Smelliest Day at the Zoo (3 page)

Chapter 5

The next morning Miss Ingleby, the dung-beetle keeper, received a call from a very flustered-sounding Mr Pickles.

“It’s all a disaster!” he declared—a little overdramatically, Miss Ingleby thought. “You must come now!”

Miss Ingleby sighed as she put down the phone. She really didn’t understand why people couldn’t be more like dung beetles. There was never even a whiff of amateur dramatics from her precious insects. Even if there was that constant slight whiff of a different kind.

Miss Ingleby had a sudden thought before leaving for Mr Pickles’s office and stopped just for a second to pop something in a matchbox to take with her.

“The neighbours are complaining,” Mr Pickles announced when Miss Ingleby arrived.

“I should think the whole town’s complaining,” said Miss Ingleby sharply.

“It’s thirty degrees in the shade and the pong is quite awesome.”

“Yes, well. Sergeant Saddle has been round to check up on us because of the complaints—interrupting the Test Match, I might add—and he’s not impressed,” said Mr Pickles. “So what we need is a plan. An emergency plan,” he added decisively.

“Righto,” agreed Miss Ingleby, waiting to hear Mr Pickles’s plan. But Mr Pickles didn’t appear to have anything else to say. He looked it Miss Ingleby hopefully.

Miss Ingleby sighed for the second time that morning. “I was wondering about these,” she said, opening a little box to reveal two small, round, brown insects.

Mr Pickles looked confused. “Dung beetles!” she said brightly. “What about dung beetles?” asked Mr Pickles.

“Well, they eat dung,” said Miss Ingleby.

“They eat…thingummy?” asked an astonished Mr Pickles. “How extraordinary. Do they, er, like it?”

“Love it. Breakfast, lunch and supper. Nothing but dung,” said Miss Ingleby. She scrunched up her nose at the little beetles. “Yum, yum, yummy, eh?”

The dung beetles frowned back. Anyone would think they were children.

“Well, let’s set them to work,” said Mr Pickles excitedly. “I shall ring Sergeant Saddle and tell him we have an emergency plan.”

He called out to Miss Busby, his secretary, to ring Sergeant Saddle on his mobile phone. Miss Ingleby tipped the beetles out of the little box into a large metal wastepaper bin and then—much to Mr Pickles’s horror—produced a large elephant dropping from her rucksack and carefully placed it in the bin.

“There you are,” she cooed to the beetles. “Lovely num-nums!”

The beetles glowered back.

“Now, how much thingummy can a whatsit beetle eat a day?”

“About fifty grams,” said Miss Ingleby.

“And how many beetles do you have?” asked Mr Pickles.

“One hundred and fifty-two,” said Miss Ingleby. “When I last looked.”

Mr Pickles got out his calculator and fed in:

152 × 50
=
7,600

“Seven point six kilograms a day!” Mr Pickles was now very excited. “Just wait until I tell Sergeant Saddle this.” A sound like a tiny burp echoed around the metal wastepaper bin. Miss Ingleby looked in and saw two beetles, green with indigestion and mopping their brows.

Mr Pickles called through to Miss Busby: “Have you managed to get Sergeant Saddle yet?”

“Now, remember,” said Mr Pickles to Miss Ingleby, stabbing away at his calculator, “we have 4,000 animals in the zoo. And that means three tonnes of, urn, what-do-you-call-it a day.”

“Right,” said Miss Ingleby, taking the calculator off him and doing some sums of her own. “That’s three tonnes, which is, let me see, 3,000 kilograms, which is, er, 3 million grams.”

“Which means,” groaned Mr Pickles, “that it would take 395 days for all our dung beetles to eat just one day’s worth of poo.”

There was another tiny belch from the tin bin as one of the beetles choked on a stringy bit of dung.

“That’s over a year!” said Mr Pickles.

“To eat one day of thingummy…” He slumped back into his armchair in despair.

Just then Miss Busby called in from the outer office, “I have Sergeant Saddle on the line. Shall I put him through?”

“Oh no,” groaned Mr Pickles. “Tell him I’m busy”

Miss Ingleby picked up the metal wastepaper bin—complete with burping beetles and dung—and tiptoed out of the room.

Chapter Six

Half an hour later Miss Ingleby returned with a Second World War gas mask which her grandfather had used as a soldier. She handed it to Mr Pickles and suggested they did a tour of the zoo. She thought it best that they saw how bad—or smelly—things had got.

“Let’s go and see if any of the other keepers are doing any better,” she hissed.

Mr Pickles struggled to strap on the gas mask. It was made out of heavy green rubber with two glass portholes to look out of and a long round sticky-out snout where the nose should be.

“Thank-oo,” said Mr Pickles after he had finally stretched it over his head. The gas mask made him sound as if he had a heavy cold and made him look like an alien.

“Shall we go and see how the keepers are getting on?” said Miss Ingleby.

“Goo’…idea,” snuffled Mr Pickles, who was beginning to feel like a Martian.

“I think it might be a good idea to do the smelliest first.”

“Mmmm,” mumbled Mr Pickles, as sweat began to trickle down the inside of his mask.

Miss Ingleby, who was an expert in all types of animals, consulted a list she had drawn up and led Mr Pickles to the porcupines.

They were twenty metres away from the Porcupine House when the smell hit them. Or rather, hit Miss Ingleby. Mr Pickles was struggling for breath a little, but even through his Second World War gas mask he picked up on the unbelievable stench wafting across the grass from the building they were approaching.

“A combination of pee, poo and scent,” said Miss Ingleby briskly, pinching her nose with her left hand.

“Ah,” gurgled Mr Pickles.

“The males pee
on
the females. They both squirt scent from their bottoms. Glands near their bottoms to be precise. And—”

“Charming,” said Mr Pickles, who had learned quite enough about porcupines for one day.

“Er, well, how about the wolves?” asked Miss Ingieby, leading her boss to the next building.

As they got close they walked into a wall of pong like a cross between a week-old nappy and a month-old rotting fish.

“Phwoooar,” groaned Miss Ingieby, who until now had been a model of composure. “I think they must be spraying scent around to disguise the smell of all that—”

“Thingummy,” interrupted Mr Pickles.

“Er, yes, thingummy,” agreed Miss Ingleby.

“Shall we move on?” asked Mr Pickles.

“Yes,” said Miss Ingleby quickly, relieved not to have to get any nearer the wolves. “What about the turkey vultures?”

“If we must,” sighed Mr Pickles, who now felt as if his head was about to burst inside the confounded gas mask.

“I’m afraid these might be very whiffy indeed,” warned Miss Ingleby. “Turkey vultures pee and poo on themselves…”

“They do WHAT?” shrieked Mr Pickles.

“Pee and poo on themselves,” repeated Miss Ingleby. “And they also vomit all over other animals if they feel threatened.”

“Ah,” said Mr Pickles.

“Apparently the vomit smells particularly disgusting,” said Miss Ingleby helpfully.

“Er, why don’t we give the vultures a miss?” said Mr Pickles, who was now feeling sick, not to mention steaming hot and extremely bothered.

And so it went on. Miss Ingleby started scribbling a list of all the animals they visited.

Hyenas
, wrote Miss Ingleby.
Smearing stinky paste all around their cages
.

Skunks
, she scribbled.
Saw Mr Pickles coming and squirted him with thick oil spray. Dis
…
GUST
.…
ing!

Dingoes
, she wrote next.
Have been rolling in their own poo all morning. Uuuugh!

Polecats

nay revvvvvv-OL-ting! Camels…burping all the time. Gross. Cows…farting all the time. Really gross. Mongooses…

But before they could manage any more Mr Pickles threw up at Miss Ingleby’s feet.

One of the mongooses looked up at the two zoo keepers in disgust. Humans were just BEYOND GROSS.