5 Found and Lost

Chapter 5 FOUND… AND LOST Smush! Andrew's brain kerchunked against his skull when they landed. Klunketa… klunketa… klunketa… Andrew poked his head through the opening at the top of the bag. He watched as Frank and Jeff dragged the can out of the classroom, down the hall, and out of the school. "What do we do now?" asked Judy. "We'll find a way to get out of the bag and get back to the Goa Constrictor," said Andrew. "But first I've got to find the remote." Andrew dug down through a rotten lettuce leaf. Feels like Jell-O, he thought. He shoved away some green peas and crawled through a bite mark in a pizza crust.

I wonder who chewed this, thought Andrew. meep… "Gotta call Uncle Al," said Thudd. "He find way to help." Uncle Al was Andrew and Judy's uncle. He was also a super-smart scientist who invented Thudd. "Good idea, Thudd," said Andrew. "But I think Uncle Al is still delivering all those prehistoric animals back to their own times and places." Thudd pressed the big purple button in the middle of his chest. This sent a signal to Uncle Al's Hologram Helper. The Hologram Helper allowed Uncle Al to get messages and to visit with people by hologram. Thudd's purple button popped open and a beam of purple light flashed out. A see-through, slightly purple picture of Uncle Al floated at the end of the beam. "Hey there!" said the smiling see-through Uncle Al. "I'm away from my laboratory. Your message has reached my Hologram Helper. If you're calling to have a friendly chat, please press one. If you have discovered life on another planet, please

press two. If you're calling to complain about the smells coming from my laboratory, please press three. If this is a purple-button emergency, please scream loudly. I will contact you as soon as possible." "Yaaaaargh!" screamed Andrew. "We need help, Uncle Al!" Andrew dug his way through sticky spaghetti and climbed over a carrot. Andrew was crawling over an apple core when something caught his eye. "I found the remote!" he shouted. He reached for a dark object half hidden under a strand of spaghetti. "Then let's get out of here," yelled Judy. As Andrew reached for the dark thing, he saw what it really was. "Um, we can't leave yet," he said. "All I found was Germy's Excuse-O-Matic." Andrew put the gadget in his pants pocket. Suddenly their garbage bag was yanked up.

"Toss 'er in!" said Frank. The bag flew through the air and flopped onto a heap of bags in the rear of the truck. "Yeeouch!" hollered Andrew. He tumbled over the sharp edge of an eggshell, fell into a blob of chocolate pudding, and got something hard stuck in his ear. Judy smacked into a bread crust, got a Cheerio stuck in her hair, and plopped next to Andrew in the pudding blob. When Andrew reached to pull the hard thing out of his ear, its shape felt familiar.

"The remote!" shouted Andrew. "I found it!" "So how are we going to get back to school and get ourselves unshrunk now, Bug-Brain?" asked Judy. Andrew looked around. He went over to the eggshell and broke off a piece. "This shell has a sharp edge," he said. "We can use it to cut a hole in the bag and get out." The doors of the garbage truck slammed.

meep… "Garbage truck can carry as much weight as six big elephants." "Don't waste your batteries on elephants, Thudd," said Judy crossly. "Figure out how to get us unshrunk and unstinky." meep… "Garbage stinky cuz little bacteria eat it," said Thudd. "Poop out stuff that make food for plants. Burp up stinky gas. If bacteria and fungus not eat garbage, earth be piled high, high, high with garbage and dead stuff." Judy rolled her eyes. "Okay, Frank," said Jeff, his voice drifting through the open windows of the truck's cab. "On to the dump."