6 A PLAN

All of the frogs looked up at me hopefully. I took some deep breaths. I needed a plan. I also needed my Thinking Goggles—which of course I forgot in my hurry! I took off my backpack and opened it to put my magnifying glass away when I spotted my Thinking Goggles. "Thanks, Mom!" I whispered. She must have put them in my backpack while I was looking for my magnifying glass.

I popped the Thinking Goggles on my head and started walking slowly in a little circle and talking to myself. Sassafras and the little group of forest frogs watched me curiously. "OK, so we know we can't just spread out the bips that are left. We need a lot more bips…. a bazillion bips…" I tapped my Thinking Goggles. "A bazillion bips to replace all the bips that the bazillion hophops ate. Wait. Hophops! So many hophops! That's it! We need a SWARM of bips!" I cheered. I knelt down by Pip. "I was asking Mom about the cloud of things we saw yesterday in the

forest—it must have been the hophops. Mom said when everything is just right, you can sometimes get a big swarm or cloud of bugs because a bunch of them hatch all at once." "That makes sense," Pip said. "So, that's what we need to do with the bips! We need to figure out how to make everything just right for them and grow a big bunch all at once!" Pip grinned. "That sounds like a perfect plan, Zoey!" I smiled back and then gulped. "Errrm, we just need to figure out the perfect conditions for bips to grow. You guys wouldn't happen to know that, would you?" The frogs all looked at each other and shook their heads.

One of the frogs started to cry again. "This will never work. The hippogriff eggs are about to hatch. We don't have any time!" My stomach flipped. "Pip, is that true? Are the eggs ready to hatch now?" "I only know that they'll hatch soon." Pip thought for a moment. "We probably ought to visit a hippogriff nest and find out for sure." I clapped my hands over my mouth so I wouldn't squeal and scare the frogs. A hippogriff nest!