Francine Poulet Meets the Ghost Raccoon by Kate DiCamillo

Author:Kate DiCamillo [DiCamillo, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
ISBN: 978-0-7636-8039-8
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Published: 2015-08-25T04:00:00+00:00

Francine Poulet got a job as a cashier at Clyde’s Bait, Feed, Tackle, and Animal Necessities.

Her left leg, the one she had broken when she fell from Mrs. Bissinger’s roof with the raccoon in her arms, continued to ache. So Francine sat on a stool as she rang up dog chow and plastic worms, chicken feed and rawhide bones, fishing poles and horse bridles.

For some reason, Clyde’s Bait, Feed, Tackle, and Animal Necessities was bedeviled by flies. Francine kept a fly swatter in one hand at all times. She got very good at whacking flies.

Other than the flies, it was a quiet existence.

There were no emergency calls. There were no dramatic chases. There were no raccoons who called her name. There was no Mrs. Bissinger. And so on.

Clement Poulet did not show up in the brightly lit aisles of Clyde’s. There was no smell of cigar smoke. There was no suggestion that Francine was disappointing anyone or that she was not as solid as a refrigerator.

Also, a stool was not a chair. It was very, very hard to tip backward on the legs of a stool. Francine did not even try. It seemed too dangerous.

Francine sat. The days passed.

She rang up a lot of dog chow.

She killed a lot of flies. In fact, she kept a running tally of how many flies she had whacked, just so she could convince herself that she was making progress of some sort.

On the day that Francine killed her 238th fly, a girl and a boy came into Clyde’s Bait, Feed, Tackle, and Animal Necessities.

The girl said, “Where are your sweets?”

“We don’t deal in sweets,” said Francine Poulet.

She could hear Fly 239 buzzing at her ear.

“Not even licorice?” said the girl.

“No licorice,” said Francine.

Fly 239 zoomed back and forth in front of her, taunting her.

“Hey,” said the boy, “I know you.”

Francine took her eyes off the fly and looked at the boy.

“My name is Frank,” he said.

“Good for you,” said Francine.

“And you are Animal Control Officer Francine Poulet,” said Frank. “Once you were on official business on our street. Also, I saw your picture in the paper.”

“What about cough drops?” said the girl. “Do you have cough drops? Sometimes when a store doesn’t sell candy, they will sell cough drops.”

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