To my horror, the first thing Mom did when we got home was march to the closet and pull out the vacuum cleaner.

“What are you going to do with that?” I asked.

“Don’t worry,” she said.

But I was worried. Not about my nose. I was worried because the vacuum cleaner’s motor was currently sitting in my hovercraft.

Of course when Mom flipped the vacuum cleaner switch, nothing happened. She flipped it a couple more times while I tried to look innocent.

“Darn old thing!” she said.

I shook my head in disgust at the vacuum cleaner.

I was just congratulating myself for getting off so easily, when Mom said, “All right, we’re going downstairs to see Julius.”

That made me nervous all over again. I like Julius, but he is kind of scary, too. I wondered if Mom was going to have him flip me upside down and shake the carrots out of me. It turned out, though, that she only wanted Julius to get her the lobby’s vacuum cleaner.

“It’s to suck the carrots out of Otis’s nose,” Mom told Julius.

Julius looked at me for a long time. Then he said, “Don’t you know which face-hole to stick your food into, son?”

“I do dow, Juliuth,” I mumbled.

Julius rolled out the lobby vacuum cleaner, which looked like a jet engine on wheels. It was something called the Mighty Mack 500, and Julius said it could suck the skin off a lemon.

“Maybe this isn’t such a good idea,” I said.

“I know what I’m doing,” Mom insisted. “I once removed a candy cane from your brother’s nose this way.” Then she got red in the face, like she hadn’t meant to say that.

“Is that why he never picks his nose anymore?” I cried. “Because you used a vacuum cleaner to suck a candy cane out of his nose? Listen, lady, that’s not going to happen to me—”

But before I could finish, she flipped the switch on the Mighty Mack 500 and stuck the nozzle against my nose.

BROARRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!

The thing not only looked like a jet engine, but it sounded like one, too. And boy oh boy, was it powerful! I felt the carrot in my left nostril begin to vibrate. If the nozzle had been any bigger, I’m pretty sure my whole body would have been sucked right into the hose.

Within a few minutes a crowd had begun to form around me in the lobby. I guess most people have never seen a person with a vacuum cleaner up their nose before. They seemed like they were really enjoying themselves, too.

one lady said.

“From the size of that vacuum, he must have stuck an entire cash register up his schnozz,” a guy said.

“Wow,” said someone else, “it looks like that thing is going to suck his brains right out of his head!”

Now that really worried me. In fact, the very next second I really did begin to feel like my brain was getting tugged through my nose. Everything got really tight in there and I felt this pressure building and building …

“Turn off the Mighty Mack!” I cried out. “It’s sucking out my brains!”

But between the roar of the vacuum and the carrots up my nose, no one understood what I was saying. Right then I felt something shoot out of both nostrils and clatter around in the vacuum hose.

“Oh no, my brains, my brains!” I cried.

Mom shut off the Mighty Mack 500. She looked up my nose. Then she smiled.

and everyone in the crowd applauded.

I guess I should have been happy. The carrots were out of my nose, and my brains were still in my head.

But now there were two things I knew for sure:

1. Miss Yabby was going to hear about this.

2. I was never, ever going to put anything up my nose again. Not even my finger.