“Weird,” Ben said.
Second thing: The sasquatch has one of the foulest odors among Imaginary creatures. Some people say it smells like a wet dog that has rolled in stinky socks.
Third thing: The sasquatch cannot speak. Therefore, it does not like to be asked questions. If you ask it too many questions, it will get angry.
Fourth thing: Although it is a gentle creature and rarely hurts a fly, do not make a sasquatch angry. It has the ability to tear off your limbs.
Fifth thing: The sasquatch loves to eat and never gets full. In the wild, it eats forest greens, berries, mushrooms, and bark. But if it escapes into the Known World, it will seek out food that is sweet, particularly chocolate.
Pearl looked up from the book. “I love chocolate, too. But not the kind with nuts. Everything gets ruined when you add nuts. I wonder if sasquatches like nuts.”
Ben elbowed her. “Keep reading.”
After much trial and error, I have found that there are three ways to successfully catch a sasquatch.
First way: Put it to sleep.
A tranquilizer dart is included in this kit. The dart contains enough potion to put an average-sized sasquatch to sleep. It is best to shoot the dart directly at the sasquatch’s rump. The potion will take effect immediately.
When the sasquatch falls, anything it lands on will be crushed, so keep your distance. The potion will last for one hour. If you are unable to carry a sasquatch, do not use the tranquilizer dart.
Pearl looked up again. “How much did Mr. Tabby say our sasquatch weighs?”
“Four hundred and something pounds.” Ben took out a sealed plastic tube and a blowpipe from the box. “I don’t think we can carry a four-hundred-pound sasquatch.” He set the tube and blowpipe aside. Pearl kept reading.
Second way: Trap it.
A net is included in this kit. I have found that if a sweet treat is placed inside the net, the sasquatch will walk right into it and will sit and eat the treat while the net is secured around it.
The sasquatch rarely puts up a fight, unless you anger it by asking a lot of questions.
If you have not arranged for transportation, and if you are unable to drag a sasquatch, then do not use the net.
“If we can’t carry a four-hundred-pound sasquatch, I don’t think we’ll be able to drag it,” Ben pointed out. He set the net aside, then looked inside the box. Three items remained.
Third way: Feed it.
The sasquatch is always hungry and has a sweet tooth. I have found that the sasquatch will willingly follow me if I hand it pieces of chocolate. Do not run out of chocolate before you reach your destination or you will have to use one of the other methods.
“Hey, that sounds pretty easy,” Ben said as he pulled out a chocolate bar. “But what’s this green thing?” The item in question was the size and shape of a tennis ball.
I have also included a fog bomb, which will create a fog bank. This will provide camouflage in case you run into nosy neighbors.
Pearl reached into the box and removed the last item.
And last but not least, I have included a whistle. When used correctly, it releases a sound quite similar to the call of a wild sasquatch. Use this whistle only as a last resort and only if you are a professional, for without the proper amount of airflow, you may attract creatures other than the sasquatch.
Pearl set the book aside and held the whistle up to the light. The overhead bulb shone on the silver surface like the moon. “I wonder what the call of a wild sasquatch sounds like,” she mused.
“It probably sounds like that roar we heard at the hospital,” Ben said.
“You think?” Pearl rolled the whistle between her fingers, a smile tickling one side of her mouth. “I’d sure like to find out.” She brought the whistle to her lips.
“Wait!” Ben cried, grabbing her wrist. “The book said to use the whistle only as a last resort.”
Pearl’s smile widened. “Oh, come on, Ben. Don’t you want to know what a sasquatch sounds like? I’ll use just a teeny-tiny bit of air. I’ll blow real soft. No one will hear it but us.” Then she whispered, “I’ll be very quiet.”
“Okay,” he agreed, releasing her wrist. “As long as you’re very quiet.”
So Pearl put the whistle to her lips, and, with the smallest puff of air, she blew.
13
Ben 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.
14
Ben 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.
“Breakfast!” his grandfather hollered.
Ben pushed the box deeper beneath the bed. His plan was to eat breakfast as quickly as possible, then dart over to Pearl’s.
“So?” Grandpa Abe asked as he poured milk into his bowl of Sugar Loops. “Do you and Pearl want to come to the senior center? Everyone wants to meet my grandson, the storyteller. And today is pudding day. What could be better than that?”
“No, thank you,” Ben said as he sat at the kitchen table.
“What? You don’t like pudding? What kind of person doesn’t like pudding?”
“I like pudding,” Ben said. “But Pearl wanted me to meet her at the Dollar Store after breakfast.” Ben poured milk into his bowl. Then he stuffed his mouth with Sugar Loops so he wouldn’t have to keep answering questions.
“Well, I guess that’ll be okay.” Grandpa Abe tapped his spoon on the table. “Why would you want to hang out with a bunch of old people when you can hang out with a kid your own age? But just be careful. Like I told you, that girl’s a troublemaker.”
“Okay.”
The toaster popped, and the scent of warm bread filled the air. “You want a schmear of cream cheese on your bagel?”
As Ben nodded, a knock sounded on the front door, followed by a high-pitched voice. “Yoo-hoo!”
Grandpa Abe groaned. Then he whispered, “That voice. I know that voice. Pretend we’re not home.”
“Who is it?” Ben whispered back.
“Martha Mulberry, the busiest busybody in Buttonville.”
Knock, knock, KNOCK. “I know you’re in there, Abe Silverstein. Are you going to make me stand here all day? Because I will. I will stand here all day and knock until you open this door.”
“All right, already.” With another groan, Grandpa Abe grabbed his cane and hobbled across the kitchen. “Why, hello, Martha,” he said in a cheerful voice after opening the front door. “How nice to see you this morning. I was just saying to my grandson, Ben, that I should have such luck as to see Martha Mulberry this morning.”
Ben watched from the kitchen table as a woman pushed her way into the living room, followed by a girl who was pulling a red wagon. They were dressed in matching red overalls and white sneakers. And they wore matching red baseball hats with the words WELCOME WAGON embroidered on the brim.
“Ben, get your tuchus over here and meet Mrs. Mulberry and her daughter, Victoria.”
Ben shoved another spoonful of Sugar Loops into his mouth—he’d need energy for the sasquatch hunt. Then he joined his grandfather in the living room.
“Hello, Ben.” Mrs. Mulberry’s hair stuck out from beneath her baseball cap like frizzy ropes of red licorice. “As the president of the Welcome Wagon Committee, I’d like to officially welcome you to Buttonville.” She shook Ben’s hand. When she smiled, her top gums showed.
“Hi,” Ben said after swallowing the Sugar Loops.
“And this is my daughter, Victoria.”
The girl frowned as she shook Ben’s hand. Her eyes peered at him from behind superthick glasses. Her red hair was so frizzy it looked like it might explode from an overload of static electricity. Was this the girl Pearl had mentioned? The girl who couldn’t keep a secret?
“We would have come earlier this morning, but something got into our garbage can and made a real mess,” Mrs. Mulberry explained.
“Raccoons?” Grandpa Abe asked. r />
“No, I don’t think it was raccoons,” Mrs. Mulberry said. “I’ve never heard of raccoons sorting the garbage into colors. All the green stuff in one pile, the red stuff in another pile, and so on and so on. And it happened to six other houses on Cedar Street.”
“That’s very strange,” Grandpa Abe said.
Ben chewed on his lower lip as he remembered the sasquatch guidebook. It enjoys puzzles and likes to arrange things by color.
“I was convinced that a misbehaving child did the damage,” Mrs. Mulberry said. “But my neighbor Mr. Bumfrickle found a big footprint in the grass next to his overturned garbage can.”
A bigfoot print? Ben gasped and some spit went down the wrong tube.
“What’s the matter with you?” Mrs. Mulberry asked as Ben started coughing. “Are you sick?”
“Nothing’s the matter with me,” Ben said. He hurried into the kitchen and got a glass of water. As he drank it, he imagined the sasquatch squatting in the Mulberrys’ front yard, sorting through the garbage. It was supposed to be sleeping in the forest, not wandering around Buttonville. What else had the creature done during the night? He and Pearl needed to find it ASAP!
“Ben,” Mrs. Mulberry called, “we have a present for you.”
As Ben returned to the living room, Mrs. Mulberry grabbed a wrapped package from the wagon. “Welcome to the town of Buttonville. We hope you have a long and happy stay.” She handed the package to Ben.
“Thanks,” Ben said. He set the present on the sofa. “Uh, I really need to get going.” But as Ben started for the door, Grandpa Abe cleared his throat.
“Ben, be a good boy and open your present.”
Ben sank onto the couch, untied the red ribbon as fast as he could, and yanked open the box. It held the following things: