7 CHEWING

CHAPTER 7 CHEWING? "Mooom!" I burst through the doorway and almost ran into her. "Oh, whoops! You're right there." We both laughed. I held out the footprint mold. "And whatever the creature is, it chews. At least, I'm pretty sure that's what those noises were. And there might have been a few of them—it sounded like more than one and there were a LOT of these footprints." "Huh." Mom ran her finger along the outline of the footprint. "This is going to sound strange, but what were your friends' moods like when you heard the creatures?" "Both times they were SO grumpy! It was like, all of a sudden, too!" Mom nodded. "Huh. So… years ago when I was

much younger, I found a strange footprint in the forest. I think it looked like this one. I was so curious I asked two of my forest monster friends about it. One of them said it was a creature that makes everyone grumpy, and the other had a funny name for it. I should have written it down in my science journal!" "OH! I think I know. Pip was talking about a grumpie. No… that's not quite it. Hold on a sec." I dashed to my room, grabbed my Thinking Goggles, popped them on, and raced back to the kitchen. "A bad case of the GRUMPLETS! That's what he said." "Yes! That's it. That's what she called them— grumplets! But I haven't seen any footprints since then. I had forgotten about them until you showed me this." Mom handed the footprint mold back to me. Mom put an arm on my shoulder. "Since the forest monsters seemed to know about them, I think your best bet is to go ask—" "GORP!" we said at the same time.

Sassafras immediately started purring.