Harry the Poisonous Centipede (8 page)

He shot out of the way just as the stick came down.

The stick came down again.

And again.

It beat the earth.

Whack! Whack! Whack!

George ran frantically here and there,
dodging the stick. But he couldn't really dodge it. He didn't know where it would hit next. He was more frightened than he had ever been before in his life.

He just twisted and turned and raced here and there. It was only good luck that the beating stick kept missing him. Sooner or later, it must find him!

Suddenly the stick fell to the ground. The Hoo-Min let it go.

George stopped running.

He looked around. The Hoo-Min was leaving the ground and coming back to it very heavily. The noise and vibrations were thunderous. It kept making noises from its head, as well. Noises that sounded like “OW! OW! OW!”

Can you guess what had happened?

Right! That brave mother centipede, Belinda, had run up the Hoo-Min's trouser and given its leg a mighty bite!

The moment she'd done it, she ran down the leg again to the ground. She had to keep running because the Hoo-Min was jumping up and down and its great feet might have landed on her and squashed her flat.

As soon as she was clear of the jumping, she turned and looked for George.

He was right beside her.

He'd seen her dashing away from the howling Hoo-Min, and had followed her.

“Grndd! Come with me, quickly!” Belinda signalled.

He didn't need to be told. As fast as she ran, he ran faster. I told you centipedes can run very, very fast. Well, even I didn't know they could run as fast as George and Belinda ran then.

They reached the hole where Harry was hiding and fell into it on top of him. The three of them rolled down the slope, all tangled up together, and lay at the bottom. They looked like a shiny lumpy black ball with about a million legs sticking out in all directions.

I'm exaggerating. But three times forty-two is quite a lot of legs. And two-thirds of them were awfully tired from running.

Harry was the first to uncurl himself and become a separate centipede again.

“Mama? Why did it start going up and down like that, and making that funny noise?”

“I bit it,” said Belinda shortly.

Both the centis stiffened their front feelers in astonishment.

Then, as if they were one centi, they rushed up the tunnel again and poked their heads out.

The Hoo-Min was nearer the ground now, all hunched up, bent over its leg and making another kind of noise. Like “Ooooooogh, uuuuuuuugh, aaaaaaaaah!”

They ran back to Belinda.

“You couldn't have bitten it! It's still moving!”

“Well, that's partly why they're so dangerous. Biting them doesn't kill them. It doesn't even paralyse them. They're too big.”

“So why is it making that noise? Why did it stop trying to kill me?”

“I think because it hurts,” said Belinda.

“Maybe if all three of us bit it—?”

“No,
Grndd,” said Belinda. “No. We will go back to our nest.”

Neither George nor Harry felt like arguing.

Back in the nest-tunnel, both the centis felt very tired and wanted to go straight to sleep. But Belinda had something to say first.

“I don't know if you've learnt a lesson, Grndd,” she said grimly.

“Oh yes,” said George quickly.

“I doubt it. I don't think anything can teach you not to get into trouble.

But I have to try. Bend over.”

That's what she would have said, if she'd been your mother, perhaps. Centipedes can't bend over. What she actually said was more like “Bottom up!”

Anyway, George knew only too well what she meant.

George, trembling with alarm, turned round and stuck his rear segment into the air.

Belinda stood beside it.

She raised her first foot on that side. She brought it down hard on George's back end.

The next little while wasn't much fun for George because that was only the beginning.

Belinda walked past his raised rear segment and spanked him once with
each foot. And as if that wasn't enough, she then turned round and walked past him the other way, spanking him once with each foot on her other side.

So that was twenty-one spanks on one side, and twenty-one more on the other. Forty-two spanks altogether. It seems a lot, but that was a normal punishment for a disobedient centi.

Mind you, it really doesn't hurt half as much to be spanked if you've got a thick cuticle on your bottom. So it wasn't as bad as all that.

When it was over, George lowered his tingling rear segment to the ground, and rubbed some of his nearest legs over it. If centis could sniffle, George would have sniffled.

“Now, centis, go to your leaves,” said Belinda sternly.

There were no kisses for either of them.

George crept away under his leaf.

He felt very, very sorry.

I can almost hear you saying it: “Sorry he'd been so bad? Sorry he'd put Belinda into danger?”

I'm afraid not.

What he was sorry about was that he'd had a spanking from Belinda. He forgot she'd saved him. He just thought how his bottom hurt and how she wasn't even his real mother.

Which was pretty ungrateful of him.

But if you'd just had forty-two spanks, you might not feel grateful either. Even if your life had just been saved.

And in case you're wondering if Belinda had managed to teach George not to get into trouble, don't even think it.

She hadn't.

Because I'm afraid George – and here comes a wonderfully useful word for people like him who won't learn to be sensible – George was
incorrigible.

A few days later, when Harry was just about ready for sleep, his mother started chewing up his bedding and spitting the bits on the floor.

“Mama! What are you doing?”

“I've got a nice new leaf for you,” she said, with her mouth full. “I'll just use this old one for floor-lining. Come and give me a mouth.”

So Harry helped, and soon his old bedleaf was well crunched and spat out and spread smoothly over the floor of their
nest. The spitty part dried and Belinda rubbed her head over it until it had a sort of shine and it looked very nice, the way new floor-tiles or a carpet would do to us.

“Good centi! Now, come and choose a new leaf to sleep under.”

There were plenty of leaves to choose from. Belinda had worked hard, dragging them down the tunnel. They were all shapes and sizes, and quite soft, juicy and colourful, not crackly and dull like his old one.

“How come there are so many?”

“This is the season when some of the trees drop their leaves,” she explained.

Harry chose a pretty yellow one which was just the right size for him and curled up under it and went to sleep.

In the middle of the day he was suddenly, and not at all pleasantly, woken by George
landing on top of him and bashing him in the head with his own head.

“Get up! Get up! Something terrible's happening!” George crackled.