Rise of ZomBert by Kara LaReau

Author:Kara LaReau [LaReau, Kara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781536211887
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Published: 2020-09-01T16:00:00+00:00

On Tuesday, Bert left three headless birds on our back porch.

On Wednesday, I found five headless mice.

On Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, I found two headless moles, a headless chipmunk, and a headless garter snake.

On Sunday, I found ten headless crickets. Each time, I managed to bury the evidence before my parents saw it. I hoped they wouldn’t notice how lumpy our backyard had become.

“Meow,” Bert would greet me in the morning from under the rhododendron bush. His fur was growing back and looking sleek, and he definitely didn’t look scary-skinny anymore. His all-brain diet seemed to be working.

Each time he attempted to share his “feasts” with me, I made sure to thank him. I kept blinking at him, but he wouldn’t blink back. I tried not to feel too disappointed. We were still family, I kept reminding myself, even if he didn’t want to kiss me.

Monday was the first day of our organism reports. Since I picked number three, I had to give mine that day. But I was ready; I drew a picture of a cat on poster board and labeled all the body parts. Thanks to my phone, I had lots of pictures of cats from The Cat Book, and photos of Bert to share: sleeping under the rhododendron bush, sitting in my lap, and even scent marking against my fingers. And of course, I had all my cat facts.

When Danny and I got to school, we saw a bunch of kids crowded around Carl Weems. He was giving his report first that day, and I could see he was even more prepared than I was. He was holding a cage covered with skull-and-crossbones stickers, and inside the cage were two actual rats.

“Maybe I should have brought Bert?” I said as we locked up our bikes.

“He’d probably would’ve been asleep the whole time,” Danny reminded me. He was probably right.

Other than the living visual aids, Carl’s report wasn’t all that great. He hardly had any facts about rats, other than what they ate (everything, apparently) and what their poop looked like. But it didn’t matter; aside from me and Danny, everyone in class was fascinated.

“So, this is Chunk and Zoomer,” Carl said. He opened the cage and took out the rats, holding one in each hand. They seemed pretty wriggly and twitchy, and their paws looked like tiny pink human hands. Their tails were long and hairless.

“Which one is which?” Marco Lanza asked.

“Chunk is the fat one, duh,” Carl said. “But they both eat a lot.”

“Can we hold them?” asked Will Gorton.

“Sure!” said Carl. But when he went to hand Chunk and Zoomer to Will, Mr. James stopped him.

“I think it’s best if we all observe these animals while they’re in their cage,” he said. “We wouldn’t want anyone to drop them.”

“Or contract the bubonic plague,” Danny whispered to me.

Carl and the rest of the class seemed disappointed as he put the rats back in their cage and gave the latch on the cage door a little extra nudge to lock it in place.

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