CHAPTER 6

rofessor Wacko Kilowatt arrived at the cottage on the lake accompanied by three official paleontologists. They came in a truck packed with equipment to measure and test and x-ray and otherwise annoy Dippy.

Paleontology comes from three Greek words and means “the science of ancient being,” and paleontologists are men and women who study the history of past life by fooling around with fossils, usually the petrified bones of animals who died millions and millions of years ago.

“Okay,” Wacko said at once, “where is the thing?”

“He is not a thing,” Jacob Two-Two said angrily. “He is my pet and his name is Dippy.”

“Ha,” Wacko said. “Lead us to it. Or him,” he added, winking at the paleontologists.

Dippy happened to be taking a snooze in the sun, his green humped back heaving like a mountain with each breath and his snores resounding like thunder.

“Does he bite?” Wacko asked, retreating a step. “Scared?” Jacob Two-Two asked.

“Certainly not, you little runt.” Then Wacko turned to the three trembling paleontologists. “Go ahead, men. Get on with it. I’ll just climb that tree and watch from there.”

So they got out their equipment and extension ladders and began to crawl all over Dippy. Dippy, stirring awake, yawned. The paleontologists leaped off him and ran for their lives.

“Come back at once, you cowards,” Wacko called out from his perch in the tree.

Grudgingly the paleontologists crept back toward Dippy. They measured his jaw. They peeked in his ears. They took his blood pressure. They listened to his heart. “If I didn’t know any better,” the first paleontologist said, “I’d say he was a dinosaur.”

“He certainly looks like one,” the second paleontologist said.

“And measures like one,” the third said.

Wacko slid down the tree. He pulled his hair. He stamped his feet. “But he can’t be a dinosaur, you idiots. There hasn’t been one alive on earth for sixty-five million years, give or take a year or two.”

Wacko and the three paleontologists conferred. They consulted books. They studied charts. They appealed to their computers. Finally, Wacko was ready to pronounce. “We have,” he said, “in accordance with the facts and our unrivaled scientific knowledge, come to a conclusion that cannot be disputed. Dippy is either a hoax or a figment of Jacob Two-Two’s imagination.”

“What do you mean, a hoax?” Jacob Two-Two’s father demanded.

“Well,” Wacko said, “how do we know he’s not a giant elephant wearing a Halloween costume?”

“What’s a figment of the imagination?” Jacob Two-Two asked.

“I mean, and I’m speaking scientifically, you little squirt, that you made him up in your head and he doesn’t really exist. ”

“But here he is,” Jacob Two-Two said. “Here he is.”

“Here he is, only if you are eight years old, maybe not doing so hot in the second grade, and have not had the advantage of my celebrated intelligence.”

“Dippy is a dinosaur,” Jacob Two-Two said, “a genuine Diplodocus.”

“Which only goes to prove that you’re just a bit dippy yourself, kiddo.”

Suddenly Dippy raised his huge neck and began to roar. Teeth now as large as bananas flashed in the sun. He opened his mouth wider and sent out his long wet pink tongue. Wacko and his helpers stumbled over each other, reeling backward.

“It’s plain to see,” Wacko hollered, “that this freak of nature, this beast ugly beyond compare, is a menace. We’ll have to make arrangements to remove him from here.”

“But how can you remove a figment of my imagination?” Jacob Two-Two demanded.

Ignoring Jacob Two-Two, Wacko turned to his helpers. “I have decided that he isn’t a figment after all, but a hoax. A fraud. A vile attempt to trick honest scientists. I will advise the prime minister that he is to be exterminated. We will return with airplanes and use Dippy for target practice. Why, we’ll bomb the beast into oblivion.”

“Oh, no you won’t,” Jacob Two-Two said. “Oh, no you won’t.”