Squirrel in the Museum Read online

  “Run, squirrel, run!” calls out the boy in the movable chair.

  Security Guard is closer than I thought. He swings his net—just as one of his big feet lands on my beautiful tomato, squishing it. His leg slips sideways in all that juicy juice, and I fling myself off the couch and at the row of lockers behind.

  The lockers turn out to be metal (I never knew that!), and that means nothing for my nails to dig into. There are slits near the top that would make a great place to hold on, but between them and me is smooth slippery metal. Despite my scratching and scraping, I slide down the face of the locker until I get to the handle, which stops my slide. I manage to get my back feet and my front feet onto the handle, and I can jump onto the counter once I have my footing.

  But before I can jump, there’s a click! and the locker door swings open. Wheee! I twist around to the other side of the door—the side that’s usually inside—and leap into the locker and catch hold of a coat that’s hanging from a hook (not the coat Ponytail has been throwing at me and children). I climb up the coat and onto a little shelf that’s in the locker. It’s crowded on the shelf because there’s a plastic bag like some of the students carry their lunches in to keep their food cold. I sniff the bag, but I don’t smell food.

  From this higher spot, I can jump up and across to the top of the thing they called refrigerator. Then I can climb down the back of that, run behind the chair that’s close to the door, and run out of this staff lounge.

  The only thing stopping me is that bag, which takes up too much room. I can make a better jump if I start from a level spot. So I push the bag off the shelf. It hits the floor with a thud.

  Then there’s a second thud.

  Which is Security Guard slamming the locker door shut with me trapped inside.

  I expect to hear Security Guard say, I’ve caught you now!

  But what I hear instead is Museum Director Woman. “What,” she demands, “is that?” She uses the same tone teachers use when they know exactly what the that which they’re asking about is. They’re not really looking for an answer—they’re just letting the children know how much trouble they’re in.

  Bin Guy says, “Those look like some of the moon rocks that have been going missing the last few days.”

  From my shelf, I can see out the slits in the top part of the locker door. Children and teachers and museum workers are gathered around the floor where the bag I pushed—the one for holding lunches—has landed. The top has opened, and two stones the size of strawberries have rolled out. They are like the stones I saw in the glass table in the room with Mars Rover. Stones are not as interesting as strawberries. I wish I had a strawberry now. Strawberries are my favorite thing.

  “Whose locker is this?” Museum Director Woman asks.

  Bin Guy and Ponytail look at Security Guard.

  “It’s my locker,” he says, “but I never saw this bag before.”

  “I’ve seen you carry your lunch in it every day this week,” Bin Guy says.

  “So have I,” says Ponytail.

  “So have I,” says Museum Director Woman.

  “I mean,” Security Guard says, “yes, obviously, it’s my bag, but I have no idea how the rocks got in there. I’ve never seen them before. Except in their case, naturally. Which I never opened.”

  “It’s you,” Museum Director Woman says. “It’s you who’s been stealing the rocks, and you’ve been sneaking them out of the museum in your lunch bag.”

  The little girl who pointed me out asks the question I’ve been wondering. “Why would he steal rocks?”

  The boy in the movable chair says, “They’re from the moon.”

  Museum Director Woman says, “Which makes them very hard to get. And that makes them very valuable. Even the small ones we have.”

  “Boo! Hiss!” the girl says to Security Guard.

  “You can say that again,” says the boy in the movable chair.

  “Boo! Hiss!” the girl repeats. “You’re in so much trouble.”

  That will teach him to chase a squirrel.

  And to make such a mess in the museum.

  “We’ll call the police from my office,” says Museum Director Woman. She takes the butterfly net from Security Guard’s hand.

  Bin Guy has put down his blue plastic bin, and Ponytail puts down her puffy coat. They each hold on to one of Security Guard’s arms.

  Everybody is watching them.

  Except for the boy in the movable chair. He rolls his chair closer to the locker, and he opens the locker door a crack. Once again he pats the seat.

  I slide down the coat that is hanging from the hook. Then I climb up onto the chair next to the boy. He arranges his backpack beside him so that it forms a roof over me. I can see out, but people can’t see me. He leans down and peels the squished tomato off the floor and hands it to me. Most of the juice is gone, but it’s still delicious. That’s why tomatoes are my favorite.

  The museum people have left the room, and the teacher who has been pushing the movable chair says, “Well! That was exciting. But now we’d better rejoin the rest of the class.”

  The movable chair is a much smoother ride than either the school bus or Mars Rover. In the hallways with the diorama displays, a new group of children is running back and forth pushing the buttons that make the voices explain what’s inside.

  “The sea otter’s coat is water-repellent to keep this aquatic creature warm and dry…”

  “The buffalo was hunted to near extinction in the 1800s…”

  “The bald eagle is the only eagle unique to North America, which is why…”

  “Timber wolves are social animals that live in family units called packs…”

  Wolves!

  I put my head up, and the boy stops the chair.

  There are two wolves in the diorama display we are facing. Like the owl that startled me earlier, the wolves are not moving, but they look as if they could lunge in an instant. They are bigger than foxes or weasels, but not as big as T-Rex. But they have almost as many teeth. I remind myself that even if the wolves are real (and they probably aren’t), they are behind glass. They can’t smell me any more than I can smell them. From my hiding spot between the arm of the chair and the backpack, I show my teeth to the wolves. I tell them, “Boo! Hiss! You’re not that scary.”

  As long as they stay behind the glass.

  But—just in case—I will definitely continue to tell young squirrels, “Don’t let a wolf eat you.”

  It’s not that I’ve become the pet of the boy in the movable chair. It’s just that we ride in his chair together.

  He has a bag of peanuts in his backpack, and he shares them with me. Anytime one of the museum workers talks for too long or uses words that are too big, the boy reaches into the bag. One peanut for him, one peanut on the seat beside him for me. He even cracks the shells open for me. That’s the sign of a true friend. Did I mention peanuts are my favorite thing?

  I stay next to him even when the field trip is drawing to a close and the teacher and the bus driver get the chair back into the field trip bus.

  Of course, it has not rained (because I know weather better than the bus driver does), so the bus is warm and stuffy. While the children and the teachers open their windows, I climb down from the chair, but I stay under the seat in front of the boy where he can see me and I can see him.

  And where I am still in range of thrown peanuts.

  Once again, I have to hold on every time the bus starts, stops, or turns a corner.

  The ride back to school is even noisier than the ride to the museum. Children are talking and laughing and singing songs, and the teachers are too tired to tell them to use their indoor voices. The children have all gotten cookies and candies from the gift shop and share with one another. The teachers all hide in the back of the bus.

  When we reach school, the other c
hildren start getting off the bus first.

  One of the children, who has not zipped her zippers or buckled her buckles, has picked up her pink sparkly backpack the wrong way, and suddenly everything that was in her backpack is now on the floor of the bus. The children who are still on the bus are helping her to gather up all the spilled notebooks and pencils and hair fasteners—all of which are also pink and sparkly. The children are blocking the way and I decide I’ve waited long enough.

  “Thank you for the peanuts,” I tell the boy, even though I know he can’t understand me. But it’s always a good thing to be polite, no matter what.

  I jump onto the seat in front of me, climb up to the back, and see that beyond the girl with the pink sparkly backpack, the way is clear.

  I spring from the back of the seat, touch down for just the tiniest moment on the girl’s head, then leap off and run down the aisle of the bus. A quick bound down the stairs, and I’m outside—where squirrels belong. Up a tree I go.

  Behind me, I can still hear the screams of the excitable girl, even though I’m gone.

  The boy in the movable chair is saying, “Lydia! It was just a squirrel. And he’s gone now.” Then he says, “Goodbye, squirrel!”

  I can’t be sure, but I think he sounds sad.

  I’m a bit sad, too.

  After all of the children get on their regular buses to go home, I find the window to the room where my cousins the geckos live. The window is once again open a crack, and I squeeze in.

  “I’m Galileo,” says one.

  “I’m Newton,” says the other.

  “I’m Twitch,” I say. “I’m just back from the museum.”

  GALILEO: That would be the Galileo Museum and Science Center.

  NEWTON: We know the name of the museum already. You don’t have to remind anybody.

  GALILEO: He could have meant the art museum, which is named after some artist person.

  NEWTON: But he wasn’t going to the art museum. He was going to the science museum.

  GALILEO: Which is named after me.

  NEWTON: Which is named after the man you’re named after.

  GALILEO: Same thing.

  NEWTON: No, it’s not.

  GALILEO: Yes, it is.

  TWITCH: I had a good time.

  NEWTON: Did you see marvels of science?

  GALILEO: Did you see demonstrations and exhibits?

  NEWTON: Were there untold wonders to behold?

  GALILEO: Did you gain scientific wisdom?

  TWITCH: I learned some new life lessons.

  For once the geckos stop talking before my head has started to wibble-wobble. They want to hear what I have learned.

  This is what I tell them:

  School buses are not really yellow. They’re something-sort-of-but-not-exactly-like-marigolds-colored.

  A pocket-sized dinosaur is better than a big dinosaur.

  Planets can break and fall down easily.

  Mars Rover is a fine sandbox toy.

  Sometimes lightning can get in a ball, and if it does, then it’s not dangerous.

  Wolves are not as scary as a security guard with a net.

  Peanuts that a friend has cracked open for you are absolutely the best thing in the world. The only things that are better than peanuts a friend has cracked open for you are hard-boiled eggs. The only things that are better than hard-boiled eggs are squirrel-sized chocolate bars. The only things better than squirrel-sized chocolate bars are potato chips. The only things better than potato chips are peanuts that a friend has cracked open for you.

  For another once, the geckos still do not have anything to say. I can see that I have shared scientific wisdom with them that they did not know before.

  “Oh,” I say, “and one more thing: I learned Sir Isaac Newton’s real name.”

  The two geckos look at each other, then they look at me, then they look at each other, then they look at me.

  NEWTON: Sir Isaac Newton’s real name is Sir Isaac Newton.

  GALILEO: Definitely his real name.

  NEWTON: I’ve never heard of another.

  TWITCH: It’s Fig. And guess what. He has a cookie named after him. I tasted one on the bus. It’s the best—

  GALILEO: No, I don’t think—

  NEWTON: Ha! Having a cookie named after you is better than having a museum named after you.

  GALILEO: No, it’s not.

  NEWTON: Yes, it is.

  GALILEO: A museum is big and important.

  NEWTON: A cookie is something children love, so obviously they love Newton better than they love Galileo.

  GALILEO: Do not.

  NEWTON: Do too.

  GALILEO: Not, not, not.

  NEWTON: You’re just saying anything in order to have the last word.

  GALILEO: Not.

  I leave my cousins to work this out for themselves.

  All this talk of cookies has made me hungry. Science is fine, but I need to get my dinner. I plan to look for a cookie. Cookies are my favorite thing.

  GALILEO: The thing about Twitch is that sometimes he gets so excited it’s hard to tell what he’s talking about.

  NEWTON: This doesn’t mean we don’t like him.

  GALILEO: Of course not. We like him a lot.

  NEWTON: Even if he thinks we’re cousins.

  GALILEO: When we’re not.

  NEWTON: Definitely not. But sometimes his understanding of science is not exactly what one could call…

  GALILEO: Correct.

  NEWTON: I was going to say complete. That’s a little less judgmental.

  GALILEO: And a lot less accurate. So let’s talk about the science of his field trip, starting with—

  NEWTON: —the bus. School buses are school-bus yellow. It will never catch on to call them something-sort-of-but-not-exactly-like-marigolds.

  GALILEO: What to call the color of school buses is not a scientific question.

  NEWTON: Which we have now firmly settled. That brings us to—

  GALILEO: —the dinosaurs. Since the last of the dinosaurs died out long before people came on the scene, we have to deduce what they looked like by the clues—mainly their bones that fossilized after they died.

  NEWTON: Some museums display actual dinosaur bones.

  GALILEO: Some museums display casts or replicas because the bones can be fragile or rare.

  NEWTON: And some museums display models showing what the dinosaurs might have looked like with skin, but this is guesswork. For example, scientists who had never seen a gecko but were trying to put together a picture of us from just our bones might give us scales in a pink-and-purple checkerboard pattern.

  GALILEO: But probably not.

  NEWTON: They might.

  GALILEO: I don’t think so.

  NEWTON: Let’s move on to—

  GALILEO: Planets. Twitch was absolutely right that there has never been a picture or a model of the solar system that is accurate.

  NEWTON: That’s because the distances are so vast.

  GALILEO: There’s a lot of space in outer space.

  NEWTON: I just said that.

  GALILEO: I said it better.

  NEWTON: That’s why we need scientific instruments like the Mars rover to help us explore places that are too far away for people to get to safely.

  GALILEO: Actually, there have been several Mars rovers. The first one was built in 1996.

  NEWTON: And it took seven months to get from Earth to Mars.

  GALILEO: It’s a one-way trip. The rovers pick up samples to analyze and send the resulting data—

  NEWTON: —and pictures—

  GALILEO: —to the scientists back on Earth who contro
l the Mars rover by computer. Moving on, the Foucault pendulum was invented by Jean-Bernard-Léon Foucault more than 150 years ago to prove that the earth rotates.

  NEWTON: A pendulum on a clock swings back and forth, back and forth quickly because the pendulum is short.

  GALILEO: Even the pendulum on a grandfather clock is short, compared to a Foucault pendulum, which hangs at least three stories above the floor.

  NEWTON: So a Foucault pendulum swings slowly. Back and forth, back and forth.

  GALILEO: But meanwhile, the earth is rotating, which is what causes day and night. And the earth’s movement makes the Foucault pendulum look like it is not only going back and forth—

  NEWTON: —back and forth—

  GALILEO: —but also moving in its swinging path in a circular pattern.

  NEWTON: When all the while, it’s the earth that is moving—even though we can’t feel it.

  GALILEO: And the only direction the pendulum has actually moved is back and forth.

  NEWTON: Back and forth. I like to say it twice to indicate the continued motion.

  GALILEO: Of course you do. Next comes the Van de Graaff generator, which has a rubber belt—

  NEWTON: —like at the checkout in a supermarket—

  GALILEO: —that goes around and around two rollers made of different materials. Next to each roller is an electrode.

  NEWTON: The electrodes are metal pins that collect the charge from the belts—

  GALILEO: —and pass it along to the hollow metal ball on top.

  NEWTON: The electrical charge—

  GALILEO: —passes harmlessly through anyone touching the ball but makes the person’s hair stand on end.

  NEWTON: Geckos don’t have any hair.