In the Jungle (6 page)

“Yowzers!”
cried Andrew.

“Noooooo!”
cried Judy.

“Echidna!” squeaked Thudd. “Spiny ant-eater! Nose feel electric signals from living things. From ants, from bugs, from Drewd and Oody!”

Just as they reached the dark tunnel of the echidna’s mouth, the tongue stopped reeling them in.

Snoof snoof
, sniffed the echidna.

Judy shuddered. “We’re going to be eaten by a pincushion with a head,” she moaned.

Then, as fast as the echidna’s tongue had reeled them in, it spun them out and shook them off.

Judy and Andrew landed in a brown slimy puddle. The echidna turned and waddled away.

“Cheese Louise!” shouted Judy. “We got lucky!”

“I wonder why it didn’t eat us,” said Andrew.

meep …
“Drewd and Oody still smell like peppermint,” said Thudd. “Maybe echidna not like peppermint.”

Andrew and Judy wiped the slime off as best they could and trudged on.

As the day grew late, the colors of the rain forest faded to black and gray. The screeches and screams died away. Now the jungle chirped and chittered and whistled. The air felt like a cool velvet blanket against Andrew’s skin.

Andrew stopped and sniffed the air. “I smell something fishy,” he said. “We’re getting close to the river.”

Judy peered into the shadows. “I see lights!” she said.

meep …
“Ghost mushrooms!” squeaked Thudd.

“I never thought I’d be so happy to see a fungus,” said Judy.

They picked their way through the darkness toward the little lights.

The ghost mushrooms surrounded a huge tree trunk like a necklace. The cap at the top of each mushroom looked like a glowing, pale green parachute.

Judy stood under one of the mushrooms. “We’re too small to break off chunks of these mushrooms,” she said.

meep …
“Cap of mushroom got lotsa thin, thin sheets underneath,” said Thudd.
“Sheets called gills. Gills got tiny spores. Spores make baby mushrooms.

“Gotta climb up stem of mushroom, pull off gills.”

Andrew and Judy shinnied up a mushroom stem. The gills were as thin as tissue paper. They were almost as close together as the pages of a book.

Andrew and Judy ripped off bits of the
soft, spongy gills and tossed them to the ground. Tiny round spores rained down like twinkling fairy powder.

Before long, a circle of glowing shreds surrounded the mushroom.

“Okey-dokey!” said Thudd. “Got enough pieces now.”

Andrew and Judy climbed down the stem and gathered up the bits of mushroom in their arms. The mushroom heaps were bright enough to light their path.

Andrew spied a streak of moonlight on water. “The river!” he shouted.

meep …
“Careful, Drewd!” squeaked Thudd. “Lotsa strange stuff near river. Fish-catching spiders! Toad that spray deadly poison!”

“
Thanks
, Thudd,” said Judy.

At the riverbank, their feet sank in the squishy mud up to their ankles. They plodded along until they found a little pool of water at the edge of the river.

Andrew placed his pile of mushroom gills on a pebble. From a pants pocket, he pulled a small paper-wrapped square. The wrapper was printed with the word
UMBUBBLE
.

Andrew pulled off the paper, popped the blue square into his mouth, and chewed.

He blew a bubble as big as his head. Andrew kept blowing until the Umbubble was bigger than he was, till it was as big as a Ping-Pong ball.

“Whew!” Andrew sighed. He rolled the Umbubble onto a leaf.

“We’ll stick the mushroom pieces on the inside so Uncle Al can see us,” said Andrew.

Then Andrew rolled the Umbubble to the edge of the water. He found the small hole in the Umbubble where he had blown air into it. He shoved his head through the hole, then his shoulders, then the rest of him.

“Hand me all the mushroom pieces, Judy,” he said. “And come on in.”

Judy heaped the shreds in her arms and
shoved them through the hole. Then she pushed herself inside the Umbubble.

“Stick the pieces on quickly,” said Andrew, “before the Umbubble dries and gets hard.”

Andrew and Judy worked fast to cover the inside of the Umbubble with the glowing fragments.

When they were done, Andrew sealed the Umbubble by pulling the edges of the hole together. “It’ll be ready in a few seconds,” said Andrew.

Judy tapped the Umbubble. “Feels like plastic,” she said.

“Now we get the Umbubble into the water,” said Andrew. “Just walk inside it like a gerbil in a wheel.”

They walked, and the glowing Umbubble rolled into the little pool.

Moonlit ripples of water pulled them away from the dark shapes on the shore. Soon
the river current picked them up and raced them away.

All of a sudden, the Umbubble came to a stop.

“We must be caught on something,” said Andrew.

He peered through a space between the mushroom pieces. The Umbubble had washed up against something—something big.

“Looks like a log,” said Andrew. He squinted.
“A log with eyes!”

meep …
“Platypus!” said Thudd.

“A platypus!”
said Andrew. “I’ve always wanted to see a platypus. But I always thought I’d be bigger than the platypus when I saw it.”

“Platypus!” said Judy, trying to get a good view. “The bizarre-o mammal that has a beak like a duck and lays eggs.”

meep …
“Got beaver tail and webbed
feet,” said Thudd. “Platypus beak feel electricity from animal muscles. Find prey same way as echidna.”

“And we’re right next to its beak,” said Judy.

The Umbubble rolled over a wave. On the other side of it was a flying-saucer shape.

“What’s that lump in the water?” asked Judy. “It’s headed right at us.”

Eek!
squeaked Thudd. “Numbfish! Numbfish make electricity. Make big shock to catch prey!”

Suddenly Andrew’s stomach lurched as the Umbubble flew up, spun around, and plopped back into the water.

A powerful tingle began in Andrew’s toes. It jangled up to his head like lightning and pounded his skull like a hammer.

Black-and-white spirals twirled in front of his eyes. Then everything went completely dark.

Andrew was having a dream about octopuses battling platypuses when he heard a little voice.

meep …
“Wake up, Drewd,” squeaked Thudd.

Andrew rubbed his eyes. “Huh? Wha?” he mumbled sleepily.

meep …
“Umbubble get shock from numbfish,” said Thudd. “Drewd been sleeping long time.”

Andrew’s head wasn’t pounding anymore and the spirals were gone, but he felt a little dizzy.

Why does the top of the Umbubble look so far away? And why is it getting farther away?
thought Andrew.

Ga-nufff … ga-nufff … gnewww …

Andrew looked over at Judy. She was snoring—and she was tiny, tinier than before. And she was getting tinier every second.

Holy moly!
thought Andrew.
It must be the electricity. The electricity from the numbfish is shrinking us smaller!

meep …
“Look, Drewd!” squeaked Thudd. “Lights of village!”

Indeed, as Andrew peered through the Umbubble, he saw lights on the bank of the river. He saw the dark outline of a boat—and the familiar shape of Uncle Al!

The Umbubble whammed against something and stopped suddenly. The jolt sent Andrew and Judy flying through the Umbubble. Andrew landed against Judy.

“Super-duper pooper-scooper!” said Andrew. “We’re caught in Uncle Al’s net!

“Wake up, Judy! Uncle Al’s here! We’re getting rescued!”

But Judy just rolled over and kept on snoring—and getting smaller.

The boat was almost on top of the Um-bubble now.

The next moment, the Umbubble swooped into the air. Between the mushroom pieces, Andrew saw Uncle Al’s giant fingers.

Something tapped the Umbubble.

Ping!

It cracked. Andrew, Judy, and Thudd fell onto Uncle Al’s palm and bounced onto his wrist.

Uncle Al beamed a flashlight on his open hand. His smiling face glowed like a full moon.

“Super-duper pooper scooper!” cheered Andrew. “We’re
safe
!”

TO BE CONTINUED IN ANDREW, JUDY, AND THUDD’S
NEXT EXCITING ADVENTURE:

ANDREW LOST
IN UNCLE AL

In stores July 2007

TRUE STUFF

Thudd wanted to tell you more about carnivorous plants and platypuses, but he was busy keeping Andrew and Judy from being gulped by a python and stung by a gympie-gympie tree. Here’s what he wanted to say:

• Most plants use their roots to take up all the food they need from the soil. But rain-forest soil doesn’t have much food. That’s why some rain-forest plants catch insects and some other small animals—they need the extra nutrition.
  

• Rhinoceros beetles might be the strongest animals on earth. One rhinoceros beetle could carry 800 other rhinoceros beetles on its back! A human who was as strong as a rhinoceros
  beetle could carry seventy cars!
  

• Australia has ten thousand kinds of spiders, more than any other place in the world. And new kinds are being discovered all the time. Australia also takes the prize for spiders with the strongest venom.
  

• There are different kinds of rain forests. Rain forests in warm areas near the equator are called tropical rain forests or jungles. These are what we think of when we hear the words
  rain forest.
  

  There are a few rain forests in cooler areas, too. These are called temperate rain forests.
  

  The plants and animals in the two kinds of rain forests are quite different. In tropical rain forests, trees usually have large, broad leaves to capture as much sunlight as they can. In temperate rain forests, most of the trees have needles like pine trees. There are more different kinds of plants and animals in tropical rain forests.
  

  But all rain forests get lots of rain—at least
  a hundred inches of rain each year. (A six-foot-tall person is seventy-two inches high.) Some rain forests get
  400
  inches of rain in a year!
  

• Tropical rain forests have layers. The layer created by the treetops is called the canopy. This layer covers the rain forest like an umbrella. The canopy gets most of the sunlight, and most of the rain-forest animals live there. The canopy keeps the rain forest cool.
  

  Some very tall trees, like the one that Andrew and Judy climb, stick up through the canopy. These especially tall trees make up the emergent layer of the rain forest.
  

  The area between the canopy and the forest floor is called the understory. It gets much less light. Bushes and ferns and young trees are found there.
  

  The forest floor gets only a tiny amount of light. Whatever falls to the ground—dead leaves, dead animals, poop—is quickly eaten by insects and other animals. These things disappear so fast that they never release their nutrients
  back into the soil. That’s one reason why the soil doesn’t contain much food for plants. Another reason is that the huge amounts of rain wash away the nutrients in the soil.
  

• Platypuses may be the strangest animals in the world. A platypus is a furry mammal with a flat bill like a duck, webbed feet, and a wide, flat tail that stores fat for the winter. And they lay eggs! Platypuses and echidnas are the only mammals that lay eggs.
  

  Platypus eggs are sticky—they stick to the fur on their mother’s belly. When the eggs hatch, the baby platypuses hang on to their mother’s belly fur and drink milk.
  

  The only places where you can find platypuses and echidnas in the wild are Australia and some nearby islands.
  

• When scientists first saw a platypus that was stuffed and sent back to England, they didn’t believe it was a real animal. They tried to find stitches to prove that it was sewn together from the parts of many different animals!