Squirrel in the Museum Read online

  I scramble back before the girl who owns the pink sparkly sneakers and backpack can see me.

  The driver calls out to everyone, “It looks like rain, so close the windows. I’ll be parked here. Here is where you come back to at two fifteen. Have a good time.”

  Yikes! If the windows are closed, how will I get off the bus without being seen? I don’t want to have come all this way just to wait on the bus while all the children get to see the Galileo Museum and Science Center.

  And the most bothersome thing of all is: the bus driver is wrong. One good sniff of the air, and I can tell that it’s not going to rain until evening. That bus driver’s nose doesn’t work properly.

  I look at the pink sparkly backpack that stopped my slide. I can tell by the way the pink sparkly sneakers are planted firmly on the floor facing sideways that the girl who is wearing them is busy closing the bus window nearest her.

  The backpack has a buckle and a zipper. The girl hasn’t buckled the buckle or zipped the zipper. There’s no time to search out a better choice, so I dive into the backpack.

  There’s a notebook and some pencils and an apple in here. An apple! How thoughtful of the girl! I always have room in my tummy for an apple. I think better of the girl even though her backpack is decorated with a picture of a kitten wearing a pink sparkly dress, which makes me very nervous. I hope the girl doesn’t think it’s a good idea to put a squirrel into a sparkly dress.

  But before I can have second thoughts, I feel the girl lift the backpack and start walking.

  One of the teachers claps her hands in that way that means Please be quiet and listen. “Children,” she says, “I know you will be on your best behavior anyway, but I wanted to warn you that the museum was considering canceling all the field trips today because they have been having trouble with thefts. Please be aware that—because of this problem—they will be inspecting all backpacks and bags before we leave.”

  If inspecting means what I think it means, I’ll have to find a different way to leave the museum than the way I am getting in.

  But meanwhile we are leaving the sort-of-but-not-exactly-like-marigolds-colored bus and going into the museum and science center.

  All I can do is start munching that apple.

  I bounce in the backpack as the girl bounces into the museum. I have noticed that people children bounce a lot more than the adult people. Squirrels bounce when they walk, too. I wonder if that means we’re related. I’ll have to ask the geckos.

  The temperature changes as the girl goes from the bus (hot and stuffy) to outside (warm and pleasant, due to the sun being out—pay attention, Mister Bus Driver!—no rain coming) to inside the museum (chilly).

  In fact, the children start saying, “Cool!” But they’re saying it in such an excited and pleased-sounding way that—after several of them add the word “Dinosaurs!”—I remember people sometimes use the word cool to indicate they like something.

  I also know the word dinosaurs. On the playground, sometimes children talk about dinosaurs or read books that tell about them. I have climbed to a branch above where the children sit when they choose to sit quietly rather than running and climbing and sliding, and I have looked down at the pictures in those books.

  Dinosaurs are animals.

  Except they are make-believe animals.

  I know this because I’ve never seen a dinosaur, and other squirrels I’ve asked have never heard of them. This makes them different from the wolves, which we haven’t seen in as long as any of us can remember but which squirrel mothers still warn about and which I am going to be learning all about at the museum today.

  Squirrels don’t make up animals. We have enough to worry about with owls and weasels and foxes.

  But sometimes the people teachers read books to the children about make-believe creatures. Besides dinosaurs, these include dragons and unicorns and kittens that sparkle.

  In fact, dinosaurs and dragons are clearly related to each other—and not just honorary cousins like me and the geckos. The difference is that in the stories, dragons talk and fly and breathe fire and have all sorts of exciting adventures. Dinosaurs pretty much just eat each other.

  So when I hear the children squealing, “Dinosaurs!” I assume that the museum is like a library and has books with lots of pictures. I make my way to the top of the backpack and lift up the flap so that I can see and—if a story is to be read—hear.

  There’s nothing to see in the direction I’m facing, so I squiggle around to look in the same direction the girl is looking. I have trouble making sense of what I’m seeing.

  It’s not books. It’s not a picture.

  It’s very, very big. Even by people-sized standards.

  One of the children cries out, “T-Rex! My favorite!”

  I recognize the name. “T-Rex” is the most famous dinosaur, just as “Bambi” is the most famous deer, and “Charlotte” is the most famous spider, and “Scooby-Doo” is the most famous dog, and “Winnie” is the most famous pooh. (Which is another made-up animal.)

  Although, clearly, I have to stop thinking of T-Rex as being make-believe.

  I’ve seen pictures of T-Rex, and I realize that’s who is standing before me. (Well, actually, he’s standing before the little girl with the pink backpack. I’m behind her, peeking over her shoulder.)

  The little girl must be a fan of the adventures of T-Rex, for she steps closer, even though he has a reputation for being very fierce. If she’s going to engage in risky behavior, maybe it’s time for me to leave the backpack. Although T-Rex isn’t moving at the moment, he’s looking right at us with glassy eyes, and his jaws are enormous and filled with pointy teeth. I suspect he could swallow both of us in one bite.

  But before I have a chance to scramble entirely out of the backpack, the girl moves even closer. If she thinks that little velvet rope that’s surrounding the area he’s in is going to protect her, she hasn’t listened to the same stories I have. “Look!” she yells, even though all the other children are already clustered around, already looking. “There’s his bones, and there’s the model!”

  I don’t know what a model is. But: bones! That’s what’s left after something gets eaten. I’ve seen bones before, but not standing upright on their own. Has T-Rex eaten something so quickly that the bones haven’t had a chance to fall down yet? What’s the matter with the teachers, bringing children to such a dangerous place? And what’s the matter with those two geckos, talking me into coming here?

  Incredibly, one of the adults who must work at the museum is standing inside T-Rex’s enclosure. Maybe the little girl is assuming T-Rex will eat him first, and that will give her and the other children time to escape.

  But the museum worker doesn’t seem worried. He smiles and tells the children, “Welcome to the Galileo Museum and Science Center. I trust you’ll have a fun and informative few hours here. But meanwhile, I see you’ve noticed our newest exhibit. The bones are actual fossils, dug up in Alberta, Canada, then carefully reassembled here by our knowledgeable on-staff paleontologists. Then our ingenious lab people made the full-sized model of what he might have looked like when he was alive. He may be plastic, but doesn’t he look real?”

  Plastic is what people make toys out of. I have seen plastic T-Rexes before, but those were small enough to fit into a child’s pocket. I breathe a sigh of relief. T-Rex is make-believe. I should have trusted my nose. There is no scent of a living creature here besides the people—and me, of course.

  “And,” the museum worker says, “just to make your experience more memorable, our animatronic specialists have added voice and movement.”

  This museum worker uses words that are too big. The teachers would know better. He will lose the interest of the children, who can become bored very easily.

  But before there is a chance of that, he pushes a button and T-Rex roars, swinging his massive head and snapping hi
s jaws.

  The children shriek. Even the adults gasp.

  I am not afraid. Squirrels are very brave. But squirrels are also very smart. It is not smart to stand in front of something that is roaring at you. I scramble out of the backpack and onto the head of the girl in pink so that I can leap to safety.

  The girl—who had not been one of the ones to scream at a dinosaur roaring at her—now screams at having a squirrel on her head. She also starts bouncing in place. This makes me bounce, too, which makes it hard for me to get my footing for my jump.

  Even if squirrels ate little girls—which they do not—I could not swallow her in a single bite the way a dinosaur could. So I don’t understand why she is more frightened of me than of the dinosaur.

  Meanwhile, the other children are not paying attention to the screaming girl. Their shrieks have turned to laughter. “Again!” they cry at the museum worker. “Make him do it again!”

  This is because T-Rex is not a living creature. He is a very big, very noisy toy.

  I’d forgotten that for a moment.

  The only one who hasn’t stopped screaming is the little girl whose head I’m sitting on. She’s flapping her arms in the air, not swatting at me, but like a chicken trying to take off.

  People finally notice that she’s still screaming, still bouncing. They turn to her. They point. They say, “What’s that on your head?”

  “I don’t know!” she screams.

  Well, this explains why she’s upset. Since I climbed up the back of her head, she must not realize that I’m a squirrel. Still, I’m amazed at the lack of education shown by the other students, who can’t recognize what I am—unless they can’t see because of all her hair, or because of all her bouncing.

  Even though people can’t understand Squirrel (though squirrels can understand People), I lean close and make the chittering sound in her ear that means squirrel. Even if she doesn’t know the meaning of the word, she should be able to recognize what kind of animal is speaking.

  The girl is not reassured. “Get it off! Get it off! GET IT OFF!”

  Climbing out of her backpack and onto her head probably was not my wisest decision.

  “It’s a squirrel!” someone shouts. “Stop making such a fuss!”

  I look over and see the boy in the movable chair.

  He calls over to the girl, “He’s probably more scared of you than you are of him.”

  I’m not scared at all. I was only startled, for a moment, by the dinosaur’s roar.

  The girl doesn’t believe him, either, and she doesn’t stop screaming.

  Some of the teacher chaperones are heading in my—our—direction in that fast walk teachers often use at the same time they’re saying, “Now you’re in trouble.”

  So I leap off the girl’s head and run.

  I run through a forest of legs. Most of them are moving away from the girl whose backpack I was riding in. Sure, gather around the dinosaur, scatter away from the squirrel!

  But this unreasonable behavior of people works out well for me because all the movement makes it hard for the adults to keep track of me. I know that people love squirrels, and there’s always the danger of someone wanting to keep me as a pet. Squirrels are not meant to be pets.

  The first room I come to is no bigger than a classroom at school, but there are no desks for sitting at or boards for writing on or clear aisles for walking down. It is crowded wall-to-wall with people stuff: on shelves, hanging from the ceiling, on counters. If there is something in here to teach about wolves, I will never find it. Still, this will make a good place to hide for a while. The shelves hold brightly colored boxes of all shapes and sizes. There are also some of the plastic T-Rex toys I have seen children playing with on the playground—pocket-sized, which I think is a very sensible size for T-Rex to be. There are other toys of the kind that are soft. There are whirly things hanging from the ceiling, twisting and catching the light. There are books. There are barrels and bins and baskets. There are butterfly nets, which I recognize from spring in the schoolyard. There are…

  Oooo! Candy bars! I’ve tasted little bits of candy bar that the children sometimes accidentally drop during recess. Chocolate is delicious, and I haven’t eaten in forever. Well, except for the apple that was in the backpack. And the peanut butter sandwich on the floor of the bus. And the French fries I found in the garbage can at the edge of the playground before I got onto the bus. Not to mention my breakfast of seeds and nuts. And my snack of green tomatoes that someone thoughtfully planted for me, with a fence to keep deer and chipmunks and groundhogs out.

  But other than that, my tummy is entirely empty.

  How kind of these people to welcome me to the science museum by leaving a whole bunch of candy bars out for me!

  What’s the best way to get onto the counter?

  I jump onto a shelf and stretch to reach up to the next higher shelf.

  Someone screams, “A rat!”

  Rats are my cousins! I look around to find this cousin. But I don’t see him.

  I look at the person who screamed. She’s dressed like the other museum workers, and she’s pointing at me. I turn around just to make sure. But no. She’s definitely pointing at me. I wag my tail at her: my big, fluffy squirrel tail, which is entirely different from a rat’s skinny, naked tail.

  But apparently she’s not interested in being educated, for she keeps screaming, “A rat! A rat! There’s a rat in the gift shop! Somebody get a security guard!”

  I have to pause to consider. Everybody loves squirrels, so I know that means they would want me to have the candy bars. But I’m not sure they feel the same way about rats. So…as a squirrel who is being mistaken for a rat, should I still make myself at home with the candy, or not?

  Truth is truth, I decide. I should take one of the candy bars. Sooner or later, someone will tell her, “No, that was a squirrel you saw, not a rat,” and then she would feel bad if I didn’t take one. I don’t want her to feel bad, even if she can’t tell the difference between a rat and a squirrel.

  I climb the rest of the way onto the counter and reach into the jar where the sized-for-squirrels candy bars are. These have easy-to-remove wrappers, which is good because when I pop one into my mouth I taste mint, which is not my favorite. I spit it back out into the jar for somebody else and choose another that turns out to be chocolate and almonds. Yummy! My favorite!

  A new museum person runs into the room. I wonder if he’s the security guard help that the woman called for. I know what a crossing guard is, but there are no people children needing to cross a street here, so I don’t know what a security guard’s job could be. This man is tall and skinny and has just shiny skin on top of his head, but the rest of his hair is long and tied back into a ponytail. He takes one look at me, then grabs one of the butterfly nets.

  Clearly, he’s one of those people who would want to make a pet out of me, so it’s time to leave.

  I leap from the counter to a tall stack of boxes.

  Security Guard tries to sweep me up into his net, but he knocks the top box off the pile because I’ve already jumped onto this tall thing that has slots for holding and showing shiny pictures. Surprisingly, the thing begins to spin around. And tip.

  The woman who can’t tell the difference between a squirrel and a rat yells at the man, “Careful! Those telescopes are delicate! And now he’s on the postcard rack!”

  I don’t know what a postcard rack is, but at least she’s not yelling “Rat!” anymore.

  Security Guard picks up the box he caused to fall and gently shakes it. He checks out the woman and sees she isn’t watching him, so he hurriedly sticks it back on top of the pile.

  Meanwhile, the woman lunges to grab hold of the tall, slotty, spinny thing I’m riding on, no doubt worried that I might get hurt if it falls.

  But there’s no cause for alarm, as I’ve already jum
ped onto one of the things hanging from the ceiling. This one looks like a bird—if birds were wooden. The string holding it breaks, and I fall—unhurt because squirrels know how to fall safely—and I land on a soft pile of T-shirts.

  Too bad for Security Guard, though. The wooden bird lands on his head and he jumps, causing the box he just replaced—plus two others—to crash to the floor.

  And too bad for the woman, too. Because the place is so crowded, when she reaches to catch the tall, slotty, spinny thing, she knocks over a container that is on the counter. The container is full of those small, really bouncy balls that the children sometimes play with on the playground.

  The container was full of those balls. Now they spill, they hit the ground, they bounce, they go off in all directions.

  The woman steps back from the bouncy balls and knocks into a display that has little baskets full of sparkly stones. They fall, too. But they don’t bounce.

  She hasn’t learned to stop moving. She takes another step, putting her foot on one of the stones, and loses her balance. She throws her arms out to keep from falling and sweeps a bowl of marbles onto the floor. She ends up falling into the arms of Security Guard, who catches her but knocks over a stand that holds pens and pencils and crayons and markers.

  What a mess they’ve made!

  I run out of the room before someone starts yelling at them.

  The next doorway leads to a room whose walls curve around in a circle. (I know my shapes from listening in at the school window of the first grade.) I recognize people from the field trip bus, but I don’t see the girl whose backpack I rode in.