Guinea-Pig-Napped
Eduardo rushed back along the counter to the bath. “Lulu! Coco!” he called. “It’s time to get out. Nigel has terrible plans for Lulu and me!”
“What was that, Eddy?” Lulu called back. “I can’t hear too well. I’ve got shampoo in my ears!”
“Get out of the bath now!” commanded Eduardo.
“Give us a minute,” said Coco. “We’ve got conditioner on our fur and it says on the bottle it needs another ten minutes for that deep-down, allover, sweet-smelling shine.”
“I don’t care if you both smell like a sewer!” shouted Eduardo. “Get out of the bath! Nigel is going to sell me and Lulu to a circus.”
Coco stood up on the raft and popped her head over the side of the bath. “So does that mean I can stay in for a bit?”
“How can you be so selfish and silly at a time like this? The circus owner is on his way! He wants to take us on a plane tonight.”
Coco and Lulu looked alarmed.
“Come on, Lulu, you go first,” said Coco. She wasn’t being selfish or silly now.
Lulu looked over the edge of the bath. “How do I get down?” she asked fearfully.
“Climb down off the raft,” Coco said, showing her what to do. She held on to the side of the bath with her front paws and swung one back leg over, followed by the other, and dropped down onto the counter.
Lulu copied her.
“Now what?” Coco asked, peering over the edge of the counter. “It’s too far to jump. And you two can’t climb.”
“But we can fly!” Eduardo grabbed a shower cap that was lying on the counter and whipped it up into the air above his head.
“Excuse me, but where are your manners?” Coco demanded. “What happened to ‘ladies first’?”
“It might not be safe, señorita,” Eduardo explained. “Especially for Lulu. I will go first and find something soft for you to land on.”
Then he took a running jump and hurled himself off the counter. The shower cap acted like a parachute and he floated almost gracefully to the floor.
“I don’t know how to jump,” said Lulu, shaking with fear. “I get carried everywhere at home.”
“I’ll show you,” said Coco bravely, “and then you can copy. It’s easy, really.”
In truth Coco was pretty scared herself. She’d never jumped down so far. And it would have been easier for her to climb down the trellis outside. But she had to jump to show Lulu it could be done. She looked down at the hard linoleum floor.
“Hang on,” Eduardo said, and he dashed over to a sponge that was lying not far away on the floor. (It seemed Nigel wasn’t a very tidy person.) He pushed the sponge along the floor until it was below the girls.
“There you go,” he said to Coco. “Land on that.”
Coco shut her eyes and jumped.
She felt herself falling. She thought she would never stop. And then she did—with a bounce, on the sponge.
“Well done,” said Eduardo, taking her paw so she could leave the sponge like a high jumper leaving the landing mat.
Coco shook herself. She was still a bit sticky from the conditioner she hadn’t had time to wash off properly.
“Your turn now, Lulu,” Eduardo said.
They both looked up at Lulu. Lulu looked down at the sponge. She took a deep breath. And then she squealed because a big hairy hand had grabbed her and chucked her into a cage!
“Time to go, rodent. Now, where’s your silvery friend?”
It was Nigel. The guinea pigs had been so busy with jumping down from the counter that they hadn’t heard him come back in.
Coco dashed for cover. It wasn’t too far to the sunroom’s curtains. “I made it!” she gasped.
“Wait for me!” Whoosh! Eduardo slipped on the wet floor where Coco had shaken herself.
Nigel was stomping around the room. “Where’s that blasted guinea pig?” he muttered. “Ronald will be here in a minute.” He saw Eduardo struggling to get up. “Ah, there you are.”
“Come on, Eduardo,” whispered Coco from the curtains. “Hurry!”
“I can’t, señorita! You’ve made this place as slippery as a Peruvian mudslide!” Eduardo cried.
The doorbell rang.
“Got you just in time.” Nigel grabbed Eduardo and threw him into the cage. “Ronald doesn’t want to hang around. He’s flying to the circus with you two tonight.” He put the cage on the counter and went to answer the door.
Coco watched from behind the curtains. She was trembling. What should she do now? What could one little guinea pig do against two big, mean men? She might never see Eduardo and Lulu again. It was unbearable.
Her heart was pounding so loudly in her chest that she didn’t hear a strange sound coming from the garden. And even if she had heard it she might not have known what it was. She might even have thought it sounded a little scary. But once the thing that was making the noise came through the door into the sunroom, she wasn’t scared at all. She was delighted. It was Pat’s tank coming to the rescue!
