Professor Gargoyle Read Free

furiously, and several times the chalk snapped in his grip.
    When the drawing was finally complete, he labeled the bones one at a time—the sternum, the scapula, the tibia, the thoracic vertebrae …
    One of the twins raised her hand.
    “Excuse me, Mr. Goyle?”
    He didn’t turn around. “
Professor
Goyle.”

    “Professor Goyle, is this going to be on the test?”
    “I don’t understand the question.” He went right on labeling the head of the rodent: the incisors and the mandible and the maxilla.
    “I mean, should we be taking notes or something?”
    Again, the chalk snapped in Goyle’s fingers; the broken pieces clattered to the floor.
    He turned around to face the class, looking weary from all the frenzied scribbling.
    “I understand,” he said, “that many of you were disturbed by this morning’s incident. This is completely understandable. Humankind has long associated rats with disease and filth. In fourteenth-century Europe, rats carried the dreaded black death, a plague that killed some one hundred million people.” Professor Goyle laughed. “Can you imagine that, children? A hundred million humans? Wiped off the earth by a bunch of tiny rodents? They’re truly deadly creatures! Much more dangerous than they appear!”
    The class stared back at him. If he was trying to put them at ease, he wasn’t doing a very good job.
    Goyle walked over to the window and glanced outside. “You need to remember that, six months ago, all of this property was farmland. Trees. Streams. Hundreds of natural ecosystems invisible to the naked eye. The rats were probably quite happy living here. They had food, water, shelter, everything they needed.” His expression darkened. “Until man came along and bulldozed all their underground burrows. Destroying their homes in the blink of an eye. Now what would you have these creatures do? They needed a new place to hide, and the result was this morning’s unfortunate surprise.”
    The other students were nodding as if this made perfect sense, but Robert wasn’t satisfied at all. It didn’t explain how a rat ended up
inside
his locker. But Robert was too shy to ask another question, so he didn’t raise his hand. He figured it was no big deal. If everyone else in class accepted Goyle’s explanation, then it was probably—
    “Uh, Professor Goyle?” Glenn asked. His voice was full of uncertainty; Robert couldn’t remember the lasttime he’d heard Glenn ask a question in class. “I hear what you’re saying, but I found one of those rats
inside
my locker. It was there, like,
before
I opened it.”
    Professor Goyle nodded. “An adult rat can gnaw through bone, brick, concrete, even lead piping. Your school lockers are made from sixteen-gauge sheet metal, a much thinner material. No match for the teeth of a rodent.”
    “Yeah, but I checked my locker,” Glenn continued. “There weren’t any holes in it.”
    Now Goyle seemed irritated.
    “What’s your name, young man?”
    “Uh, Glenn?”
    “Glenn what? Do you have a family name?”
    “Glenn Torkells.”
    “Mr. Torkells, are you sure there were no holes in your locker? You’re absolutely sure?”
    “Yeah, I checked all over. No holes. Just the air vents in the door.”
    “Just the air vents in the door!” Goyle exclaimed. “Now we’re getting somewhere! Tell me, Mr. Torkells,how would you describe the width of those vents? Did you happen to notice?”
    “Maybe half an inch?”
    “Maybe half an inch,” Goyle said, smiling now. “And did you know, Mr. Torkells, that the rat is the only known mammal that can literally collapse its own skeleton at will, allowing it to squeeze through spaces as narrow as half an inch?”
    “I did not know that,” Glenn mumbled, and the whole classroom laughed.
    “Of course you didn’t! Because you’re too busy wasting my time with stupid questions!”
    Robert gasped. It was the first time he’d ever heard a teacher describe any question as “stupid.”
    “May I