Mouse Noses on Toast by King Daren

Author:King, Daren [King, Daren]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781101652336
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2008-01-31T00:00:00+00:00

For a brief moment, the Tinby was moving faster than any Tinby had moved in the entire history of the world. Then, SMASH, the bottle shattered into a million silver-green stars.

By the time Paul reached the floorboards, the Tinby had gone, leaving only a Tinby-shaped mark in the dust.

Paul called for Sandra to come down, but she refused. “I think you should come back up,” she said. “And bring Larry with you. I have found something he may find interesting.”

THE PROTEST

FURTHER ALONG THE TOP SHELF, IN A DARK AND DUSTY corner, Sandra had found a box marked MOUSE NOSES WHISKERS ON. The top was open, but the box lay on its side and some of the noses had spilled out.

Paul stood with his paws on his hips, knee-deep in noses. Graham was there too. Larry had stayed under the floorboards. He had important work to do, he said, organizing the campaign.

“We should take some down for Larry,” Graham said.

“No,” Sandra said, “I have a better idea.”

A minute later, Larry looked up to see a huge sheet of cardboard drop through the floorboards. The words MOUSE NOSES WHISKERS ON were printed across it in big letters. Larry was halfway through reading the word ON when a second sheet of cardboard landed on his head.

“They’re flaps,” Paul said.

“From a cardboard box,” Graham added.

“Graham tore them off with his bare paws,” Sandra said.

“A box?” Larry said, scratching his ears. “A box of noses?”

The second cardboard flap was blank on both sides. Graham ripped it into several cardboard squares, and Sandra glued a matchstick to each square to make them into signs. Larry wrote a message on each with a huge felt-tip pen. HANDS OFF OUR NOSES, read one. MOUSE NOSES SMELL, read another.

“That one doesn’t make sense,” Paul said.

“It’s a double meaning,” Larry explained. “What’s the old joke about the dog with no nose?”

The twins knew the joke, and told it together.

“My dog has no nose.”

“How does it smell?”

“Terrible!”

Paul looked at the sign. “It still doesn’t make sense.”

The plan was to protest in the restaurant itself, to make the customers think twice before ordering mouse noses on toast. Everyone agreed that this was a good plan, but it did have one flaw. If the chef caught them, he would chop them up with a knife.

Paul shook his head. “I don’t like the sound of this.”

Larry picked up his sign. JUST BECAUSE WE SQUEAK, it read, DOESN’T MEAN WE’RE MEEK.

“Look,” he said, “can we just get on with it? There are mouses having their noses cut off this very moment.”

Larry could be very persuasive at times, and this was one of those times. When he marched out of the dusty storeroom that warm afternoon, his sign held high above his head, the mouses followed.

It is rare to see twenty-five mouses and a Christmas-tree decoration marching across the floor of a posh restaurant chanting protest songs and waving cardboard signs. The customers carried on eating at first, not believing their eyes. Then, when they realized that the mouses were real, the restaurant erupted as customers ran screaming from the room.

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