‘Scratching machines?’ Selby thought, standing still again. ‘What is he talking about? We’re not all the same, for starters. We have as many different personalities as people do. Some of us scratch a lot and others don’t.’

‘I’ll make a sculpture of Bogus scratching!’ the sculptor said. ‘If I’m clever about it I can collect my money and the mayor won’t know what I’ve done until the sculpture comes back from the foundry. By then I’ll be long gone. But I’m sure everyone will love my dog.’

Selby watched in horror as Sigfried Slapdash added lots of ears and mouths on the sculpture until the whole face was a mass of eyes and ears and noses.

‘Crikey!’ Selby thought. ‘It’s like a moving face in a comic book.’

‘A dog scratching a flea! It’s perfect!’ the sculptor cried.

‘It’s perfectly horrible!’ Selby thought. ‘It looks like a mutant dog from outer space!’

‘Now to cover it with the mould stuff before the mayor sees it,’ the sculptor said.

He quickly mixed up a big bowl of white glurp and spread it all over the statue. Just when he’d finished, Mrs Trifle returned.

‘I just popped in to see how you were going,’ she said.

‘I’ve finished.’

‘Already?’

‘They don’t call me Slapdash for nothing,’ the sculptor said. ‘I finished it ages ago. Now all you have to do is wait till this dries and then send the whole thing off to the foundry. They’ll pour in the hot metal and then you’ve got your sculpture.’

‘I wish I could have seen it before you put that stuff on it,’ Mrs Trifle said.

‘You’re a very important person and I didn’t want to interrupt your work,’ the sculptor said. ‘Trust me — you’ll love it.’

‘Oh, well come with me and I’ll give you your money.’

‘This is awful!’ Selby thought when Mrs Trifle and the sculptor had left the room. ‘Everyone will hate it! I’ve got to get that sticky stuff off and fix the face so it looks like a real dog’s face.’

Selby dug his claws into the glurp around the sculpture’s face and pulled.

‘It’s already getting hard!’ he thought. ‘It may be too late!’

Selby put his feet up against the sculpture and pulled harder until a big soggy chunk flew off, hitting him smack in the face.

‘Oh, no!’ he thought as he struggled to peel it off his face. ‘It’s got me! I’m going to suffocate! Help!’

Selby staggered around the room, slowly pulling it off his face until it finally popped free.

‘Phew!’ he sighed. ‘Now to reshape the wax and put some new glurp on it. All I have to do is get rid of some of these eyes, ears and noses. It won’t be brilliant but it should be okay.’

Selby was about to press his paws into the wax when he heard footsteps in the corridor.

‘Crumbs!’ he thought. ‘Mrs Trifle is going to
catch me! I’d better just whack the glurp back on the face and leave it alone!’

Selby quickly slapped the hardening mould back on the sculpture and then stepped back, smiling innocently as Mrs Trifle came though the door.

‘It’s okay to move now,’ Mrs Trifle said to Selby, wondering why there were flecks of white in the fur on his face. ‘Come along, it’s time to go home. You’ve been such a good dog.’

‘Are you kidding?’ Selby thought. ‘I’m a failure. Poor Mrs Trifle is going to be shocked to her socks when she sees that silly sculpture. Oh, well, at least I tried.’

A month later the sculpture came back from the foundry in a big wooden box. People crowded around as Mrs Trifle prised it open.

‘This is terrible,’ Selby thought. ‘They’re going to be really upset at Mrs Trifle for spending so much money on a terrible sculpture. I can’t watch.’

Selby put a paw over his eyes and then thought of sneaking away when suddenly a big cheer went up.

‘Well, they seem to like it,’ Selby thought, wondering whether it was okay to look. ‘Maybe Sigfried Slapdash was right after all.’

‘It’s lovely!’ cried Mrs Trifle. ‘I knew that sculptor could make a good sculpture of a dog if he put his mind to it. And goodness, the face is exactly like Selby’s face! Why it’s an exact copy.’

Selby slowly pulled his paw away from his face and saw himself looking back.

‘It
is
me!’ he thought. ‘And all because that goo hit me in the face. No wonder it looks just like me. It’ll be strange seeing a sculpture of myself right here in the middle of town. It’s sort of embarrassing. But I have to admit that when I look at it it makes me feel kind of good.’

‘Stars and planets are so exciting!’ Selby thought as he listened to the Trifles talk to their old astronomer friend, Percy Peach. ‘They’re so mysterious. I just love to think of myself out there in the depths of space. It makes me all goosebumpy. Of course I’ve been to Mars but that’s just a nearby planet. It’s nothing like going to another galaxy.’

‘Whatever happened to that telescope that you had poking up through your garage roof?’ Percy asked the Trifles. ‘The one we used when we discovered the Peach-Trifle Comet, remember?’

‘We had to put it away. There were three problems with it,’ Dr Trifle explained. ‘First of all, that hole in the roof let the rain in. Secondly, I’m not so good at looking through telescopes. I usually only see my own eyelashes — a few stars but mostly dirty great blinking eyelashes.’

‘And what was the third problem?’ Percy asked.

‘We could never find the stars and planets we wanted to find,’ Mrs Trifle chimed in. ‘We’d look up and see lots of little white dots but we could never tell which one was which. If you ask me, they all ought to have their names next to them so when you look through a telescope you could just read the names.’

‘Well it’s not possible to put names up in the sky, of course, but I have the next best thing,’ Percy said, showing her a copy of his book,
Everyday Stars for You and Me.

Percy took a map out of a pocket in the back of the book and unfolded it till it covered the dining-room table.

‘This is
Percy Peach’s Planet Plan
,’ he added. ‘It’s got all the best-known stars and planets with their names printed right next to them.’

‘That’s very clever,’ Mrs Trifle said.

‘I’m glad you like it,’ Percy said proudly. ‘Amateur astronomers tell me that it’s a real life-saver. They’d be lost without it.’

‘A life-saver, eh? What’s on the other side of the map?’ Dr Trifle asked. ‘There seems to be a whole lot of other stars.’

‘One side has the stars that we see from the southern part of the world. The other side has the stars they see in the north.’

‘Suddenly I want to get that telescope out again, ‘Dr Trifle said.

‘Hey, I’ve got an idea!’ Percy cried. ‘How would you like to look through a proper huge telescope?’

‘That sounds like fun,’ said Mrs Trifle. ‘Which one?’

‘Do you know that new telescope, the one they call Sky Eye?’

‘The one they sent up in a rocket?’ Mrs Trifle asked.

‘That’s it. Let’s have a squiz through it.’

‘But how can we do that?’ Dr Trifle asked. ‘It’s way up in space.’

‘Yes, but it’s controlled from a tracking station on the ground — about a hundred kilometres
from here. I know the people there. I’m sure they’ll let us use it. There’s no one actually up there with the telescope, of course.’

‘I don’t understand how it works,’ Mrs Trifle said.

‘Simple: they send up signals to move the telescope this way and that and tell it where and when to take pictures.’

‘But how do they see the pictures?’ Dr Trifle asked.

‘They’re sent back through the air — it’s all beeps and squeaks and dots and dashes. These go into a computer and the computer de-wonkifies them.’

‘It de-whats them?’

‘They’re usually wonky — all blurry and everything — so they have to be kind of smoothed out before you can actually see them properly. Come on, let’s drive out there. We’ll take some photos, put them on a disk and then bring the disk back here to look at on your computer.’

‘Isn’t it amazing what they can do these days? When I was a girl there was none of this fancy stuff,’ Mrs Trifle said, and the three of them headed for the car.

‘I wish I could go with them,’ Selby thought. ‘I’ve read all about the Sky Eye. It would be so much fun discovering new comets and galaxies. Oh well, at least I’ll get to see the pictures on the computer later on. Hmmm, I wonder what Percy’s book is like.’

Selby lay down on the lounge next to the swimming pool in the back yard and read a chapter on spying in
Everyday Stars for You and Me.

‘Crumbs,’ he thought. ‘I never knew you could use sky telescopes to spy on people all the way down on the ground. That would be even more fun than looking at the stars! Oh, I love all that spy stuff.’

As the sun set and as the first stars began to appear, Selby held up
Percy Peach’s Planet Plan
to see if he could tell which star or planet was which.

‘The problem with this thing,’ Selby said, lying on his back and using all four legs to hold the map up, ‘is that when I hold the map, I can’t see the stars anymore because the map’s in the way. I give up. It may be a life-saver for some people but it’s only a life-complicator for me. Maybe it’s better to just look at the stars and planets and not worry about what silly names we’ve given them.’

Late that night the Trifles and Percy Peach returned.

‘I won’t stay,’ Percy said at the door. ‘You can look at the photos by yourselves.’

‘But don’t you want to see them?’ Dr Trifle said.

‘I’ve seen a lot of stars and planets. Besides, I’ve got to be back in the city by morning and it’s a long drive.’

Selby watched as the Trifles excitedly put a diskette into the computer and started looking at all the photos they’d taken with the Sky Eye. There were dry and craggy planets and strange swirling galaxies with lots of colours like exploding fireworks.

‘These pictures are so wonderful,’ Selby thought. ‘They take my breath away.’

‘It’s all very nice,’ Mrs Trifle said finally. ‘But I think I like the Earth better than the stars. It’s all kind of cold out there and it’s nice and warm and
cozy down here. I’ve got an idea: let’s have a look at the pictures we took of Bogusville.’

‘They took pictures of Bogusville?’ Selby thought. ‘They actually turned the telescope around and pointed it down here! Wow! This is going to be fun!’

Dr Trifle found the photo of Australia and then zoomed down to Bogusville. As he zoomed closer and closer Selby could see houses and then people appear.

‘The people all look like ants,’ Mrs Trifle said. ‘Make it bigger so we can see them properly.’

Dr Trifle clicked the computer mouse and made things bigger and bigger.

‘Look! There’s Aunt Jetty!’ Mrs Trifle cried. ‘You can see her perfectly. And look! She was picking her nose when we took the photo. She didn’t know she was being spied on from space. Isn’t that a riot!’

‘Yeah, a disgusting riot,’ Selby thought. ‘That woman gives me the shivers even when she
doesn’t
have her finger halfway up her nose. Yuck!’

‘Let’s zoom in on our house,’ Dr Trifle said, moving across the town till the top of the house was in view.

‘What’s the point?’ asked Mrs Trifle. ‘There was nobody at home. We were at the tracking station, remember?’

‘Maybe we’ll see Selby,’ Dr Trifle said. ‘Maybe he was outside somewhere.’

‘Gulp,’ Selby thought. ‘They were actually spying on me! I’m not sure I like this.’

‘Hmmm, I wonder if that’s him in the back yard next to the pool?’ said Mrs Trifle. ‘There’s sort of a blob-like thing there on the lounge.’

‘Oh, no!’ Selby thought as the sweat began to pour down his forehead. ‘I was out there reading that stupid book and they were looking down on me! They’re going to catch me reading! I’m about to be sprung — from space by that stupid Sky Eye spy!’

‘Let’s zoom in a little closer,’ Mrs Trifle said. ‘I can’t quite make out what I’m looking at.’

‘Oh, woe,’ Selby thought. ‘This is it. This is the end. The Trifles are about to find out that I’m not just an ordinary non-star-gazing dog but the only real live talking, thinking, book-reading
dog in Australia and, perhaps, the world. I might as well tell them before they find out for themselves.’

Selby put his paws up on the computer table and cleared his throat ready to say: ‘Okay, okay, turn that silly thing off — you caught me,’ when Dr Trifle clicked the computer mouse again.

Suddenly a strange image filled the screen. It was all blue but sprinkled with little white dots.

‘Hey, that’s not me,’ Selby thought. ‘It’s
Percy Peach’s Planet Plan!
— the star map! Just when they took the picture I was holding the star map over my head and that stupid Sky Eye couldn’t see me! Thank goodness for that!’

‘This is very strange,’ Dr Trifle said. ‘The telescope must have turned around again. I do believe we’re looking back out into space. That’s what all those white dots are: they’re stars and planets.’

‘But there’s something very unusual about them,’ Mrs Trifle said.

‘They just look like stars to me,’ Dr Trifle said.

‘Except — they have all their names printed next to them. It’s just the way it should be,’ Mrs Trifle said, looking out the window to see if
the names were next to the stars. ‘That is the strangest thing I’ve ever seen.’

‘What a close call!’ Selby thought as he breathed a sigh of relief and headed off to get a good night’s sleep. ‘And Percy Peach was dead right: that planet plan of his certainly is a life-saver. Well it saved my life, anyway!’