CHAPTER 4

ippy, nourished only on rubbish, grew even faster than asparagus. He slept on a pile of the latest newspapers at the foot of Jacob Two-Two’s bed in their house in Montreal. Only two weeks after he had popped out of the cigar box, he was as big as a full-grown cocker spaniel. Two months later, lo and behold, he was as large as a horse. By that time school was out and the family had moved to a cottage on a nearby lake for the summer. This was very fortunate, indeed, because obviously Dippy could no longer sleep at the foot of Jacob Two-Two’s bed. He was too big to even fit in the bedroom anymore and was still growing bigger at an incredible rate. So Dippy slept out in the woods. But every morning, when Jacob Two-Two awoke, there was Dippy by his bedroom window, waiting for him, his head dipping slightly to one side, wagging the green tail that grew longer and longer every day.

Dippy didn’t look like anything anybody on the lake had ever seen before. He had an enormous green head, somewhat scaly, with big red eyes and a wet darting pink tongue as long as a yardstick. There were one hundred and two teeth in his mouth, most of them as high and sharp as the biggest nails you ever saw but gleaming white. His forelegs were very short, ending in scaly fingers with sharp claws. His hind legs were much thinner, far longer, and also ended in sharp claws. He had a huge humpy back, a fat belly, and a curling tail longer than everything else about him put together. Let’s face it, if you weren’t a personal friend, Dippy looked like something out of a horror movie. Jacob Two-Two thought he was beautiful.

Every morning after breakfast Dippy would bend his forelegs at the elbows and lay his enormous head on the grass so that Jacob could slither up his neck and make himself comfy on his back. Then off the two of them would go for a gallop. This was great fun as far as Jacob Two-Two and Dippy were concerned, but it was more than somewhat upsetting to the other people on the lake. One morning, for instance, a farmer out plowing his fields saw them galloping toward him. He leaped off his tractor and ran two miles to the village church, where he promptly fell onto his knees, praying. Late one evening as Mr. and Mrs. Sloshed were driving home from a cocktail party they saw – or thought they saw – Jacob Two-Two and Dippy bounding across a field. Mr. Sloshed promptly slammed on the brakes and turned to his wife, trembling. “Did you just see what I saw?” he asked.

“Certainly not,” she lied, “because I’m not an old drunkard like you.”

Right there and then Mr. Sloshed swore to give up drinking for life.

There were other incidents. People began to complain. And soon enough Jacob Two-Two’s father invited him into the library for a man-to-man talk. “Jacob Two-Two, I realize that I’m the one who brought Dippy over from Africa in a cigar box in the first place. But at the time I honestly thought he was fully grown.”

Dippy was now as fat as an elephant and as high as a giraffe.

“Now the phone never stops ringing. Everybody is complaining about our – our monster.”

“Dippy is not a monster.”

“Speaking for myself, I now have to spend two hours a day out in my station wagon collecting rubbish just to keep Dippy’s stomach from rumbling, and he’s still growing. What if we donated him to the local zoo and I got you a pony instead?”

“I don’t want a pony. I’ve got Dippy and I love him.”

Jacob Two-Two’s parents sat up late that night talking about their problem. They decided to register Jacob Two-Two for daily swimming lessons at the Certified Snobs’ Golf and Country Club, whose members all agreed among themselves that they were the finest people on the lake. In fact, if Snobbers, as they were known, ever argued about anything, it was only about which one of them had inherited the most money or whose family had discovered the lake first.

Jacob Two-Two’s parents felt that if Jacob was separated from Dippy every morning they might grow apart, and later it would be easier to separate them once and for all. What they hadn’t counted on was that Dippy, left to mope by himself in the woods for two mornings, would follow Jacob Two-Two to the Certified Snobs’ Club on the third morning. This happened to be a very special day for the Snobbers. Their club president, the celebrated Professor Wacko Kilowatt, was to be honored at a luncheon. But even as he was taking his place at the head table, all the people at the other tables began to scatter, the women screaming, the men jumping into the lake. All because Dippy had just come trotting past, heading for the swimming pool.

It was a disgrace. A scandal. And that night an outraged Professor Wacko Kilowatt summoned Jacob Two-Two’s father to the club and presented him with a petition signed by all the Snobbers.

“Look here,” Wacko said, “we are now, in spite of what hopelessly inferior people say, a very tolerant club. We have come to accept a few members who are black or Italian or Jewish or Greek, so long as they are also filthy rich. We even accept children for swimming classes whose parents,” he added, looking hard at Jacob Two-Two’s father, “were not intelligent enough to inherit money and actually work for a living. But we must draw the line somewhere. We will simply not accept any green monsters in our club. That beast must not trample our grass anymore.”

“I will see to that,” Jacob Two-Two’s father promised.

“Of course you will. But, unfortunately, everybody on the lake is frightened. There are rumors that that ugly monster is an invader from another planet. As you know, I am the most distinguished scientist in the country. That creature has not only aroused my anger, but also my curiosity. Tomorrow morning I intend to visit your modest cottage with my staff of experts to establish exactly who and what that slimy thing is. I will establish this scientifically, of course.”