13 Ch13-Stuff Like This Happens Every Day

Chapter 13 Stuff Like This Happens Every Day What was that weird hissing sound? "Hey!" I whispered to Ryan, who was in the sleeping bag next to mine. "Stop that hissing!" "I'm not hissing," he replied. "You are, too." We went back and forth like that for a while, until suddenly there was an ear-piercing shriek. "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEKKKKKKKKK!" "There's something in my sleeping bag!" screamed Emily. Instantly, everybody was awake and jumping out of their sleeping bags. Emily started running around, freaking out. "What is it?" Andrea asked. "Maybe it's a blue-tongued skink!" I yelled. "It's a bug!" Emily shrieked. "It must be that rare hissing cockroach from Madagascar!" screamed Andrea.

"It's General Muffin!" Michael yelled. "Run for your lives!" shouted Neil the nude kid. Ryan's mom and Mr. Macky and the rest of the grown-ups tried to calm everybody down, but it was no use. Nobody wanted the cockroach to touch them. We were all screaming and jumping around. Finally, Ms. Krup came running over. "What's the matter?" she yelled. "That disgusting cockroach was in Emily's sleeping bag!" Andrea shouted. "Now we can't find it! I thought you said you captured it." "I just said General Muffin was in a safe place," Ms. Krup explained. "I didn't want you kids to be scared." "Well, we're scared now!" Andrea shouted. "Poor General Muffin," said Ms. Krup. "Who cares about General Muffin?" Andrea yelled. "It's a cockroach!"

Man, that was a first. Andrea actually yelled at a grown-up! "There it is!" Michael suddenly shouted. "There's the cockroach!" "Where?" "There?" "Emily!" Andrea shouted. "It's crawling on your back!" "EEEEEEEEEEEEKKKKKKKKKK!" "Let's kill it!" all the boys yelled, and we started chasing after Emily. "Don't kill General Muffin!" shouted Ms. Krup. "He's very rare!" "Kill it! Kill it! Kill it!" we all chanted. Emily was running around like her pants were on fire, and me and all the other boys were chasing her. That's when the most amazing thing in the history of the world happened. Do you remember that giant bear that was next to the Giganotosaurus? Well, while we were chasing Emily around, Neil the nude kid— he... uh... ran into it.

"Watch out!" Ryan's mom yelled. The giant bear started to topple over. And do you know where it landed? Right on Emily! It was hilarious. A real Kodak moment. You should have been there. "EEEEEEEEEEKKKKKKKKKK!" Emily screamed, freaking out on the floor. "There's a dead bear on me! Get it off! Get it OFF!" Sheesh, what a crybaby! So there was a giant hissing cockroach in her sleeping bag and a dead bear fell on top of her. Big deal. Stuff like that happens all the time. Finally, Mr. Macky and Mr. Docker were able to pull the bear off Emily. Ms. Krup caught General Muffin with a net and put him in a cage. After all the excitement was over, the grown-ups brought us into a room for breakfast. They gave us cow chips and scrambled dinosaur eggs, but I don't think they were real. "I hate natural history," Emily said. "Natural history is cool," said Michael. We were still eating when Ms. Krup came running into the room. "Hey, who ate all the candy that was next to the candy machine?" she asked.

I looked at Michael. Michael looked at Andrea. Andrea looked at Emily. Emily looked at me. "It must have been General Muffin," I lied. "Yeah," Michael said. "You told us he likes candy." We probably shouldn't have lied about General Muffin eating the candy. But Ms. Krup shouldn't have lied to us about capturing General Muffin. Lying isn't a very nice thing to do. But I guess sometimes even grown-ups do it. "The museum will open in five minutes," somebody announced. It was time for us to leave. We rolled up our sleeping bags. Ryan's mom said we could look in the gift shop for a few minutes until Mrs. Kormel arrived with the bust Andrea felt bad about what happened to Emily, so she bought her a glow-in-the-dark dinosaur bone toothbrush. Neil the nude kid bought a box of fake moose poop that was really just chocolate. As we were leaving the museum, Ms. Krup gave each of us a diploma that said we were Junior Nature Lovers. There was a picture of a dinosaur on it. I'm going to put mine up in my bedroom. All in all, the natural history museum was almost not boring. "Can we come back next week?" I asked Ms. Krup as we lined up at the door. "Uh, well," said Ms. Krup, "now that you are official Junior Nature Lovers, you... uh.. don't have to EVER come back here again."

"Bingle boo," said Mrs. Kormel as we piled on the bus to go home. "What did you learn about?" "Poop," I told her. Well, that's pretty much what happened on the field trip. Maybe Ms. Krup will never find out that we ate all the candy. Maybe General Muffin will stay in his cage from now on. Maybe someday Emily will forget that a giant hissing cockroach crawled into her sleeping bag and that a dead bear fell on her. Maybe Mr. Docker and Mr. Macky will cut their nose hair so they'll stop snoring. Maybe Ms. Krup will stop dressing up like a wild yak and get interested in something besides poop. And maybe we'll be able to talk Mrs. Daisy into taking us on another field trip. But it won't be easy!