Agatha Parrot and the Thirteenth Chicken Read online

  HOORAY!

  Mrs. T. went over to the table by the window and saw Bianca’s sign.

  “What a lovely picture,” said Mrs. T. “But isn’t it supposed to have a flower growing out of its tail?”

  “HA HA HA!” Bianca laughed.

  Bah! I wished I’d asked.

  Mrs. Twelvetrees checked inside the box.

  “Well done, girls!” she said. “I see you’ve put some paper towels down to keep them from sliding around.”

  “And to catch all the poop,” said Ivy.

  “Er, yes,” said Mrs. T. “That too.”

  Mrs. T. took the lid off the incubator. “They’ve gotten quite warm in here, so let them run around a little before you put them into Mr. Motley’s box.”

  Mrs. Twelvetrees put the incubator on the floor and tipped it up a bit. WHEEE!

  The chickens all rolled out, then they got on their feet and started toddling around.

  Awww . . . CUTE!

  “The whole school is going to have a big chicken assembly tomorrow morning,” said Mrs. T. “So don’t be late!” Then off she went to do some other principal stuff.

  The chickens were amazing, and we started naming them. There was Wizzy, who was really fast, and Tubby, who kept rolling over, and Bumper, who kept climbing on top of Moody Broody, who just sat there looking cross.

  I couldn’t pick a favorite because they were all my favorite, but if I had to pick a favorite favorite, it would be Random. That’s because the others kept bunching up together, but Random was far too busy. He toddled off to admire the new leaf on the rubber plant, then he inspected the radiator pipes, and he finally ended up trying to peck a hole in Miss Pingle’s bag.

  It was all very happy until a voice came from the doorway.

  “What is going on in HERE?”

  Oh, rats. Miss Barking had come in. She’s the vice principal, who has big square glasses and thinks that everything in the world is dangerous. One time she tried to shut the whole school down because she saw a furry slug under the radiator in the library, but we all knew it was just an old piece of candy. Of course we didn’t tell her that—we just watched her freak out when Martha wiped the dust off and popped the candy into her mouth. HA HA awesome!

  Standing behind Miss Barking was Gwendoline Tutt.

  “Look, Miss Barking,” said Gwendoline in her horrible snotty voice. “Those chickens are all over the floor. I don’t think that’s very hygienic, do you, Miss Barking?”

  Honestly! If anything isn’t hygienic, it’s Gwendoline. She always makes us feel sick. She must have been spying on us and then gone to fetch Miss Barking.

  “Those chickens could be carrying a nasty disease,” said Miss Barking.

  We were about to protest, but then Random decided that Gwendoline’s shoes were really interesting. He hurried over to have a good look.

  Toddle toddle toddle—poop!

  WAHOO! Random had done a little you-know-what right in front of Gwendoline! It was only the tiniest little blob that had splotted onto the floor, but Gwendoline made the most of it.

  “Urgh, that’s totally GROSS!” she shouted, then ran out the door.

  What a baby! But Miss Barking wasn’t taking any chances.

  “Keep back, children,” said Miss B., staring at the blob like it was radioactive. “There could be dangerous fumes filling the room.”

  Huh.

  She made us all line up against the far wall, and opened the window. Then she reached into her bag and got out one of those paper facemasks that go over your mouth and nose. When she put it on, her head looked like a giant potato wearing glasses.

  “Do you have safety gloves, Miss Pingle?” asked the giant potato.

  Miss Pingle shook her head.

  “Really, Miss Pingle,” said the potato. “Those little beaks are like needles and could inject you with chicken germs. Luckily for you, I have come prepared.”

  Miss Barking pulled on a massive pair of gloves that made her hands look three times bigger. She got some wipes out of her bag to clear the little blob up, then went crawling across the floor to catch the tiny little chickens. Poor things! Can you imagine being one day old and being chased by a giant potato with monster hands? Not nice.

  Eventually she got all the chicks into Motley’s box.

  “We need to turn the heat lamp on,” said Miss Pingle.

  Miss Pingle was about to push the switch when Miss Barking stopped her.

  “GLOVES!” said Miss B. strictly. “How do you know this electrical device is completely safe? Has it been tested? Does it have a certificate?”

  Miss P. sighed and let Miss Barking take over. Miss B. turned the switch, but the light didn’t come on.

  “Just as I thought,” she said. “It’s broken.”

  “Maybe you have to adjust the temperature with the knob,” suggested Miss P.

  Miss Barking grabbed the knob in her big glove and turned it all the way up. The light came on.

  “There,” she said.

  “That looks too hot,” said Miss P. “Can you turn it down a bit?”

  Miss Barking grabbed the knob again and turned it back. The light went off.

  “That’s a little too far,” said Miss Pingle.

  “I KNOW what I’m doing, thank you, Miss Pingle!” said Miss Barking sharply. Then she gave the knob one more turn.

  “There . . . oh!”

  Her giant hand had broken off the control knob! The light over the box was blazing full blast.

  “Yeep yeep yeep!” went the chickens.

  “Oh, no!” said Ivy. “Miss Barking is cooking the baby chickens!”

  Miss Barking tried to push the knob back into place, but it kept falling off.

  Eeek! I couldn’t watch anymore, so I ran off to get Motley. As soon as he came in and saw the light on full blast, he unplugged the box from the wall. Off it went—phew!

  Motley saw the broken knob lying on the table.

  “Who did this?” he said crossly.

  “I must go home,” said Miss Barking suddenly, and she dashed out the door, still wearing her mask and gloves. “Yeah, fly back to your own planet,” muttered Motley as she went. (Oooh! That was a mean thing to say, but she had broken his box, so we didn’t really blame him.) Motley picked up the broken knob. “It’ll take me all night to fix it.”

  “If the chickens don’t have a heater, they’ll get cold,” said Miss Pingle.

  “We’ll look after them,” I said. “They can come and stay at our houses!”

  Miss Pingle thought about it. “As long as you keep them warm, they should be all right for one night,” she said. “Just make sure they get plenty of water to drink.”

  “And plenty of food,” said Martha, picking up the food bag.

  Eeek! I suddenly had this vision of Martha shoving the whole bag inside one little chicken, and judging by Miss Pingle’s face, she was having the same vision!

  “Put that down!” said Miss Pingle. “That stays here.”

  “So what can they eat?” demanded Martha.

  “They can have Gilbert’s food,” said Ivy. “We’ve got lots of it.”

  “Who’s Gilbert?” asked Miss Pingle.

  “Mom’s goldfish,” said Ivy. “But he’s nearly dead, so he doesn’t need it.”

  “NO!” said Miss Pingle firmly. “The chickens will not need to be fed for one night. But we do need something to keep them in.”

  “There’s a bunch of shoeboxes in Miss Bunn’s classroom,” I said. “We could use them to take the chickens home.”

  “Not me!” Ellie whimpered. “I don’t dare to! I had a bad dream about chickens.”

  “Chickens aren’t scary!” we said.

  “They are when they’ve got poisonous beaks and peck through your tights,” said Ellie. “My leg fell off in my dream.”

  So I went to get four shoeboxes, one each for me, Martha, Ivy, and Bianca, but not one for Ellie in case a chicken pecked through her tights and made her leg fall off.

&nb
sp; “Thank you,” said Miss Pingle. “I’ll pack up the chickens and bring them down to the playground. You get your coats, and then ask your mothers if you can take the chickens home.”

  So we all ran out to the playground and asked our moms. Martha’s mom got the wrong idea. “You want to bring some chickens home?” she said. “But I’ve already got dinner planned. It’s pork chops and veggies.”

  “We’re not eating the chickens, Mom!” explained Martha. “We’re looking after them. Maybe we could give them some pork chops and veggies for their dinner.”

  “NO!” we all said.

  Miss Pingle turned up with the four shoeboxes and gave us one each, except for Ellie.

  “I’ve taped the lids down, so don’t open them until you get home,” said Miss P. “And tonight, make sure they have a little bowl of water, and keep them warm. I want to see them all back here tomorrow!”

  Who’s in the Box?

  I made Mom and Tilly walk home really fast because I couldn’t wait to see who was in my box! Since there were thirteen chickens, we should have gotten three chicks each, but one lucky person would get an extra chicken. I was hoping I’d be the lucky one, and I REALLY hoped the extra chick was Random! Anybody who toddles up to Gwendoline and poops right in front of her is my hero for life. He was so cool.

  When we opened the front door, we saw lots of old towels by the stairs. Dad was halfway up the staircase, trying to balance the stepladder on a kitchen chair. It looked lethal.

  “Keep back!” said Dad. “I’m decorating.”

  “Do you have to do that now?” asked Mom.

  “You’re the one who wanted new wallpaper,” said Dad.

  Mom just told me to take the chickens upstairs out of the way.

  I squeezed past the stepladder with Tilly following me. We went into our bedroom, and I put the box on the chair. I was just about to open it . . . BIG EXCITEMENT! . . . but then Dad shouted:

  “Agatha! Quick, I need you!”

  I went out and saw he’d taken his shoes off and was balancing on the banister. He was holding a tape measure up to the ceiling, and I had to hold it at the bottom of the wall so he could see how high the ceiling was.

  I was only gone for about five seconds, but if you’ve got a nosy interfering little sister, you’ll know what’s coming next.

  When I got back, the box was upside down on the floor and Tilly’s legs were sticking out from under our bunk beds. OOOOH, I WAS SO MAD! Obviously she’d opened the box and dropped it, and the chickens had run off to hide.

  I crawled under the bunks and saw an old blue sock hopping up and down. I managed to grab it and found that one of the chicks had gotten his head stuck inside it. Tilly spotted another chick right in the corner behind the leg of the bunk beds, pecking at a dust bunny. I snagged both chicks and put them back in the box. Then I went to take another look.

  There was no sign of any more, so we had to pull everything out from under the bed. I found my horrible old woolly tights, which I’d stuffed down there years ago to lose on purpose (yuck!). Plus there were my lost earphones (hooray!), pencils, old birthday cards, bags, a gym shoe, some Lego bricks, tons of hairy fluff, dead spiders, a not-quite-dead spider (EEEK!!!), and seventeen cents.

  “How many chickens were there in the box?” I asked Tilly.

  “They ran away,” said Tilly.

  Fat lot of help that was!

  Just then there was a grumpy noise from outside the door.

  “What’s the matter, Dad?” I asked.

  “I just stepped on something squishy.”

  I dashed out to see him sitting on the carpet pulling off his sock. There was a yellow blob stuck on it.

  “Oh, no!” I said. “It’s one of our chickens!”

  “A chicken?” said Dad.

  He sniffed it.

  “No, it’s a piece of cake,” said Dad. “What’s a piece of cake doing up here? JAMES?”

  At that point my brother, James, stuck his head out of his room.

  “James, have you been bringing food upstairs?”

  “Ummm,” said James, shaking his head, but it was obvious his mouth was full, plus he had crumbs stuck to his sweater. In fact, there was a trail of crumbs leading along the landing, and there at the end was a little yellow thing happily helping himself to a cake feast.

  “It’s Tubby!” I said.

  At last we had three chickens safely back in the box. One of them was definitely Tubby, but none of them was Random. Never mind.

  Whoever they were, we were going to have an AWESOME time!

  Chicken Soccer

  After dinner, I thought my chickens needed some friends to play with, so I went next door to Martha’s house.

  I rang the bell, but nothing happened. Maybe Martha was still having dinner? Then I had a nasty thought. I hoped she wasn’t trying to feed her chickens pork chops and veggies!

  Suddenly there was a big POP sound from inside, and then Martha opened the door.

  “What was that noise?” I said.

  “Just a balloon!” Martha laughed.

  “Are you sure?” I said.

  “Of course I’m sure,” said Martha. “I was practicing soccer moves with it, and it burst.”

  “Thank goodness,” I said. “I thought you’d been feeding your chickens pork chops and veggies and one of them had exploded.”

  “Don’t you trust me?” said Martha. She stomped off to get her shoebox. Inside were three little chickens.

  “Happy now?” she said.

  I felt bad for doubting Martha and for upsetting her too, but I had the perfect idea for how to make it up to her.

  “How about if my chickens challenge your chickens to a soccer game?”

  “Cool!” Martha grinned.

  Martha brought her shoebox to my house, and we made a soccer field on the kitchen table, with little Lego goalposts. It was perfect because our table is near the radiator, so the chickens wouldn’t get too cold. Martha put her chickens at one end, and I put mine at the other end, and we put an old Ping-Pong ball in the middle.

  It was really funny! The chickens toddled over and knocked the ball around. I suppose it should have been Martha’s team against my team, playing three against three, but it was more like every chicken for itself. If real soccer was like that and had a ball as big as the people, it would be a lot more interesting!

  There was just one thing missing from the game. We didn’t have Random! Where was that star quality? Where was the creative play in midfield? Who was there to create chances and open up the defense? (No, I don’t know what any of that means either, but it’s what they say on TV.) Actually, Tubby did show a bit of star quality when he tried to eat one of the goalposts—ha ha!

  “We need more players,” said Martha.

  “I’ll get Ivy,” I said.

  I left Martha and went to knock on Ivy’s door, but then I looked up. Ivy was sitting by her bedroom window with her chickens running about on the windowsill.

  “It’s AGATHA!” shouted Ivy to the chickens. “Everybody wave at Agatha!”

  Ivy held up one of her chickens, and so I waved at it. Ivy waved back, but being a bit crazy, she can’t just wave a little wave. She waved a giant big wave still holding the chicken.

  “CAREFUL!” I shouted.

  Ivy disappeared from the window. Then I heard her come downstairs, four steps at a time (as usual).

  WAM BAM BAM WUMP!

  Ivy’s door opened, and there she was with her shoebox.

  “We’re having a chicken soccer game,” I said.

  “Awesome!” said Ivy.

  “How many do you have?”

  “Three,” said Ivy.

  “Are you sure?” I asked her. “What about the one you were waving?”

  “You mean Mr. Thompson?” asked Ivy. “He’s back in the box.”

  “Can I see?” I said. I felt I had to check.

  It’s not that I don’t trust Ivy—it’s just that Ivy can be a little nutty.

 
Ivy opened her box. Sure enough, she had three chickens.

  “There’s Mr. Thompson,” she said. “And that’s Lovely, and that’s Drain Pump.”

  Ha ha! I didn’t expect Ivy to give her chickens normal names, but where did she get Drain Pump from?

  “It’s in the book I’m reading,” said Ivy.

  “What book?”

  “Washing Machine Instructions,” said Ivy. “I’ve only got four more pages to go.”

  You see what I mean about Ivy?

  Soon we had nine chickens running around on the kitchen table. It wasn’t hard to tell who they all were. I had Tubby, and my other two were Bib and Bob. Martha had brought Wizzy and Bumper and one she called Peckham, who had an extra little funny tuft of fluff. Ivy’s chickens were all huddled together like a ball with six legs, but there was still no sign of Random.

  “Bianca must have the other four chicks,” I said. “Let’s see if she wants to bring hers over too.”

  So Martha went to Bianca’s house and came back with her shoebox.

  “Is Bianca coming?” I asked.

  “No, she’s got to practice her trombone,” said Martha. “But she said we can borrow her chickens.”

  We opened up Bianca’s box . . . OH, DEAR!

  We had expected to see four chicks, but there were only three. Right away, I knew which one was missing!

  Where was Random?

  I was worried sick. When Tilly had let the chicks escape from my box, I thought I’d caught them all. Maybe I hadn’t. Maybe Random was still running around somewhere!

  I had to try to keep cool so that Martha and Ivy didn’t know I was panicking. I decided to double-check their stories.

  “So, Martha,” I said. “Are you sure you didn’t feed your chickens anything? Not even one sliver of pork and a tiny bit of cabbage?”

  “And one drop of gravy?” asked Ivy, getting into the spirit of things.

  “Why?” asked Martha.

  “I just thought that maybe one of your chickens exploded and you’d forgotten?”