THIRTY-THREE

We all jumped up and gathered around Handy Sandy.

“Stand back!” she cried. “I’m dangerous!”

I pointed to the thing she was carrying. “What is that?”

“It’s a welcome mat,” she said, raising it in front of her.

We all scratched our heads. None of us had ever seen one before. “What does it do?” Wacky Jackie asked.

“You put it outside your front door,” Sandy explained. “People step on it and wipe their feet before they come into the house.”

“Why?” Rob Slob asked.

I shook my head. “How does that solve our Perfect problem, Sandy?”

She grinned. “Easy.” She stretched out the brown, fuzzy mat. It said WELCOME in black letters in the center.

“It looks like a normal welcome mat,” she said. “But I’ve improved it. I put a bear trap inside.”

I squinted at it. “A bear trap?”

Sandy nodded. “Let’s say Mr. and Mrs. Perfect come up to the door. Mr. Perfect steps on the welcome mat—and it snaps! The trap slams shut around his ankle, and he falls to the ground screaming.”

“Sounds good to me,” Cranky Frankie said.

“Imagine Parker Perfect on the ground screaming his head off,” Sandy continued. “And they’re trying to pull the trap open, but they can’t. So Penny Perfect calls 911. An ambulance arrives and takes them both away.”

“I like it,” Cranky Frankie said. “Simple but painful.”

“And they never find out that we don’t have any parents,” Brooke said.

“Bird seed for brains!” Ptooey squawked.

“You shut up!” Wacky Jackie shouted.

“No, you shut up!”

I scratched my head. “Sandy, you tried the electric doorbell shock trick on them—remember? And it didn’t work at all.”

“That’s because I forgot to turn it on. And it was electric,” she explained. “This is a simple metal trap. There’s nothing to plug in or turn on. It can’t fail.”

I frowned. “Hmmm, are you sure?”

“I’ll show you,” Sandy said, and spread the mat out on the floor. “Are you watching?”

She stepped onto the mat with her right foot.

SNAAAP!

“OWWWWWWWWWW!”

The trap snapped shut around her ankle.

Sandy dropped to the floor and grabbed her ankle, howling her head off in pain.

“Bird seed for brains!” Ptooey squawked.

“You shut up!” Wacky Jackie shouted.

“No, you shut up!”

Sandy thrashed around on the floor, tugging at the mat wrapped around her ankle.

“OWWWWWWWW!”

She uttered another howl—

—when the doorbell rang.

We all gasped. The room grew silent except for Sandy’s cries and howls.

“Is it Parker and Penny Perfect?” I asked. “Did they come early?”

“OWWWWWWW!”

Rolling on the floor in agony, Sandy uttered another shrill howl.

I had to step over her to get to the front door.

When I pulled it open—I stared at a woman wearing a dress with biker boots. She had spiky purple hair and squinty eyes. Leaning on a wooden cane, she scowled at me.

“Don’t just stand there, ferret face. Aren’t you going to let me in?” she barked. “I’m your mother.”