unloading the contents of her old handbag into her new one.
Although Ms. Underdorf was thrilled with her new purse, she still wanted interesting and educational creatures in the library for the betterment of her students.
And so she bought a parrot.
This is the principal . Would the custodian please report to the faculty restroom with a plastic shield, a hazardous waste suit and a large container of pepper spray? Also, whoever took the erasers out of room two oh two, please return them and refrain from removing erasers from two oh two in the future. Also refrain from taking erasers from two oh four. Thank you. Oh, and the gerbil was seen near the vice principal's office—she said it was “scurrying, very ratlike.” You should not try to pick it up if it is, indeed, a rat. I repeat: Refrain from picking up rats. Thank you .
The parrot sat completely silent for the better part of a week—so still and quiet that Mudshark thought Ms. Underdorf might have bought it from the same man who sold her Sparky the Amazing Armadillo/kicky new everyday handbag.
But after a week or so, the parrot burped, coughed, scratched a million empty birdseed shells onto the floor, emitted a sound that should have been accompanied by methane, looked at Ms. Underdorf and said:
“Hey, babe, what's happening?”
The parrot seemed to know that he lived in a library; he spoke in a near whisper. Gradually, people realized that he seemed to speak several different languages, or at least it sounded as if he did. Marly Lipinski, for some unknown reason, swore he was reciting off-color limericks in ancient Sanskrit. Of course nobody understood the language anyway, so it didn't matter how racy the poems were.
Other than the incessant belching, the parrot fit right in to Ms. Underdorf's library. She didn't mind the burps or the potentially dirty words because theywere, she announced, Proof of Life, and, after Sparky, that was good enough for her.
When the bird had been in Ms. Underdorf's care for just over a month, Betty Crimper came in to the library and asked if anybody had seen her paper on how to make salve out of lard. She had been working on the project for quite a long time, buying pound blocks of lard at the grocery and mixing the lard with what she called “experimental chemicals.”
Betty was always doing one experiment or another, looking for a Miracle Cure or Amazing Beauty Potion that would make her Rich and Famous, or at least Rich.
She posted a sign on her locker reading: TEMPORARY HOME OF THE FUTURE BETTY CRIMPER RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT LABORATORY .
And except for the time when she tried to bottle Odors to Repel and they had to close down the entire north end of the school after she dropped a small jar in the hall, her experiments hadn't been too dramatic. Betty had packed that jar full of something her cat had dragged in, which she had “cured” in thesun. As she watched the hazmat team herd the students out into the front yard, she'd made a careful note in her lab notebook:
The curing process went on a bit too
long, leading to surprising intensity.
General population not ready for Odors
to Repel; contact United States Marine
Corps. Possible use as weapon?
Her new lard salve, though, seemed to do little damage except to draw flies. This meant that the Death Ball players, who used Betty's salve as muscle balm, walked around in clouds of insects. The players' eyes watered uncontrollably when they used the stuff, but they swore that Betty's concoction was the best bruise medication they'd ever tried.
Then came the day when she rushed into the library and cried, “Has anyone seen my lard recipe?”
“Why don't you ask Mud—” somebody started to say, but before the sentence was finished the parrot belched, squawked and said:
“Check the window ledge in the girls' rest-room.”
Mudshark, who was there (of course, he was always in the library), turned to look at the parrot, frowned and then said to Betty, “He's right, you