Toad Rage - Morris Gleitzman [7]
Limpy stayed in the grass, weak with shock and disappointment.
I don't get it, he thought sadly. Humans can be friendly to possums and koalas, why can't they be friendly to cane toads?
A horrible thought hit him.
Perhaps, a long time ago, just after the dawn of time, a cane toad had done something really nasty to a human. Something so bad that humans had hated cane toads ever since and wanted to squash them at every opportunity.
If I knew what it was, thought Limpy, I could say sorry.
He struggled to think what it could have been.
Perhaps a human had chucked a can out of a car and a cane toad had chucked it back and hit the human on the head.
It didn't seem likely. Cane toads were pretty hopeless throwers.
Perhaps one of Goliath's ancestors had stabbed a car tire with a stick and made the car drive off the highway and crash into a termites' nest.
That didn't seem likely either. If it had happened, humans would be going out of their way to drive over termites as well.
Perhaps humans were just jealous of cane toads because cane toads had much longer tongues, which meant they got to eat all the juiciest insects and humans got left with the scaly centipedes and dust mites.
Limpy frowned.
It didn't seem enough, somehow.
Not for mass murder.
He knew there must be something else, something he hadn't thought of. He thought again till his head hurt, but it was no good, so he stopped worrying about the past.
Instead he worried about the future.
What I need, thought Limpy, is a way to make cane toads more popular with humans.
While he mulled this over, he watched a group of humans in the wildlife enclosure gazing at some big tropical butterflies. The humans had wide eyes and joyful smiles, and the butterflies looked pretty happy too.
Limpy sighed.
I wish I was a butterfly, he thought.
He looked down at his body and wondered if he could pretend to be a butterfly.
No hope. Even if he stretched the saggy skin under his armpits out as far as it would go, it still wouldn't look like wings in a million years.
Plus butterflies didn't have warts.
Limpy sighed again.
Suddenly the ground shook.
Limpy looked up fearfully. A huge truck was rumbling toward him. Limpy was about to turn and run when he saw that the truck was stopping.
He saw something else. Painted on the side of the truck was a large platypus and a large echidna and a large kookaburra.
Lucky things, thought Limpy. Some creatures are so popular with humans, they even get their own special trucks.
Then Limpy realized the platypus picture wasn't of a real platypus. It was a picture of a platypus costume with a human in it. Limpy could tell it was a human from the way the platypus was standing with its bottom sticking out.
Same for the echidna and the kookaburra.
Limpy stared at the pictures, puzzled.
Why would humans want to disguise themselves as animals and birds?
He didn't get it, but he had to admit they were great disguises. The kookaburra's feathers and the echidna's spikes and the platypus's fur looked so real, they'd even have fooled a kookaburra and an echidna and a platypus.
And, thought Limpy, a human behind a steering wheel.
Then Limpy had an idea that made his warts tingle with excitement.
An idea that made his long journey suddenly seem worth it.
An idea, he thought joyfully, that could keep Charm safe and bring peace and security to cane toads for countless generations to come.
The underpants were just what Limpy was looking for.
They had purple swirls on them and yellow blobs and green ripples and really bright orange around the edges.
Perfect, thought Limpy.
He had to have them.
The only problem was, they were lying on the floor of a parked caravan, just inside the open door.
Not just any caravan.
The rock throwers' caravan.
Limpy hopped closer, warts prickling with fear, desperately hoping that the humans from the van were over in the enclosure, patting possums or chucking rocks at each other.
He hopped onto the caravan step and listened.
Nothing.
He hopped into the van and crept around a pair of furry slippers