“Jeepers creepers!” he whispered as he checked out the scene on the ground.

  Shiny beetles twice as big as Andrew were hurrying about on thorny legs like bizarre armored vehicles. Some of them were burrowing into underground tunnels.

  A giant-headed black ant was hauling a dead bug on its back. A dozen tiny red ants had circled a green Froot Loop and were carrying it away.

  “It’s like the dismissal bell rang in bug world!” said Andrew.

  Beneath the beetles, the ground was a squirming carpet of wormy things big and small. Beside Andrew’s doughnut, a heap of little white worms wriggled over a fish head.

  meep … “Baby blowflies,” said Thudd. “Mother blowfly lay eggs on dead meat. Egg hatch into maggot. Maggot look like worm. Maggot never eat living stuff. Only eat dead meat.”

  “HELP!” Judy was screaming.

  “I’m coming!” yelled Andrew.

  As he was about to climb down the doughnut, he turned back and grabbed the peanut shell.

  “We might need this,” he said, tossing it onto the ground. It landed on the maggots.

  When Andrew reached the ground, he dragged the peanut shell away from the maggots. Some of them stuck to the shell. He pushed them off.

  “These guys feel like a squishy toy,” he said.

  Andrew balanced the peanut shell on his back the way he would carry a canoe. He chuckled. “I’ll bet I look like some kind of weird beetle.”

  meep … “Peanut beetle,” said Thudd.

  Andrew tried not to step on worms, bump into bugs, or fall into beetle holes as he clomped toward Judy’s screams.

  As he hiked past the mouth of a ketchup bottle, he spotted Judy. She was skidding and sliding over a slice of moldy meat.

  A rough brown ball, two times as high as Judy, was rolling behind her. A beetle was behind the ball, pushing it. The strange beetle ball was about to run Judy over!

  meep … “Dung beetle!” squeaked Thudd.

  “Huh?” said Andrew, scrambling toward Judy.

  meep … “Dung is poop,” said Thudd. “Dung beetles live on poop.

  “Male dung beetle find poop. Give it to female dung beetle. Female dung beetle roll poop into big ball. Roll ball into tunnel. Lay egg in poop ball.

  “Egg hatch into little wormy thing. Worm called larva. Larva eat poop. Grow up. Become big, strong dung beetle.”

  A silver trail glistened just ahead of Andrew. He was about to cross it when Thudd squeaked, “Noop! Noop! Noop!”

  “What’s the matter, Thudd?” asked Andrew.

  meep … “Shiny stuff is slime,” said Thudd. “Slime from giant banana slug. Sticky, sticky, sticky! Like glue! Drewd step, Drewd stuck.”

  “Hmmm …,” said Andrew. He looked around, found a leaf, laid it across the slime trail, and hurried toward Judy.

  Just as Andrew got to Judy, she slipped on the slimy slice of meat. The poop ball was touching her toes!

  In a split second, Andrew grabbed his peanut shell and used it to give Judy a big shove.

  Andrew held his breath.

  The globe of poop rolled past. An un-squashed Judy was lying next to a plastic spoon.

  “Super-duper pooper-scooper!” cheered Andrew.

  “That stupid dung beetle almost ran me over with its stupid poop ball!” said Judy, sitting up on the edge of the spoon.

  “You know about dung beetles?” said Andrew.

  “Of course,” said Judy. “Grandpa gave me tons of great stuff from his beetle collection. I know everything about beetles.”

  Judy tried to scrape meat slime off her jacket. “Yeuw!” she said. “Now I smell even worse.”

  meep … “Good thing about bad smell,” said Thudd. “In little while, nose not smell bad smell so much. Nose stop sending signal to brain.”

  “Stuff a stinky sock in it, Thudd,” said Judy, scanning the ground.

  She snatched a bread crumb away from three small red ants and wiped meat goo off her face.

  Amid the noise of birds and bugs, Andrew thought he heard a rustling sound. He turned to see something long and narrow speeding toward them. It was going so fast it was almost a blur!

  THE CANNIBALS ARE COMING!

  “Eeek!” squeaked Thudd. “Centipede! Centipede is meat-eater. Drewd and Oody gotta hide! Flip spoon!”

  Judy leapt off the spoon. She and Andrew flipped it over and hid under the bowl. They peered out from under the edge. The centipede’s long antennas were wagging. Fang-like claws under its mouth opened like scissors. Its spiky legs moved as smoothly as a wave.

  “Look!” said Andrew. “There’s another one chasing it!”

  meep … “Centipede is cannibal,” said Thudd. “Try to eat other centipede.”

  Suddenly legs started falling off the first centipede. And those legs kept moving all by themselves!

  “Wowzers schnauzers!” said Andrew. “Legs on the loose!”

  meep … “When centipede chased by predator, centipede toss legs,” said Thudd. “Try to confuse predator. Can grow legs back.”

  The second centipede came so close to the spoon that Andrew saw the sharp claws at the tips of its legs. The centipede’s last long legs whipped by—and knocked the spoon off Andrew and Judy. Both centipedes disappeared behind a watermelon rind.

  “Wowzers schnauzers!” sighed Andrew. “I’m glad that’s over!”

  “Okay, Bug-Brain,” said Judy. “The sun is going down. We’ve got to get out of this dump before dark. That’s when really awful things come out—skunks, foxes, even bats! Eeeeuw!” Judy shivered.

  “We have to find a high place,” said Andrew, looking around. “If we can see Hugo’s building, then we can figure out how to get there.”

  The craggy ground around them was buzzing with flies. There was a teacup, watermelon rinds, a broken eggbeater, and a birthday card smeared with mustard.

  “I can climb the—” Andrew began, when suddenly he felt the ground below him coming up!

  TIME TO CRY WOLF!

  A round trapdoor beneath Andrew and Judy was pushing up! From under the door crept five long, hairy legs.

  “Uh-oh,” groaned Andrew.

  “Eeeeeeyaaaaaaah!” hollered Judy, hands clapped over her mouth.

  “Eeek! Wolf spider!” squeaked Thudd.

  “Let’s get out of here before we see the rest of it,” said Andrew.

  “With legs like that,” said Judy in a shaky voice, “it can run a lot faster than we can.”

  meep … “Got giant poison fangs!” squeaked Thudd. “Drewd and Oody gotta run across slug-slime trail. Remember, trail sticky, sticky, sticky! No touch! Use leaf to cross. When spider walk on slime trail, feet get stuck.”

  Andrew grabbed Judy’s arm. “Let’s go!” he said.

  Andrew and Judy picked and tripped their way through wormy strawberries, soft black potatoes, and moldy cheese chunks.

  Andrew heard soft shuffling behind them and turned to see.

  Not more than five inches behind them was a giant hairy head with two black eyes on top, two big eyes below them, and a row of four small eyes below those.

  Most horrible of all were the two huge, fuzzy orange fangs that hung almost to the ground.

  Andrew could barely breathe.

  Blocking the way ahead of them was a black and orange beetle.

  “Cheese Louise!” said Judy. “That’s a bombardier beetle!”

  Judy turned to see where the spider was. Two inches away!

  “We’ll never make it to the slime trail,” she gasped. “Time for plan B. Step away from the butt of the beetle.”

  Judy snatched up a cherry stem, whacked the beetle’s behind, and dove under a leaf.

  The beetle swiveled its rear end.

  Popetta! Popetta! Popetta!

  With loud pops, a cloud of blue smoke exploded from the beetle’s behind. A steaming spray that stunk worse than burning rubber shot into the air.

  “Ack!” gagged Andrew.

  “Gack! Gack! Gack!” coughed Judy.

  meep … “Bombardier beetle make boiling-hot stinky stuff!” said Thudd. “Shoot stinky stuff one thousand times every second!”

  Through burning, watery eyes, Andrew saw the spider stop. It reared up on its back legs! It looked like it was about to attack! But instead, it backed away, swiveled around, raced into its tunnel, and pulled its trapdoor shut.

  The bombardier beetle spread its wings and took off.

  “Whew!” said Judy, rubbing her eyes. “I’m sure glad Grandpa taught me about beetles.”

  “Don’t rub your eyes,” said Andrew. “They’ll just hurt more.”

  Judy kept on rubbing. “So let’s get back to getting out of the dump,” she said.

  Andrew pointed ahead.

  “That eggbeater there is the highest thing near us,” he said. “I’ll climb it. Maybe I can tell where we are.”

  Andrew crept up to one of the beaters and tried to climb up. But it was too smooth and slippery.

  “Hmmmm …,” he mumbled.

  Andrew walked back to the slug’s slime trail and scooped some slime up with his hands.

  “Wowzers!” he said. “This stuff is really sticky! It feels like rubber cement.”

  Andrew went back to the eggbeater and began climbing. His sticky hands made it easy. He quickly reached the top.

  “See anything?” Judy yelled up.

  “Nothing yet,” said Andrew, looking around. “Hey! I see a sign!”

  “Sign shmine,” said Judy. “Someone threw out a sign. So what?”

  “This sign says GARBOLOGISTS AT WORK!” said Andrew excitedly.

  meep … “Garbologist mean ‘someone who study garbage,’” said Thudd.

  “The sign is next to a big hole in the ground,” said Andrew.

  “Do you see people?” asked Judy.

  “Nope,” said Andrew. “Maybe they’re in the hole studying garbage. Let’s go see!”

  Andrew climbed down the eggbeater and led the way, trying to step on as few worms as possible.

  In a few minutes, they arrived at the sign.

  Andrew crept toward the edge of the hole.

  “YES!” he said. “There’s two heads down there!”

  A BIG BAT-TLE

  “Looks like a blond guy and a girl with long brown hair,” said Judy, peering into the hole. “They can get us out of here!”

  Andrew got down on all fours and leaned over the edge. Judy knelt next to him. “Looks like the guy is putting something into a plastic bag,” she said. “I can hear them talking.”

  “This is exciting!” the guy said.

  “What is it, Cody?” asked the girl.

  “A newspaper from July 20, l969,” said Cody. “Neil Armstrong Walks on the Moon.”

  “My gosh!” said the girl. “Imagine reading a newspaper from so long ago.”

  meep … “When paper get buried,” said Thudd, “take long time to get eaten by worms and stuff. Long time to turn into good dirt.

  “Plastic worse. Plastic last forever. Nothing eat plastic to make dirt.”

  Down in the hole, Cody was asking Hannah a question. “What’s the most interesting thing that you found, Hannah?” he said.

  Hannah held up a strange-looking container. “This whale-oil lamp,” she said. “It’s from about 1880. Imagine eating dinner or reading books by the light of burning whale fat.”

  Cody nodded. “Garbage dumps are history books,” he said. “You can tell a lot about the way people lived from the stuff they threw away.”

  “This place has been used as a dump for hundreds of years,” said Hannah. “If we had more time to dig, I’ll bet we’d find arrowheads and stone tools.”

  “We’ll never know,” said Cody. “They’ll begin to bulldoze the dump tomorrow. Then they’ll cover it with clean dirt and grass.”

  Hannah shook her head. “It’s hard to believe they’re turning the dump into a park!”

  “Cheese Louise!” said Judy. “We’re going to get bulldozed and buried!”

  “The new landfill will be cleaner than this dump,” Hannah was saying. “But it’s going to use up a tremendous amount of land. And they’re building it close to the school, too.”

  The sun was quickly sinking into a bright pink and orange glow.

  Cody looked up. “It’ll be dark soon,” he said. “Let’s pack our backpacks and get out of here.”

  Andrew looked Judy in the eye. “This is dangerous,” he said. “But we don’t have a choice. As Cody and Hannah come up the ladder, we jump onto one of their backpacks.”

  “What if we miss when we jump?” Judy asked. “We’ll be lost in that hole and never get out.”

  The racket of the day was changing into the noises of the night—quieter noises, spookier noises.

  “My hands are still super-sticky from the slug slime,” said Andrew. “I’ll stick to whatever I touch. Wrap your arms around my waist. We’ll jump together and I’ll grab on to Cody or Hannah when they come up.”

  It was getting dark. Colors were fading to black and white. Most of the seagulls were gone. But a flurry of small, dark shapes were darting and diving in the sky.

  meep … “Bats!”

  “Eeeuw!” Judy shuddered. “We’ll never make it through the night here.”

  “Okay,” said Andrew. “Jump when I say ‘Go.’”

  Cody climbed so quickly that he was out of the hole before they were ready.

  “Oh no!” said Judy.

  “We have one more chance,” said Andrew.

  Hannah was climbing up.

  Judy leaned over to get a better look.

  Andrew lost his balance, and they toppled into the hole!

  “Errrgh!” hollered Andrew as they tumbled down and down.

  “Aaaaaack!” screamed Judy.

  Booof!

  Andrew felt himself sinking into something as soft as a feather pillow but stringy.

  “We’ve landed in Hannah’s hair!” he said.

  Hannah stopped climbing. Her brown hair ruffled and separated into strands. Fingertips were rushing toward them!

  “Super-duper pooper-scooper!” yelled Andrew. “She feels us! She’ll find us! We’re saved! I can even get back in time to win the Young Inventors Contest!”

  Hannah’s slender fingers combed through her long, soft hair.

  “Oook! Bugs!” she said as Andrew got poked in the stomach by her pink fingernail.

  Andrew and Judy were caught between her fingers! They were getting swept away!

  “Help us, Hannah!” they screamed, but she couldn’t hear them.

  She flicked her fingers, flinging Andrew and Judy into the air.

  “Aaaaargh!” yelled Andrew.

  “Aaaaaaaaah!” yelled Judy.

  “Eeek!” squeaked Thudd.

  Everything was a blur to Andrew as he tumbled through the air. But he caught sight of a shadow diving toward him. The shadow had giant pointy ears and needle teeth.

  A bat! thought Andrew. To a bat, we’re bugs! Bats can eat their weight in bugs every night!

  Desperate to get away, Andrew flapped his arms and legs as though he were swimming.

  “Arghhhhhhhhh!” Andrew yelled as he whammed into something hard and furry. He grabbed on to the fur.

  When he saw the huge pointy ear blocking his view, Andrew knew he had landed on the back of a bat!

  The way the bat dove and spun, zigged and zagged, was crazier than any roller-coaster ride.

  “Eeeeeeeeeee!”

  The eerie cry came from the other side of the bat.

  It was Judy! She was hanging off the bat’s other ear!

  “Judy!” yelled Andrew. “At least we’re leaving the dump before dark!”

  TO BE CONTINUED IN ANDREW, JUDY, AND THUDD’S

  NEXT EXCITING ADVENTURE:

  ANDREW LOST

  WITH THE BATS!

  In stores July 2006

  TRUE STUFF

  Thudd wanted to tell you more about garbage, but he was awfully busy trying to keep Andrew and Judy from being eaten by centipedes and wolf spiders. Here’s what he wanted to say:

  A person who designs buildings is called an architect. An architect named Michael Reynolds designs buildings with outside walls made out of recycled tires filled with dirt. These thick walls keep the building warm in winter and cool in summer.

  If you stay in a stinky place, in a few minutes you won’t even notice the smell. The smell hasn’t gone away. Your brain just stops paying attention to the signals from your nose.

  Like us, worms need oxygen. But worms don’t breathe the way we do. Instead, oxygen from the air dissolves in the wet slime on their bodies. Then the oxygen passes through the worm’s skin into its body.

  We have something in common with worms. Our lungs must always be wet. When we breathe air into our lungs, the oxygen dissolves in the wetness and passes into our blood.

  If a worm loses its rear end, the head end can grow another rear end. But a worm’s rear end can’t grow another head.

  Using worms to turn paper and garbage into super-nutritious food for plants is called vermicomposting. The vermi part of the word means “worm.” Vermicomposting is easy and fun. You might want to try it. In “Where to Find More True Stuff,” you’ll find a book that tells you how to do it.

  Maggots—baby flies that look like small worms—are used to cure dangerous infections. When doctors put maggots on the wound, these wormy little guys munch on the infected skin and any other dead tissue. They clean the wound completely and leave the healthy tissue alone. And the maggots’ saliva kills deadly bacteria! Imagine— someday your life could be saved by maggots!

  Because young dung beetles hatch from what looks like a ball of lifeless dirt, ancient Egyptians thought dung beetles had the power to create life and even to bring life to the dead.

  One of the most powerful Egyptian gods was called Ra. He rolled the sun across the sky every day, and he could bring the dead back to life. Ancient Egyptian artists sometimes drew pictures of Ra in the shape of a dung beetle.

  Garbage gets slimy, smells stinky, and turns weird colors. These changes are caused by bacteria, funguses, and molds. These guys break garbage down and turn it back into molecules that living things can use for food. Without bacteria, funguses, and molds, the earth would be piled hundreds of miles high with garbage and dead things.

 

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