1 A Terrible Flap

chapter 1 A TERRIBLE FLAP "Are we going to get out of this alive?" yelled Judy Dubble. "Sure!" Andrew yelled back. But he was thinking, If we get out of this alive, I'll never, ever do anything like this again, ever! Thanks to an accident with his newest invention, the Atom Sucker, Andrew was smaller than a flea's knee. And so were Andrew's cousin Judy and his robot buddy, Thudd. Now they were all dangling from a hair of a dog's floppy ear. Ahwoooo! The dog, Harley, was standing in a big white bathtub. Harley's owner, Mrs. Scuttle, was about to give him a bath! Water thundered out of the

faucet. Hot steam curled into the air. Mrs. Scuttle's face was a huge, grumpy storm cloud above the tub. Andrew thought about the two things that might save them. One was a cube of Um-bubble in his back pocket. The other was the helicopter that had gotten shrunk, too. Andrew and Judy had been searching for it in the endless furry forest of dog hair. They hadn't found it yet. Mrs. Scuttle wrapped her giant, squiddy fingers around Harley's collar. "Get over here, mister!" she yelled. She yanked Harley to the front of the tub. Woof! Harley shook his head. His long brown ear flapped toward the roaring faucet. meep… "Hang tight!" squeaked Thudd from one of Andrew's shirt pockets. Harley's ear hit the spray. Water drops sloshed over Andrew and Judy. Andrew coughed and blew water out of his nose.

Thudd pinched his way up Andrew's shirt. meep… "Oody okey-dokey?" Thudd squeaked as loudly as he could. Judy pulled a strand of frizzy brown hair away from her eyes. "I'm smaller than the eye of a fly and hanging on to a soggy dog hair!" she yelled down. "What do you think?" "I'm really sorry about this," Andrew called up to Judy. "I just wanted to write a great report on ants!" "Dirty dirty dog!" said Mrs. Scuttle, high above them. "This is what you get for rolling in garbage!" A shower of pink dust rained down past Harley's ear. Andrew looked up to see that it was pouring from a jar in Mrs. Scuttle's hand. The label on the jar read "htaB elbbuB."

Whoops! thought Andrew. I'm reading it upside down! "Bubble bath!" he said.

"Ahhhh… chooof!" Judy sneezed. "I'm allergic to bubble bath!" Bubble bath dusted Harley's head like pink snow. Harley shook his head. His ear flapped out like a furry magic carpet! "Andrew!" screamed Judy. "I see something shiny inside Harley's ear! I think it's the helicopter!" WHAPPPP! The ear smacked into the tub! "Yaaarghhh!" Andrew screamed as he lost his grip on his dog hair. With one hand, he pushed Thudd into his shirt pocket. With the other, he reached for the little cube of Um-bubble in his back pocket.