Muckabout School Read online

  Gary and Ken squeezed through to the front. Deep down in the pit below were two small figures. One of them, Wanda Offalot, was busy barbecuing the lions’ meat. The smaller child, a freckled boy with one leg in plaster up to the thigh, was distracting the furious lion by waving his skateboard about.

  The crowd gasped and some even fainted as the lion crouched. With a horrible roar, the lion sprang at the unflinching little daredevil.

  “I know that kid!” snarled Ken Keen. “That’s the little terror who played havoc at Sewage-on-Sea! He’s the one I caught on camera before! What’s the little loony’s name?”

  “That’s Franky Fearless,” smiled Gary. “He’s a school prefect.”

  As he watched, Franky whipped off his T-shirt, jumped on to his skateboard and gave it a push with his good leg. That sent him whizzing along the edge of the enclosure like a rider on the wall of death.

  He passed within inches of the snapping jaws of the lion, twirling his vest like a bullfighter’s cape. The lion span giddily and bit thin air.

  “O-Lay!” yelled the crowd. “Look at that kid go!”

  CLACK! Went Ken Keen’s camera.

  It took a while to find Chesty the gorilla. Surprisingly, after what the ticket man had said, there was quite a crowd watching him, too.

  “That’s odd,” said Gary. “What could be interesting about a large primate sulking in a corner?”

  Once more, Gary and Ken Keen pushed through to the front. A huge gorilla was heaving and straining at the bars of his cage. He seemed to be trying to rip them open so that he could get at a skinny little monkey hopping up and down just outside.

  With a shriek of tearing metal, the bars gave way.

  “Great Scott!” exclaimed Ken Keen. “It’s a break-out!”

  The crowd screamed, “Look out! Run for it! The gorilla’s escaping!”

  But no. The gorilla wasn’t coming out. The monkey was going in.

  And boy, did the monkey have fun with his new chum!

  The gorilla and the monkey started with a chest-thumping competition.

  Then they did whoo-hooing and see-how-many-bananas-you-can-stuff-into-your-mouth. That was followed by flea-exploring and then wrestling.

  Unfortunately, Chesty the gorilla, not knowing his own mighty strength, ripped off the poor little monkey’s head.

  “Ooooooooo!” screamed the crowd, as they closed their eyes in horror.

  But when everyone uncovered their eyes they saw that the monkey had not been beheaded after all. Instead, Chesty was happily playing football with the head from a monkey suit. And urging him to try to score a goal, with his freckled face plain for all to see was… Franky Fearless.

  CLACK! went Ken Keen’s camera.

  “Gotcha!” the reporter said with a smug twist on his ratty face. “This is enough to put him behind bars for good.”

  “What’s that, Mr Keen?” asked Gary, who was still clapping Franky Fearless.

  “Nothing for you to worry about, laddy,” the reporter said. “Where to next?”

  Gary was keen to see the Reptile House, so the cunning reporter went with him.

  There they found a group of people watching with fascination as the boa constrictor bulged and writhed. It had an enormous lump in its middle.

  Tim Tattle was among the spectators. He turned to Gary and said, “That’s William Whale in there. He was trying to feed it hot dogs and it ate him.”

  “Isn’t that fascinating?” said Gary, turning to Ken Keen. “You see the boa constrictor has a remarkable digestive system…”

  CLACK! went Ken Keen’s camera. CLACK! CLACK! CLACK!

  “I think this zoo is rather fun, in spite of what the man in the ticket office said, don’t you, Mr Keen?” said Gary. “You will say nice things about it in your article, won’t you?”

  “Yeah yeah,” panted Ken Keen, whose mind was on the headline he was going to write. He was trying to decide which word to put in bigger letters: SHOCK or HORROR? He was also wondering whether he could get just one more picture – this time with lots of Muckabouts.

  “What happened to all the little ones from your school?” Ken Keen asked.

  “There are the twins,” said Gary, pointing to a girl and a boy from the infants. They stood in the Petting Park among the goats, bunny rabbits and guinea pigs.

  “How sweet,” said Gary. “Shall we go and say hello?”

  But as they approached, they noticed that the children were picking up things from the ground: smelly brown pellets dropped by the goats and bunnies.

  “What are you going to do with those?” asked Ken Keen.

  The twins looked up and answered together.

  “We’re going to put them into dad’s muesli,” they grinned.

  CLACK! went Ken Keen’s camera.

  “Who’s looking after you lot then?” asked Ken Keen.

  “Mrs Nevermind is looking round the gift shop,” the twins chorused. “And Mr Dawdle said he was going to have a lie down.”

  “And where are the other infants?”

  The twins simply pointed towards the Monkey House.

  Ken Keen swung his nose in the direction of the vast expanse of the Monkey House. At first, his attention was taken by the visitors standing around the huge cage. They were throwing things – food it seemed. They threw peanuts and fruit, cakes and chocolates, through the bars. They were clearly enchanted by the little wild things inside.

  Some of the little creatures filled their cheeks with food, whilst others chased each other round and swung wildly from branch to branch. Others held out their hands or rattled the wire, or scratched their armpits and made funny faces.

  “Mrs Nevermind’s infants!” Gary cried.

  The infants were so brilliant at monkey business that even the monkeys started laughing and chattering and joining in. The crowd watching roared their approval.

  CLACK! went Ken Keen’s camera. Ken Keen could hardly believe his luck. A gang of small children running riot – and not a teacher in sight. This was too easy.

  “What’s next?” he asked excitedly.

  “We could try the seals,” Gary suggested.

  But when they got there, things didn’t look promising.

  The seals flopped sleepily on rocks. A keeper stepped through a gateway at the back and trudged on to a little platform that took him out over the water. He banged the sides of the bucket with his knuckles and called out, “Here we go, my dears. Come to daddy. Fetch a little fishy for daddy!” He reached into the bucket and flipped a herring high into the air. The seals gazed blankly at the keeper. Not one of them moved.

  But before the fish hit the water, a shape flew out of the sky from the edge of the lake.

  It appeared at terrific speed from among the greenery on the far bank. There was a flash of skateboard wheels, a loud bark of pleasure and a snap of teeth, followed by a satisfying SPLOOOSH as the shape caught the fish and bombed into the murky water.

  “What was THAT?” yelled the keeper.

  “That looked to me like Franky Fearless!” Gary gasped.

  The little daredevil leapt out of the water like a dolphin. The seals barked their pleasure and the crowd roared.

  “Did you get that, Mr Keen?” asked Gary. “Mr Keen?”

  He turned to see Ken Keen hurrying away.

  “I got it alright!” he hissed, pulling out his mobile phone.

  “Chief? Hold the front page!” the sneaky reporter yelled. “I’ve got some sensational pictures here for you – and a story that might just finish off Mankey Zoo and Muckabout School – for ever!”

  “Oh, dear!” sighed Gary. “What have I done?”

  Gary got up early to read the newspaper next morning.

  What he saw upset him so much that he hid the newspaper from his mum and dad and stayed in bed all day with a headache.

  “That Ken Keen is such a rotter!” he complained to himself. “I felt sure he would write a nice story about the zoo. Now I’m going to be in such trouble. And he hasn�
�t even published my poem.”

  But the next day, Gary had decided that he must go into school, even if it was for the last time. He knew Mr Jolly would be furious with him for helping the Spoilsport. The school inspectors were probably already there, closing the school down. And what was going to happen to the poor defenceless zoo?

  As expected, as soon as Gary arrived at school, Mr Jolly grabbed him and rushed him into his study. Mr Jolly’s T-shirt, on this blackest of days, read:

  Other pupils from the junior school were already in the headmaster’s office. There was Franky Fearless and Ricky Rude, Tim Tattle and even William Whale (looking a little nibbled around the edges). Next to them stood Mr Dawdle and Mrs Nevermind. They were all crowding around the Thursday edition of the Spoilsport, which was spread out on the headmaster’s desk. They must all be in serious trouble.

  But then Gary stepped a little closer and read the headline:

  NEW DAWN FOR ZOO

  THAT GOES MUCKABOUT

  “You mean they’re not closing the zoo down?” asked Gary.

  “Not a hope of it!” the headmaster chortled.

  “And what about Muckabout?”

  “Muckabout’s for ever, Gary,” Mr Jolly beamed. “Remember that! And I think that we can count our visit to the zoo as Muckabout’s most successful outing ever! The school gets special mention in the paper today for making the zoo ‘an exciting and entertaining place’! What’s more, the Spoilsport had loads of complaints yesterday from visitors who loved their day at the zoo, saying that Ken Keen’s report was unfair. The result is – he’s been given the push, ha ha! And young Franky here has even been offered a free lifetime pass. Look, today’s paper is full of stuff about the plucky little chap who doesn’t allow a broken leg to stop him having fun!”

  “But what about me?” asked Gary. “I feel terrible about helping that rotter, Ken Keen.”

  “Not a bit of it – not a bit of it. Tim Tattle told us all about what you’ve been up to. First rate snitching all round! I said when I planned this outing that it would be a roaring success for everybody concerned, and I was right! Now who’s for a drink of something tooth-rottingly fizzy and a slice of chocolate cake?”

  Gary was so relieved that he quite forgot himself. He stuffed a huge piece of cake into his mouth, washed it down with a glass of fizzy pop and shouted at the top of his voice: “MUCKABOUT FOR EVER!”

  Other Books By Ian Whybrow

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  About the Author

  Ian Whybrow has written over 100 books, ranging from picture books to novels for older children and his stories have been translated into more than 20 languages. He is best known for his original humour and says he always writes with adult readers as well as children in mind: “For me, that's the acid test for any book – that there's something in it for everyone to enjoy.” Little Wolf is one of his best-loved characters.

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