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Authors: Betty G. Birney

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BOOK: Summer According to Humphrey

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When you’re a small creature who can’t see out of the car windows, you learn to listen for clues. Here’s what I heard as the car slowed down:

• A crunching sound beneath the wheels, which meant we weren’t on a paved road anymore

• More and more bumps

• Birds chirping

• Buzzy sounds

Here’s what I didn’t hear:

• Other cars whizzing by

• City noises

• People

Then I heard Ms. Mac say, “Oh, wow.”

The car stopped. She opened the door and told Og and me that she’d be right back.

The windows were open and a nice breeze drifted in. I didn’t smell chalk and erasers and markers and paper bag lunches, like I had in Room 26. I smelled grass and trees and things I couldn’t even name.

“Can you see anything, Og?” I asked my friend.

No answer. Maybe the car ride had upset his tummy. He looked a little greener than usual.

I tried to concentrate on the sounds of the birds singing and the buzzy things. Then I heard other noises, too.

SKITTER-SKITTER-SKITTER.

SCRITCH-SCRITCH-SCRITCH.

That sounded like small creatures scurrying about. I wondered if there were other hamsters around.

Then I heard footsteps. Not Ms. Mac’s footsteps, though. These were CLOMPITY-CLOMPITY-CLOMP footsteps. Ms. Mac would never clompity-clomp.

Suddenly, a man’s big red face with bright red hair under a red and white baseball cap popped right in through the open door!

“Well, who do we have here?” Goodness, his voice was almost as loud as Lower-Your-Voice-A.J.’s.

“I’m Humphrey!” I squeaked back. “Who are you?”

“Yoo-hoo!” Ms. Mac was calling in the distance.

The man’s face disappeared. “Hello!” his voice boomed out again.

“Hi, Mr. Holloway!” I heard Ms. Mac say. “I was just up at the office looking for you. I’m Morgan Mc-Namara.”

Oops! I’d almost forgotten that Ms. Mac had a longer name.

“I remember from your interview. Call me Hap,” the man replied. “And welcome to Happy Hollow.”

“Did you hear that, Og? We’re in a place called Happy Hollow!” I squeaked to my friend. “That’s a nice name. It must be a nice place.”

“BOING!” Og replied.

Then I heard Hap Holloway say, “I see you brought your friends along.”

“Yes, the hamster and the frog, as we discussed,” Ms. Mac answered.

“That’s us!” I told Og.

“Great! Why don’t you get unpacked and then come on up and we’ll get organized. You’ll be in Robins’ Nest tonight. Just up the hill on the right. It’s all clean and aired out.”

Ms. Mac hopped back in the car and drove up the hill. I was unsqueakably excited. Were we really sleeping in a birds’ nest? Would it be up in a tree? Would the robins actually be there? And would a small furry hamster be welcome?

Room 26 suddenly seemed FAR-FAR-FAR away.

NOTE TO SELF:
No matter what you think humans have planned, they’ll always surprise you (like it or not).

Camp Happy Hollow

I
wasn’t too disappointed to discover that Robins’ Nest was not a nest at all. It was a little wooden house surrounded by trees and grass and more trees and more grass.

“Here’s our cabin,” Ms. Mac said as she gently lifted my cage out of the car.

“Looks nice!” I said.

My, the air smelled fresh, and I smelled something I’d never smelled before. It was the scent of something
wild.

Outside, the cabin looked like a normal house with a covered porch. Inside, it was a room with four beds—actually, eight beds stacked on top of each other in pairs. Ms. Mac called them bunk beds.

Everything was made of bare wood, except for the red plaid curtains on the windows and the white sheets on the beds. “Enjoy the quiet,” Ms. Mac said after she had Og and me settled on a table by the window (she’s thoughtful that way) and had given us both fresh water. “It won’t last long.”

Ms. Mac cleaned up and left us alone.

There we were: one frog, one hamster, one bare wood cabin. No desks, no ringing bells, no shouting children. I missed them all: Kirk’s corny jokes, Seth and his sports scores, Aldo’s sweeping, Mrs. Brisbane’s stories. I was even starting to miss Mrs. Wright. (But
not
her whistle.)

“What do you think of this place?” I asked Og.

Og splashed around in the water but said nothing.

I hopped on my wheel and began to spin. There was really nothing else to do. I tried looking out the window, but it was unsqueakably frustrating. All I could see was green wherever I looked. Green tree branches when I looked up. Green grass when I looked down. Green bushes straight ahead.

Finally, I couldn’t stand it any longer. “There must be something else to see,” I told Og.

He splashed agreeably. So I jiggled the lock-that-doesn’t-lock and the door swung open. I knew it would be difficult (and dangerous) to get down to the floor and outside. So for the first time ever, I climbed up the
outside
of my cage to get a little higher.

I guess I surprised Og with this new behavior, because he let out an alarmingly loud “BOING!”

Standing on top of my cage, I could look above some of the bushes blocking my view and see a teeny-tiny bit more. There were several other cabins in sight—all of them just like the one I was in.

And there were many paths that crisscrossed through the grass.

Mostly, though, there were trees. And more trees.

I was pretty sure there had to be more out there than trees. I knew there were birds, because I could hear them singing. (Thank goodness Ms. Mac left the windows open.)

Then I heard people singing, way off in the distance. I’m pretty sure I heard bongo drums playing, too.

Ms. Mac came in at night, but she went right to bed and got up very early in the morning. She did this a few days in a row. Eight beds. One human. Nothing much to do.

Sometimes I would hear SKITTER-SKITTER-SKITTER and SCRITCH-SCRITCH-SCRITCH.

“Who’s making that noise?” I asked Og one day when my curiosity got the best of me. “Is it inside or outside?”

“BOING-BOING!” said Og, leaping around his tank.

“I should probably check it out,” I said, but I was almost wishing Og would talk me out of it.

Skittering or scritching could be made by a number of different creatures and some of them might not be too friendly. Still, I am a very curious hamster. Perhaps just a peek would ease my mind.

With a lump in my throat, I jiggled the lock-that-doesn’t-lock. I was about to swing the door open when I heard footsteps approaching. I pulled the door back just as Ms. Mac came into the cabin. She was wearing shorts and a shirt that had the words Camp Happy Hollow printed on the front.

“You must think I abandoned you,” she said.

The thought had crossed my mind, especially when I heard that skittering sound, but I was too polite to mention it. But I was glad to have a reason to stay in my cage.

“I’ve been in training,” she said. “Things are about to start popping.”

My mind raced, thinking about what kinds of things popped. Popcorn did and sometimes balloons, which are a little scary for a small furry creature.

Ms. Mac lifted my cage ever so gently.

“I need to get you guys up to the hall to meet the rest of the crew,” she said. “I think you already know a couple of them.”

I was relieved to get out of the quiet cabin. Ms. Mac carried first me, then Og down a winding path. We passed other cabins like the Robins’ Nest, then entered a much bigger wooden building with an even bigger porch and a big sign that said HAPPY HOLLOW HALL.

Inside was an unsqueakably big dining room with long tables and benches. There was even a stage up front with heavy curtains on either side of it. We went through the dining hall, past the kitchen and into a large room behind it.

Ms. Mac put Og and me on a table in front of huge windows that looked out on even more trees and grass.

“Sorry you’ve been cooped up in that lonely cabin.” Sometimes Ms. Mac seemed to read my mind. “You’ll like it better here in the rec room. And you’ll be busy from now on.”

“Doing what?” I squeaked. But she had moved to the door, where she was talking to someone.

“Busy doing
what,
Og?” I asked my neighbor. He wasn’t paying attention. He was enjoying the waves in his tank created by our move. They made me feel a little seasick.

I looked around the wreck room. It didn’t look like a wreck at all. There were couches and tables and chairs and a fireplace and bookshelves and cabinets—oh, it was a cozy place.

“Meet our first campers,” Ms. Mac told whoever was at the door.

I scampered up the tree branch in my cage to see who was coming in. And I almost fell right off again when I saw—well, I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was Aldo! He was wearing shorts and a shirt with Camp Happy Hollow written on it just like Ms. Mac.

“Never fear ’cause Aldo’s here,” he said as he rushed over to see Og and me.

“Aldo! What are you doing here?” I squeaked in disbelief.

“I told you I was leaving town,” he said. “I didn’t tell you I was coming here to be a counselor. And guess who else is here?” He turned and gestured toward the doorway. “Come here, honey!”

Suddenly, Aldo’s wife, Maria, was standing in front of me, smiling happily.

“Maria’s taking a break from the bakery to cook here for the summer,” Aldo said. Maria worked nights in a bakery while Aldo worked nights at Longfellow School. And I’m happy to say, I helped them get together in the first place.

“It will be the best camp food ever,” Aldo assured us. “You guys are lucky this recreation room is so close to the kitchen.”

Oh, so the “wreck” room was really a “rec” room! A place for games and fun.

“And I’m lucky that Humphrey and Og are close to me,” Maria said with a twinkle in her eye. “I have to do something with the extra fruits and veggies.” Yum. I do love fruits and veggies. Og, on the other paw, likes ickier things, like crickets.

More people came in. Ms. Mac called them counselors. Some were grown-ups like Aldo. Some were college students, and there were junior counselors, who were high school age. Ms. Mac brought some of them over to meet me. It was hard to tell them apart because they all had on shorts and identical shirts.

One of the college students, a young woman with short blond hair called Katie, rushed over to see me. “Oh, Morgan, he’s so cute! He’s the cutest thing I’ve ever seen!”

I liked Katie a lot.

And there was Hap Holloway. He leaned down and put his big red face right next to my cage.

“Glad to have you aboard at my camp,” he said in his loud voice.

His
camp?

“Just try not to get eaten by a bear,” he added, roaring with laughter.

I didn’t dare tell him that wasn’t one bit funny. After all, it was
his
camp.

It was VERY-VERY-VERY noisy in the room with everyone laughing and talking.

Then suddenly, it got VERY-VERY-VERY quiet. The quiet was broken by footsteps, heading toward my cage.

“Do you think it’s a good idea to have
him
here?” a voice boomed.

The way the voice said “him” was very familiar.

I raced to the side of my cage to get a closer look. I knew it. It was Mrs. Wright, the physical education teacher who liked rules more than hamsters. (Let’s face it, she
loved
rules and she didn’t like hamsters at all. I don’t think she was very fond of frogs, either.)

“The kids will love them,” Ms. Mac said. I was proud of how brave she was, standing up to Mrs. Wright.

I braced myself, waiting for Mrs. Wright to blow her loud whistle. But she didn’t.

“There are health issues.
Allergies.
Disease,” she said.

BOOK: Summer According to Humphrey

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