The Message

M
y name is Cassie.

I can’t tell you my last name. I wish I could. But I can’t even tell you what town I live in or what state. We have to disguise our identities, we Animorphs. It’s not about being shy. It’s about staying alive.

If the Yeerks ever learn who we are, we’ll be done for. If they don’t kill us outright, they’ll make us Controllers. They’ll force a Yeerk slug into our brains, where it will take control of us, making us slaves—tools of the Yeerk invasion of Earth.

And I really don’t like the idea of being under the control of an alien. I don’t like the idea of being dead, either.

On the other hand, there are some things I do like about being an Animorph. Some very cool things.

Take the other night. It was late. I should have been in bed. Instead I was in the barn, getting ready to turn into a squirrel.

Technically, the barn is really the Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic. My dad is a vet. So is my mom, but she works at The Gardens, this big zoo. The Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic is just my dad and me. We take in injured birds and animals and try to save them, then release them back into their natural habitats.

That’s where I was. In the barn. Surrounded by dozens of cages full of birds, from a mourning dove who’d run into a car windshield to a golden eagle who’d almost been electrocuted by a power line.

In another part of the barn we have bigger cages for the badgers and opossums and skunks and deer and even a pair of wolves—one who’d been poisoned, and one who’d been shot. At the other end (far from the wolves) we keep our own horses.

There’s an operating room and a couple of small recovery rooms, too.

Back to that night. Have you ever watched a squirrel in the park? They are constantly alert. Constantly looking around. It’s like every minute of every day they’re thinking, “Hey! What’s that?”

So I knew that if I morphed into a squirrel, all that nervousness and fear would become a part of me. It’s something we’ve all had to deal with: controlling the animal instincts, the animal mind that comes along with the animal body.

Anyway, that’s where I was, in a gloomy barn with just the yellow overhead bulbs to light the room. Why was I there? Because someone, or something, had been sneaking in and getting at the birds. We’d lost a patient just the night before. A duck.

And because I couldn’t sleep, anyway. I kept having these dreams. Only they weren’t like normal dreams, somehow. More like … I don’t know. Just really strange, that’s all.

“Relax, Magilla,” I whispered to the squirrel in my hands. “This won’t hurt at all.” I pulled some chestnuts from my pocket and handed him one. Another nut fell to the floor.

Some morphs are easy. Some are terrifying. When I was a horse, that was cool. When I had to become a trout, well, that was a little more weird. The whole time I just kept thinking how someone could fry me and serve me with tartar sauce.

And I don’t like tartar sauce.

“Squirrel,” I told myself. I always try to get into the feeling of what it might be like to be the animal before I even start morphing.

The first physical change was in my size. I started shrinking. It’s a very bizarre feeling. See, you feel like you’re standing totally still, but the ground keeps coming up toward you. And the ceiling is moving away. Door handles aren’t where they should be anymore. All of a sudden they’re over your head.

I had shrunk to maybe two, two-and-a-half feet tall when my arms came sucking back into my body. Right about that point, the real Magilla tore out of there. He ran back to his cage, got in, and — I swear this is true — closed the door. Anyway, I still had normal (although short) legs, but my arms were stunted. I still had the normal number of fingers, but they were teeny-tiny now, way too small for my body.

My ears traveled up the side of my head to rest on top. Soft gray fur spread across my body in a wave. My face puffed out and grew pointed.

Then, the wildest thing! My tail sprouted out of my body! And what was cool was that I wasn’t a squirrel yet. I was still about half human, the size of a small child, and my tail just shot out, about two feet long! Much longer and bigger than it would be once I was totally squirrelified.

I tilted my head back and I could see this bushy gray tail arched up over me. Way cool.

My legs sucked in and I was down on the ground, down on the cement floor of the barn.

I suddenly discovered I hadn’t swept and mopped as well as I thought I had. Amazing what you can see when your face is just an inch from the floor.

Then the squirrel brain kicked in.

WHOA! YOW!

Man, did I have
energy!

It was like I was plugged into a million volts. I was supercharged! My slow, sluggish human brain was just blown away by the sudden explosion of energy.

A noise!

What’s that?
I cocked my ears. I swung my head, focusing my big eyes.
A bird in a cage!

A new sound! What was it?
I spun around.

No, wait! What was that? And that? And the other sound?

PREDATORS! They were everywhere! I was surrounded! PREDATORS!

Birds! Big birds with nasty claws. All around me.

Wait. There was a nut. Oooh. A nut.

PREDATORS! Alert!

I scampered across the floor.
Look left. Look right. Sniff sniff sniff the air.

Oh, yes. Predators. I smelled them. I heard them. Birds. A wolf. A badger.

PREDATORS! RUN RUN RUN!

Oh, wait. Was that a nut? I hopped over to the nut. YES! A chestnut! I seized it in my little front
claws and began immediately to chew a hole in it.
Excellent! Wonderful! Chestnut!
And I had it! No one could take it away. Hah hah!
A noise! What?
PREDATORS!

Don’t drop the nut! Run with the nut! RUN!

With the nut stuffed into my jaw, I ran.

I ran straight up the wall. Straight
up.

And that was the moment when Tobias decided to show up.

T
obias flew in through the hayloft overhead.

Unfortunately, in my squirrel mentality, with my human brain just barely holding on, I didn’t realize it was Tobias.

What it looked like to me was a red-tailed hawk. A bird of prey. And this one was not in a cage.

No, this one was flapping around the high rafters of the barn. The hawk had talons like steel and a hooked beak that could open me up like a can of beans.

I felt his hawk’s eyes on me.

RUN RUN RUNRUNRUN!

I didn’t know what to do. I mean, me, the human being named Cassie. I didn’t know what to do. I knew I had to get control over the squirrel. But it was so hyper!

However, the squirrel knew just what to do.

ZOOOM!

I ran farther up the wall. My little claws grabbed at tiny splinters and cracks in the wood, and shot up at a terrifying speed. If you’ve never been a squirrel — and let’s face it, you haven’t — you probably don’t have any idea what it’s like to run
up.
The wooden wall was like a floor under me. But at the same time I knew the difference between up and down. I knew if I fell it would be down. It’s as if you were running across the floor in your house, but if you tripped you’d fall back against the wall.

Very strange.

Tobias had come to rest on a rafter. But I could feel his eyes on me. I froze. I froze completely. Not even my tail twitched. I just clutched on to the wall and froze.

But I couldn’t keep it up. That torrent of squirrel energy would not let me stand still for long.

Suddenly, with barely a glance to the side, I launched myself through space. I flew. I mean, I just jumped and hurtled through the air for what seemed like half a mile, but was actually just ten feet.

SLAM! I landed on the wooden beam that runs above the horse stalls.

Bad move. Tobias had seen my movement. Out of the corner of my eye I saw his vast wings open. He swooped down, talons raked forward.

But then … a new movement. Something large and furtive. A board in the side of the barn pushed open. A head poked inside. It was just below me. An intelligent, alert face, looking up at me and wondering if I was dinner.

A fox! Aha!
My mystery bird-killer.

I had to get control of the squirrel brain. It always takes a minute in any new morph, at least, to control those wild animal instincts, but I didn’t have a minute.

Tobias swooped.

Suddenly it was insanity everywhere. Birds in every cage began to squawk and shriek! The wolves in the next room decided to start howling. The horses were whinnying shrilly.

Tobias sheered away, startled.

Too late. I had jumped again, and now I was falling toward the straw-covered floor of a stall. Falling toward the fox.

I hit the ground and blew out of there, leaving a storm of dust and straw in my wake.

The fox came after me. He was fast. Very fast.

I yelled in thought-speak.

I dodged left. The fox dodged after me.

He was faster than me and almost as agile.

Unless I could find a place to climb up and away, I was done for!

he said, sounding grumpy in my head.

The fox’s jaw snapped at my tail. I felt his teeth comb the fur.

Tobias said. He opened his wings and came hurtling down, straight at the fox.

The fox saw the shadow of the big hawk. He stopped dead in his tracks.

Too late. Tobias raked him with his talons and shot past.

The fox decided this was more trouble than he needed. He bolted for his secret passageway.

Tobias came to rest on a crossbeam and looked down at me with his fierce hawk’s gaze.

I was already starting to morph back to human shape. couple of days. We figured it was a badger or a raccoon or a fox, but we couldn’t figure out how he was getting in. So I decided to morph and wait to see when he showed up.>

he said. He fluffed his wings and began preening some ruffled feathers.

I was halfway back to human shape, growing up from the floor, feeling my legs sprout beneath me. But my human mouth was not back yet.

Tobias had almost completely accepted the fact that he was permanently stuck in the body of a red-tailed hawk. Recently he had begun to hunt and eat like a hawk. He was still a little sensitive about it, but I thought if I just made a joke out of it, he would realize I wasn’t grossed out or anything.