Stinkbomb and Ketchup-Face and the Badness of Badgers Read online

  KETCHUP-FACE SINGS

  Blueberry jam,” sang Ketchup-Face.

  The badgers applauded politely.

  “Well done,” said Harry the Badger. “Right—into the box you go.”

  Ketchup-Face fixed him with a steely glare. “I haven’t finished yet,” she said. “That was just the first verse.”

  “Oh—sorry,” said Harry the Badger. “I thought there only was one.”

  “I wrote some more,” said Ketchup-Face, with a touch of pride. “Because the first verse was so good, only it needed more jam.”

  And she cleared her throat once more, and began to sing the second verse.

  CHAPTER 13

  IN WHICH

  KETCHUP-FACE SINGS

  THE SECOND VERSE

  Raspberry jam,” sang Ketchup-Face.

  The badgers were about to put their paws together when Ketchup-Face fixed them with another steely glare.

  “There’s more?” inquired Harry the Badger hesitantly.

  Ketchup-Face nodded, and began to sing the next verse.

  CHAPTER 14

  IN WHICH

  KETCHUP-FACE SINGS

  THE THIRD VERSE

  The third verse was about gooseberry jam.

  This time, Ketchup-Face got the steely glare in before the badgers had time to applaud.

  Then she continued.

  CHAPTER 15

  IN WHICH

  KETCHUP-FACE SINGS

  THE TWENTY-SEVENTH

  VERSE

  The twenty-seventh verse was about redcurrant jam.

  CHAPTER 16

  IN WHICH

  KETCHUP-FACE SINGS

  THE FIFTY-THIRD VERSE

  The fifty-third verse was about cauliflower jam.

  CHAPTER 17

  IN WHICH

  KETCHUP-FACE SINGS

  THE SEVEN HUNDRED AND

  EIGHTIETH VERSE

  Elephant jam,” sang Ketchup-Face.

  Stewart the Badger yawned, and Ketchup-Face fixed him with another steely glare. This was the five hundred and third steely glare she’d fixed a badger with since the song began, and she felt she was getting rather good at it.

  “Did you say something?” she asked coldly.

  “Um, no, not at all,” Stewart the Badger said miserably. Somewhere around the two hundred and fiftieth verse—the one beginning “Daffodil jam”—the other badgers had sneaked off, leaving him in charge with strict instructions to call them when Ketchup-Face had finished her song. Unfortunately, this didn’t seem to be about to happen.

  CHAPTER 18

  IN WHICH

  KETCHUP-FACE SINGS

  THE FOUR THOUSAND

  SEVEN HUNDRED AND

  SIXTY-NINTH VERSE

  Micropachycephalosaurus jam,” sang Ketchup-Face.

  She fixed Stewart the Badger with another steely glare as he got up.

  she said. “And all the other badgers have sneaked off. You have to stay and be my audience.”

  “Um, feel free to carry on without me,” said Stewart the Badger, wriggling uncomfortably. “I’ll be back in a minute. It’s just that, um, I need to go for a poo.”

  And he made a dash for the door.

  CHAPTER 19

  IN WHICH

  KETCHUP-FACE IS INTERRUPTED

  Quick!” said Stinkbomb. “Let’s get out of here!”

  Ketchup-Face fixed him with a steely glare. “I haven’t finished my song!” she said.

  “You can finish it later,” Stinkbomb told her.

  “But I’m almost at the best part!”

  “Look,” Stinkbomb said, “either you can keep singing—and then, when you finish the song, the badgers will put us in a cardboard box and mail us to the remote mountain kingdom of Bajerstan, where we’ll be put to work painting stripes on secondhand tigers—or we can escape and go home, and then you can sing the rest of your song to Mom and Dad after the end of the story.”

  Ketchup-Face thought about this. “Mom and Dad would probably like my song, wouldn’t they?” she said.

  Stinkbomb nodded. “I bet they’d love it.”

  “What about the secondhand tigers?” Ketchup-Face asked. “They’d like it too, wouldn’t they?”

  Stinkbomb shook his head. “Probably not,” he said.

  “Oh,” said Ketchup-Face. “Are you sure?”

  “Pretty sure,” Stinkbomb said. “Tigers have awful taste in music.”

  “Oh, okay,” Ketchup-Face said. “I wouldn’t want the tigers to be disappointed, that’s all. Time to escape, then!”

  And they escaped.

  Or, at least, they did the first bit of escaping, which involved tiptoeing to the elevator. It was broken, but Ketchup-Face fixed it with a steely glare, and they got in and went up to the ground floor and tiptoed out the front door. Unfortunately, as soon as they had done that, they found themselves entirely surrounded by badgers.

  “Hey!” said Harry the Badger gruffly. “What’re you doing escaping, when you should be finishing your song and getting into a box?”

  “Yeah!” agreed Rolf the Badger. “And what’ve you done with Stewart the Badger?”

  “I’ll be down in a minute,” came a high squeaky voice from an upstairs window. “I’m just wiping my bottom.”

  The badgers growled. They were in a very bad mood by this point. Not only had most of them not had anything to say yet; it looked as if most of them weren’t even going to be given a name before the end of the story. They closed in on our heroes, and it looked as if this time there was no way out. But then . . .

  “What’s that squeaking noise?” said Ketchup-Face.

  The badgers turned and saw a horrifying sight, except that it wasn’t very horrifying. But it was definitely a sight, and they saw it. Coming toward them—most of the time, except when it veered off to one side—was the little shopping cart, and sitting proudly upright in the little shopping cart was King Toothbrush Weasel, and sitting on King Toothbrush Weasel’s head, nesting in the center of his crown, was the frightened chicken.

  “I say!” said King Toothbrush Weasel as the little shopping cart drew near and steered sideways into a tree.

  “What are you two doing here in the middle of all these antelopes?”

  “They’re not antelopes, they’re badgers,” said Stinkbomb, opening How to Identify a Badger to a picture of a badger and handing it to King Toothbrush Weasel.

  “Oh, yes,” said King Toothbrush Weasel, looking at the picture. “So they are. The octopus told me you were in trouble, so we’ve come to help.”

  “What octopus?” said Ketchup-Face.

  “This one, of course,” said King Toothbrush Weasel, pointing at the frightened chicken. “Well—it didn’t exactly tell me, but it did a mime and drew a picture.”

  “And I heard your cries for help,” said the little shopping cart, “and my mom said my room was almost clean and I’d worked very hard and I could finish it later, so I came too. And luckily someone’s been driving a sports car too fast in the enchanted wood, and they’ve all the brambles and bracken down, so I can get in now.”

  “Buk-AWWWWWK!” added the frightened chicken.

  The badgers started muttering darkly, because many of them felt it wasn’t fair that even a frightened chicken should get to say more than them.

  “Here I am,” said Stewart the Badger, bursting through the doors behind Stinkbomb and Ketchup-Face. “Have I missed anything?”

  Rolf the Badger looked at him suspiciously. “Did you wash your paws?” he asked.

  Stewart the Badger blushed. “Whoops!” he said, and disappeared again.

  “So now,” continued King Toothbrush Weasel, “I shall rescue you from these wicked . . .” —here he paused and checked the book again— “badgers.”


  “Oh, yeah?” said Harry the Badger. “You and whose army?”

  “Me and my army, of course!” said King Toothbrush Weasel.

  said the army, emerging from behind him and springing gracefully up onto the edge of the basket.

  “Ooooooh,” murmured the badgers nervously. They’d never seen a whole army before.

  “Right!” said Malcolm the Cat. “You’re all under arrest.”

  “Are we really?” asked Rolf the Badger.

  “No, not really,” said Malcolm the Cat. “You can all go, as long as you promise not to do it again. Okay?”

  The badgers nodded and began to shuffle away.

  “Oh, hold on a minute,” Malcolm the Cat said. “My mistake. You are under arrest after all.”

  “Awww,” said the badgers, and they all came and stood in front of Malcolm the Cat and waited to be handcuffed.

  “Although,” said Malcolm the Cat, “I suppose if you were very good, I could let you go . . .”

  And then, as the badgers began to shuffle hopefully away again, he added, “Or maybe not.”

  The doors to the apartment building opened again, and Stewart the Badger emerged once more. “Have I missed anything?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” said Harry the Badger glumly. “We’re all being arrested by the army.”

  Stewart the Badger looked at the army. “But it’s only a cat,” he said.

  “Oh, yeah,” said all the badgers. “So it is.”

  And they grabbed Stinkbomb and Ketchup-Face and King Toothbrush Weasel and Malcolm the Cat and the little shopping cart and the frightened chicken, and put them in the cardboard box, and mailed them to the remote mountain kingdom of Bajerstan.

  CHAPTER 20

  IN WHICH

  OUR HEROES GET BORED

  IN A CARDBOARD BOX

  It was very cramped in the box. Stinkbomb ended up with King Toothbrush Weasel’s elbow up his nose and Malcolm the Cat’s tail in his ear, and the frightened chicken laid an egg on his head.

  “Hey!” said Ketchup-Face from her folded-up position underneath the little shopping cart. “I can get my toes in my mouth!”

  Stinkbomb tried this, and found that he could get his toes in his mouth as well, which was at least something to do to pass the time. They discovered that they could get their toes in each other’s mouths too, but King Toothbrush Weasel wouldn’t let them try to get their toes in his mouth because he said that sort of thing wasn’t very royal.

  When that got boring, they played I Spy, which wasn’t much fun because the badgers had taken Stinkbomb’s flashlight, so everyone’s turn began, “I spy with my little eye something beginning with D,” and then everyone else guessed Darkness and was right every time—except when it was Ketchup-Face’s turn. Her D turned out to be for Doris, who she said was her imaginary friend. This made Stinkbomb a bit annoyed because he knew Ketchup-Face’s imaginary friend was named Salary, which didn’t begin with D even the way Ketchup-Face spelled it.

  “Anyway,” he complained, “how can you see her in the dark?”

  “Because she’s imaginary,” Ketchup-Face explained.

  Fairly soon they stopped playing that, and Stinkbomb and Ketchup-Face took turns asking “Are we there yet?” every five minutes.

  And all the time, the box was bumping and jolting and doing all those things that boxes do when they’re in the mail.

  At last, they felt the box being set down, and there was the unmistakable sound of a door being knocked on.

  “Is this the secondhand tiger factory?” asked Ketchup-Face. “I can’t hear any tigers.”

  A moment later, the unmistakable sound of a door being knocked on came again. Then there was the unmistakable sound of a mailman filling out one of those “Sorry we missed you” cards and dropping it into a mail slot, and then the unmistakable feeling of being carried around to be left behind a garbage can at the back of the house. And then came the unmistakable sound of a mailman driving away, followed by the unmistakable sound of nothing happening.

  After a little while, Ketchup-Face said, “I’m bored of being in this box. Can we get out now?”

  “I’m afraid we’re still trapped in here,” King Toothbrush Weasel told her. “If someone doesn’t come and let us out, we could be stuck in this box until it rains enough to make the cardboard all soggy and mushy.”

  Stinkbomb thought about this. The idea of being stuck in a box until it rained enough to make the cardboard soggy and mushy certainly sounded interesting, but he wasn’t sure he would actually like it.

  “If only we had a knife,” said the little shopping cart, vainly bashing its basket against the side of the box in a futile attempt to escape.

  “But I do!” said Stinkbomb in great excitement, suddenly remembering. Wriggling his hand around, he managed to reach into his pocket—and after pulling out a comic book,

  a bag of chips,

  a cardboard elephant,

  a telephone pole,

  an interestingly shaped rock,

  and a squirrel,

  he eventually produced a shiny and very sharp pocketknife, with which he cut a door in the wall of the box.

  CHAPTER 21

  IN WHICH

  OUR HEROES ESCAPE FROM THE CARDBOARD BOX

  AND KETCHUP-FACE MAKES A DISCOVERY

  We’re free!” shouted the little shopping cart.

  “Hurrah!” yelled King Toothbrush Weasel.

  “Buk-AWWWWWK!” said the frightened chicken.

  Malcolm the Cat had gone to sleep in the little shopping cart’s basket during the game of I Spy, so he didn’t say anything, and neither did Stinkbomb, who just looked pleased with himself. But Ketchup-Face was eyeing the pocketknife suspiciously.

  “Is that new?” she asked.

  Stinkbomb nodded. “I bought it yesterday,” he said. “I’ve been wanting one for ages.”

  “Where did you get the money for it?” Ketchup-Face said.

  Stinkbomb rolled his eyes impatiently. “If you need to know,” he said, “I had twenty dollars in my piggy bank, and I . . .”

  And then he stopped.

  “Oh,” he said. He went red.

  “Oh,” he said again.

  And then he said, “OW!” because Ketchup-Face was jumping up and down on his toes.

  she was yelling.

  She paused to take a breath. “We’ve been scared in a dark wood and chased by badgers and put in a box and mailed to the remote mountain kingdom of Bajerstan to paint stripes on secondhand tigers for the rest of our lives, and I didn’t even get to finish my song, and now it turns out the badgers didn’t even steal your money at all, not even a little bit! It’s all your fault!”

  King Toothbrush Weasel was suddenly looking very serious. “You mean the badgers aren’t evil and wicked after all?” he said. “Oh, dear. Poor innocent creatures. We have misjudged them.”

  “Well, not—OW—really,” explained Stinkbomb. “I mean, they did—OW—put us in a box and mail us to the—OW—remote mountain kingdom of Bajer—OW—stan.”

  “Yes,” added Ketchup-Face breathlessly, still jumping. “And they’re going to force all the mommies to make their awful lunches, and make all the daddies give them piggyback rides.”

  “That’s right,” said Stinkbomb. “And—OW—they’re going to replace you with—OW—King Harry the Badger. Ow.”

  “Ow,” agreed Ketchup-Face as she fell over, exhausted, to lie panting on the grass.

  “What?” said King Toothbrush Weasel, horror-struck. “Overthrow me and put a badger on the throne of Great Kerfuffle? But . . . but that’s treehouse!”

  “Um, I think you mean treason, Your Majesty,” said the little shopping cart shyly.

  “Nonsense!” said King Toothbrush Weasel. “A treason is a little house in the branches of a tree. Anyway, we hav
e to stop them!”

  “But how?” asked Ketchup-Face. “We’re in the remote mountain kingdom of Bajerstan.”

  “Er, no we’re not,” said the little shopping cart. They looked around, and found it was true.

  “Well, bless my soul,” said King Toothbrush Weasel. “How did we get here?”

  It was like a miracle, or at least like one of those times when the mailman delivers a package to the wrong house. Far from being in the remote mountain kingdom of Bajerstan, they were behind a garbage can in back of Stinkbomb and Ketchup-Face’s very own home, on a hillside above the tiny village of Loose Pebbles.

  The little shopping cart was examining the box. “Look!” it said. “Someone’s changed the address!”

  Stinkbomb looked. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “I forgot I’d done that.”

  “You did this?” asked King Toothbrush Weasel.

  Stinkbomb nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “While Ketchup-Face was singing her song. During the verse about duck-billed platypus jam. I got a little bored, so I got out a pen and wrote my name and address on the box.”

  “And a good thing too!” said King Toothbrush Weasel. “But how will we stop the badgers from doing any more evil and wicked doings?”

  They all went “Hmm,” and scratched their heads.

  Then Stinkbomb jumped up and pointed at the garbage can. “That garbage can has given me an idea!” he said. “But we’ll have to be really quick!”