Going Batty (2 page)

There was no way the 4B teacher, Ms. Sweet, was going to let Suzanne ignore Becky all day. Sooner or later Suzanne would have to talk to her. But that didn’t mean Suzanne was going to be nice when she did.

Today, more than ever, Katie was really glad she was in class 4A.

Katie had
lots
of reasons to be glad she was in class 4A. Her teacher, Mr. Guthrie, was always surprising his class with cool and exciting things to do. And today was no exception!

As Katie walked up to the door of class 4A, she noticed something really weird. It was dark inside the classroom. All the window shades were drawn tight.

It was almost impossible for Katie to see anything. But once her eyes got used to the darkness, Katie realized that Mr. G had done something amazing to the room. He’d turned it into a dark, secret, animal world.

Well, not real animals. They were actually stuffed animals. But the room looked cool just the same. There were raccoons and opossums hiding near the trash can. A black-and-white skunk sat on the windowsill. A plastic owl with glow-in-the-dark eyes was perched on the branches of a fake tree near the chalkboard. And several rubber bats were hanging upside down from the light fixtures on the ceiling.

Seeing her classroom changed like this didn’t seem weird to Katie at all. Mr. G was always decorating class 4A in fun ways.

What
was
weird, though, was the fact that Mr. G was nowhere to be found. Usually Katie’s teacher greeted the kids as they walked into the room. But not today. The kids didn’t see him anywhere.

“Hey, where’s Mr. G?” Andy Epstein wondered out loud.

“Do you think he’s absent?” Emma Stavros asked.

“I doubt it,” Kevin answered her. “No substitute would have done all this to our classroom.”

“That’s true,” Emma S. agreed. “This is definitely a Mr. G room.”

Mandy Banks picked up one of the stuffed raccoons. “What do you think this all means?” she wondered.

Katie looked up at the bats hanging from the ceiling. “Maybe it’s for a Halloween party,” she suggested. “I saw toy bats just like those in the Halloween section of the Party Palace store.”

“But Halloween’s not for two weeks, Katie Kazoo,” George said, using the way-cool nickname he’d given her back in third grade.

“It’s kind of creepy just standing here in the dark with no teacher,” Emma Weber said.

“Maybe we should turn a light on,” Andy suggested.

Bam!
Just then the closet door swung open.

“AAAAHHHHH!” The kids all screamed at once.

Then they began to laugh. Their teacher had just burst out of the closet. He was wearing gray and pink mouse ears on his head and a long gray tail on his behind.

“Mr. G!” Emma Weber shouted. “You scared me.”

“Not me,” George said. He was laughing really hard. “Why are you dressed like that?”

Kevin Camilleri walked over toward the light switch. But before he could flip it, Mr. G stopped him.

“Don’t turn on the lights,” Mr. G told Kevin. “Mice like me are happiest in the dark. So are opossums, skunks, bats, and raccoons. Too much light hurts our eyes.”

“I think I know what this is all about,” Katie said suddenly. “We’re studying animals that come out in the dark.”

“Very good, Katie,” Mr. G told her. “They’re called nocturnal animals.”

Katie knew all about nocturnal animals because she had once
been
a nocturnal animal. One time at summer camp, the magic wind had turned her into a raccoon.

But of course Katie couldn’t tell Mr. G that. So she said, “I already know raccoons are happiest in the dark.”

“They sure are,” Mr. G said. “All nocturnal animals are more active in the nighttime than in the daytime.”

“Can we get started decorating our beanbags?” Emma W. asked Mr. G excitedly.

“Yep,” Mr. G agreed. “Go to it!”

Decorating her beanbag chair was one of the things Katie loved best about being in Mr. G’s class. The kids in 4A didn’t sit at desks like other kids. They sat on beanbags. Mr. G thought kids learned better when they were comfortable.

Every time the class started a new learning adventure, they got to decorate their beanbag chairs with the craft supplies Mr. G kept in bags and boxes in the back of the classroom. Katie was using construction paper and streamers to turn her beanbag into a big raccoon.

Emma W. dotted her beanbag with pieces of shiny wrapping paper. “They’re fireflies,” she explained to Katie. “They only come out at night.”

George used black-and-white construction paper to turn his beanbag into a giant skunk. Then he took off his sneakers and began rubbing them all over his beanbag chair.

“Dude, what are you doing?” Mr. G asked George.

“Making my beanbag smell,” George answered. “My sneakers stink as bad as any real skunk.”

“That’s the truth,” Kevin agreed.

Mr. G laughed. “How about we just
pretend
your beanbag skunk smells?” he suggested. “Put your sneakers back on. You’re going to need them in a few minutes. We’re going outside to play a special game.”

Katie grinned. They were going to get to go outside and run around, and it wasn’t even gym class!

One thing was for sure. Class 4A was the best place to be . . . day or night!

“We’re so lucky,” Katie said to Emma W. as the girls walked outside with the rest of the kids in class 4A. “Everyone else at school is inside doing work, and we’re out here.”

“I know,” Emma W. agreed. “I wonder what kind of game we’re going to play.”

The girls didn’t have to wait long to find out. A minute later, Mr. G stood in front of the class. He was holding a blindfold.

“Today we’re playing a game called Bat and Bugs,” Mr. G told the kids. “One of you will be a bat, and the rest of you will be mosquitoes. The trick is for the bat to catch as many mosquitoes as he can.”

“Oh, it’s just like tag,” Kadeem Carter said.

“Sort of,” Mr. G said. “Except the person who is doing the tagging is blindfolded.”

The kids all stared at their teacher. That didn’t make any sense at all.

“How is the bat supposed to find the mosquitoes if she’s blindfolded?” Mandy Banks asked Mr. G.

“With echolocation,” Mr. G replied.

“Echo what?” George asked.

“Echolocation,” Mr. G said again. “That’s how bats catch their food in the wild. Bats don’t see very well. So they make sounds to help them find food.”

“Okay, that makes no sense at all,” George said.

“It makes a lot of sense,” Mr. G assured him. “In fact bats use their
best
sense when they use echolocation.”

“What’s a bat’s best sense?” Katie asked.

“Good question, Katie,” Mr. G said.

Katie smiled proudly. She knew Mr. G thought that asking good questions was really, really important. He said it was how kids learned.

“Bats have a very strong sense of hearing. It’s more powerful than their eyesight,” Mr. G told the class. “So when bats are looking for food, they send out sound waves using their mouth or nose. When the sound hits an object, an echo comes back. The bat can tell what kind of object it is by the sound of the echo. They can even tell the size, shape, and texture of a tiny insect!”

“So in the game the person who is the bat has to send out a sound?” Andy asked.

“Exactly,” Mr. G agreed. “And all the mosquitoes have to send back the same sound. They
echo
the bat. Then the bat moves in the direction of the sounds. The
echoes
tell him the
location
of the mosquitoes. Echolocation.”

“Cool!” George said. “Can I be the bat first?”

“Sure,” Mr. G said. “Come on up and put the blindfold on.”

A minute later, the blindfolded George-the-bat was running, searching for the mosquitoes.

“
Blurp
,” George shouted out.

“
Blurp
,” the kids echoed back.

“
Gleep
,” George called out.

“
Gleep
,” the kids echoed back again.

Katie giggled as she watched George trying to catch some “mosquitoes.” His arms were flailing all around as he tried to catch his friends.

“
Shloop!
” George-the-bat screamed.

Katie laughed even harder. She doubted real bats made such goofy noises. But George’s silly sounds were making the game even more fun.

“
Shloop!
” Katie-the-mosquito yelled back happily.

Katie would
not
have been happy if the magic wind had come and switcherooed her into a real mosquito. She didn’t think stinging people would be much fun. And getting squooshed? Horrible.

But the magic wind was nowhere near her. And Katie wasn’t a real mosquito. She was just a
pretend
mosquito.

“
Veloorp,
” George called.

“
Veloorp!
” Katie echoed back at the top of her lungs.

“I hear Katie Kazoo!” George shouted. He started running toward the sound of her voice.

“I hear Katie Kazoo!” Katie shouted back to him.

Then she ducked down so George missed grabbing her. She didn’t want a bat—even a make-believe bat like George—to catch her today!