Roger Mantis by Tom Alan Brosz

Author:Tom Alan Brosz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: insects, bugs, fantasy, sports, baseball, friendship, nature, wildlife
Publisher: Tantrum Books, Month9Books
Published: 2019-04-02T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

Roger slept in on Thursday morning, the first day of Spring Break. If he’d still been human, he would have gotten up early to watch the carnival roll into town and the men setting up the rides. They were supposed to be bringing in a really big Ferris wheel this year. But as Roger woke up once again with all his extra legs and his worries about the reporter, he didn’t hurry out of bed. Besides, he’d had a bad night.

When he finally decided to get out of bed, it went much more smoothly than previous mornings. He was learning. Then he opened his door with a practiced tarsus grab and flip, stepped lightly across Lou, who was sprawled out in the hallway, and headed downstairs with Lou scrambling up and bounding after him.

Roger was still quite pleased that at least a bug didn’t have to get dressed or brush his teeth or anything. Heck, he didn’t even have to take showers! Yet another point in the Giant Mantis plus column. Okay, so his mom hit him with the duster now and then. So far he’d managed to avoid anything more drastic. Roger wondered what he’d do if he ever got a lot of mud on him or something. He didn’t fit in the shower, so his thoughts about being hosed off in the yard were probably real. Maybe his dad would wash him with the car washing brush!

Roger’s mother greeted him when he came into the kitchen and immediately set to cooking a fat slice of ham. The kitchen still smelled faintly of an earlier breakfast: toast, grapefruit, and fried eggs. Roger’s father must have gone down to his medical office in town a while ago.

Roger didn’t have an appetite for anything other than meat—from lunch meat up to a haunch of roast beef—but he still missed other kinds of food. Corn on the cob, for one. For his part, Lou seemed deliriously happy with the loads of meat at every meal now, as he could always count on some leftovers.

Roger washed his ham down with some orange juice his mom had put in a small bowl next to him. Roger could drink lots of different things, but it was easiest to drink out of a bowl, even if he was pretty sloppy. You wouldn’t think anybody would be a messier drinker than Lou, but somehow Roger managed it.

Sodas, which Roger loved, didn’t agree with him. Even from a bowl. Apparently, a mantis can’t burp, and after drinking a bottle of soda with Jerry and Marlene a few days ago, his abdomen had felt like a balloon. It was then he discovered, much to the amusement of his friends, that apparently a mantis can fart. Loudly. Marlene laughed until she got the hiccups and declared she would write a science paper on it, offering to give Roger all the credit for the discovery.

The phone rang, and Roger let his mother pick it up. “It’s for you, son,” she said.

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