The Sasquatch Escape (The Imaginary Veterinary) (10 page)

B
en leaned close, expecting a soft little growl to leak from the whistle’s end.

CHIIIIIIIIIIIIRT!

He plunged his fingers into his ears. “Stop,” he begged. Pearl dropped the whistle. The sound had been as loud as a train passing directly through the bedroom. Snooze squeaked and dove into his nest. The sound echoed off the walls, then faded. Ben lowered his fingers and glared at Pearl.

“I barely used any air,” she insisted. Then she looked around. “Do you think anyone heard that?”

“Everyone heard that,” Ben said, his ears ringing a bit. “You could hear that all the way to the airport.” Then he and Pearl shared a worried look.

“Do you think…?” Pearl scrambled to her feet. “Do you think the sasquatch heard?”

“Of course it heard.” Ben furrowed his brow. “But that was a weird sound.
Chirt?
I was expecting a roar.”

“Me too.” Pearl’s shoulders stiffened as a rumbling sound arose in the distance. “What’s that?”

Ben rushed to the bedroom window, threw it open, and stuck out his head. The rumbling was louder now.

“Move over,” Pearl said, shoving her elbows onto the windowsill. As she stuck out her head, a lock of blond hair blew across Ben’s mouth. He wiped it away. “It sounds like something very big is running this way.”

Something very big? Running this way?
Ben’s heartbeat quickened.

A few minutes ago they were opening a metal box, excited about possibilities, and now a real, live sasquatch was running their way. Images of Godzilla filled Ben’s mind. He remembered the old Japanese movies where the giant green reptile charged down the streets of Tokyo, smashing cars and buildings with its enormous feet. Only this wasn’t Tokyo; this was Buttonville. And this Godzilla wasn’t a giant lizard; it was a big, hairy forest-dweller!

“What do we do?” Ben asked, his voice squeaking. “We’re not ready. We haven’t figured out how to trap it. We haven’t figured out how to get it back to the factory. We—”

“Shhhh,” Pearl interrupted. “Listen.”

Ben swallowed his panic and turned his ear toward the street. The rumbling grew closer, but it sounded different, more complex. “It sounds like…like a herd of cattle.” He didn’t remember seeing any grazing land on the drive from the airport. Just lots and lots of trees. “Do you have cattle in Buttonville?”

“No.” Pearl ducked back into the bedroom and pointed at the whistle. “The book said that if the whistle wasn’t used properly, it could attract other creatures.”

“What kind of other creatures?” Ben whispered.

Pots and pans rattled as Ben and Pearl raced through the kitchen. Ben grabbed the knob and yanked open the front door. Then they stood side by side on the porch. The boards vibrated beneath their feet as the rumbling neared. Barnaby, who’d
been sleeping in a patch of sun on the front lawn, darted up the nearest tree. Clinging to a branch, he hissed, the fur on his back standing straight up. Down the road, someone screamed. Ben clung to the porch railing as a gray mass appeared around the corner.

“Squirrels?” Pearl cried.

A scurry of squirrels charged down Pine Street. There must have been a hundred of them. Maybe more. Ben had never seen anything like this. Squirrels lived in parks back home, but they never traveled in groups, and they never raced down the street as if they were competing in a marathon. “What’s happening?” Ben asked.

The scurry knocked over a garbage can, then two mailboxes, before turning into Grandpa Abe’s yard. Pearl grabbed Ben’s sleeve and pulled him back through the doorway. Then they slammed the door shut and stared in awe out the front window. The little critters scrambled up the porch. Some perched on the railing, some crowded on the cherry-red porch swing, and others balanced on
the windowsill, pressing their black noses against the glass. A chorus of
chirt, chirt, chirt
filled the air.

“Whoa,” Ben said. “That’s the same sound the whistle made.”

“Only the whistle was a million times louder.” Pearl gawked at the little gray faces. “They must think we have a giant squirrel in here. Maybe they think it’s the squirrel queen.”

It made sense. It made crazy sense.

“How do we get rid of them?” Ben asked. The window began to fog with hot little puffs of squirrel breath.

“Maybe they’ll go away. We should just wait,” Pearl said.

But they didn’t go away. A few cars stopped. Some neighbors peeked over the fence. When the squirrel queen didn’t make an appearance, the squirrels began to explore the yard. They drank from the birdbath, then overturned it. They chased Barnaby out of the tree and took over the branches, eating all the acorns and tossing the shells aside. Their little claws dug through the grass, looking
for other things to eat.
Chirt, chirt, chirt.

“That sound is really annoying,” Pearl said as eighteen pairs of beady eyes stared at her through the glass.
Chirt, chirt, chirt.

“Yeah, and they’re making a huge mess.” Ben didn’t want his grandfather to come home and find a huge mess in his yard. “We have to do something.”

It took Pearl and Ben the rest of the afternoon to get rid of the squirrels. Armed with brooms and rakes, they pushed them out of the tree and chased them down the street. Eventually, not a single gray-haired varmint remained. They set the birdbath, garbage cans, and mailboxes upright. Then Ben raked acorn shells while Pearl wiped squirrel paw prints off the window.

Just as they finished, Grandpa Abe’s phone rang. Ben answered it. It was Pearl’s mother, reminding Pearl to come home and finish her chores. A shipment from China had arrived, and all the merchandise needed to be put on the Dollar Store shelves.

“Can you come back later?” Ben asked. “So we can look in the forest?”

“We eat dinner after we close the store, and then it gets dark, and there’s no way my mom will let me walk around the woods in the dark,” Pearl said. “Guess we’ll have to wait until tomorrow.”

Ben agreed. The forest at night sounded a bit…scary.

Back in his bedroom, they collected the net, tranquilizer dart, blowpipe, chocolate bar, fog bomb, guidebook, and whistle and returned them to the Sasquatch Catching Kit. Before Ben could stop her, Pearl locked the kit.

“You keep the box, I’ll keep the key. That way, neither one of us will do something we shouldn’t.” She smiled knowingly. “Like blow the whistle again.”

“I wasn’t going to blow the whistle,” Ben said, though he had been wondering what sort of sound would emerge if he gave it a try. Would a swarm of bees appear, or maybe a sloth of bears?

“Come to the Dollar Store as soon as you can in the morning,” Pearl said. “I’ll wake up extra early
and get all my chores done. Then we can go to the woods.”

“Let’s hope Mr. Tabby was right when he said the sasquatch won’t hurt anyone and that it’ll probably just sleep in the woods.”

“Well, there’s no way
I’m
going to be able to sleep tonight.” She tucked the key into her pocket. “This is the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to me!”

After Pearl left, Grandpa Abe returned from the senior center. “What have you been up to?” he asked.

“Just hanging out with Pearl,” Ben said.

“Pearl? The troublemaker? Well, I’m glad you’ve made a friend.” Grandpa Abe handed Ben a piece of birthday cake. “Birthday day at the senior center was fun. By the way, you’ve got some
schmutz
on your
punim
.”

“Huh?” Ben asked.

Grandpa Abe frowned. “Isn’t your father teaching you Yiddish? It means ‘you’ve got some dirt on your face.’ ” He pointed to Ben’s cheek. Ben wiped
it with his sleeve. It was a piece of acorn shell. “And what do you have planned for tomorrow? Another day…
hanging out
?”

“Yeah.” Ben smiled. He stuck his hand in his pocket and found the clump of fur. Tomorrow was sure to be a day like no other. Because the truth, for once, was better than any story he could come up with.

Tomorrow he would go looking for a sasquatch.

B
en awoke to the sounds of his grandfather shuffling around in the kitchen. Cupboards clacked, dishes clinked, a coffeepot gurgled. He threw the comforter aside, slid onto the floor, then peered beneath the bed. The Sasquatch Catching Kit sat surrounded by a crop of dust balls.