CHAPTER 8

STUMPED

Tiny was not doing well. I brushed his tail with one of our rakes, and that seemed to make him feel a little better. But what Tiny really needed was a fixed leg. It felt like I had been waiting in the yard for hours when my mom finally called me in.

I ran to the cooler and opened the lid, excited to move on to the second part of my experiment.

“But … ?” I looked up at my mom. “The bacteria should’ve grown by now, right?”

Mom glanced at the clock. “I really thought it would have.”

“So, what does this mean?”

She sat down at the kitchen table. “Well, maybe the bacteria just needs more time to grow. Or maybe the agar mixture is missing something this bacteria requires. I’m not sure which.”

I sat down next to Mom and flumped my head on my arms. “We really need to figure this out! I don’t want to waste any more time.”

Mom rubbed my back. “I know what you mean.”

“Can we make a new agar mixture while we give this one more time to grow?”

Mom nodded. “Let’s try it. But what do you want to add this time?”

I got up and paced and tapped my goggles. “Come on, Thinking Goggles! Give me some ideas,” I muttered under my breath.

But instead of new ingredients, all I could think about was yogurt. Was this really the best time for a snack?

“ARGH!” I pouted. “The only thought I’m having is about yogurt. I don’t want to eat! I want to solve this … OH!”

Mom raised an eyebrow.

“Oh! Oh!” I said again. “Yogurt! Of course!”

“Care to share those thoughts?” Mom asked.

“Well, we knew we could grow the store-bought yogurt bacteria in milk, because the bacteria was already growing there.”

“Right,” Mom said.

“We know that bacteria on Tiny grows on unicorns, so we just need to find a way to add some unicorn … something … to the agar mixture!”

“Ooh, great thinking, Zoey! That just might work. What are you thinking of adding?”

“Well, the cut on Tiny’s leg is in his fur. Maybe I could clip some fur from one of his good legs and we could mix that in?”

“Excellent plan. You grab the fur and I’ll start cooking a new batch.”

In no time at all, Mom and I had petri dishes filled with new agar—now with unicorn-ness added! Once they cooled, I took them out, and with my gloves and cotton swabs, I carefully added bacteria from Tiny’s cut to the new petri dishes. Mom refilled the jars in the cooler with more hot water, and I gently settled the new petri dishes next to the old ones.

“The old petri dishes still have nothing on them,” I told Mom as I closed the lid.

“Let’s hope the new ones are more effective,” she said.

I sat down at the kitchen table. “And now we wait.”