Unreal!: Eight Surprising Stories by Paul Jennings

Author:Paul Jennings
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub, mobi
Tags: Australia, Humor, Children's Books, Short Stories (Single Author), Fiction
ISBN: 9781742286860
Publisher: Penguin Group Australia
Published: 1985-01-04T13:00:00+00:00

3

Flies, flies, flies. They hung around our house all day and all night. It was the smell of the manure. The smell attracted them. There were flies everywhere; they came down the chimney and under the doors. People had no trouble finding our house. If anyone asked where we lived they were always told the same thing. ‘Just stop at the house with the flies.’

The neighbours didn’t like the flies. They were always going crook. So Dad gave them vegetables to keep them quiet. He gave them giant carrots and potatoes. They liked them so much that they only complained about the really bad days. This usually happened when Dad made a very smelly batch, like batch seventy-two.

Dad kept each batch of manure in a large rubbish bin. He had at least two hundred of them in the back yard. The worse they smelt, the more flies hung around them. The ones with the really bad smell were kept down near the back fence, away from the house. Mr Farley lived in the house at the back. He didn’t like us much – he never spoke to us. He was a pretty crabby bloke. I could never figure out why.

The trouble all started with batch seventy-two. It was the strongest batch that Dad had ever made. It had bat droppings, rabbit droppings and wombat droppings. There was also a bit of lizard and potaroo. But the main ingredient was cow dung.

Dad also threw in some rotten pumpkins. They were bright yellow. He added water and stirred the mix up. It all went smooth and yellow. ‘It’s like custard,’ I said. ‘Cow dung custard.’

It was a smelly batch, very smelly. It was the worst one that Dad had made. ‘Good,’ said Dad, ‘The more it smells, the better it works. I’ll grow some great potatoes with this batch.’ He took out a pen and wrote Cow Dung Custard on the side of the bin. The flies were already starting to gather so I decided to go inside out of the way. The smell was bad and it was getting worse.

I could smell batch seventy-two as I went to bed, even though it was at the bottom of the yard. I knew there was going to be trouble with the neighbours over this. Batch seventy-two looked like custard. But it sure didn’t smell like it.

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