Mouse Noses on Toast Read Online Free PDF

will learn from mine.”
    “Then learn from this one,” Graham said, “and cancel the campaign.”
    Larry was dumbstruck. “Cancel the campaign? Graham, do you realize what happened up there? We emptied the restaurant. Some of those customers will never return. A few more demonstrations like that and mouse noses on toast will be taken off the menu, for good.”
    “If you think we’re going back up there,” Paul said, “you’re crazy.”
    Larry was pacing the room, stepping over his exhausted friends. “Losers. That’s what you lot are. Losers.”
    “I’m a loser all right,” Paul said. “A loser with a blue bottom, and bruises all the way up his tail.”
    “At least you still have your nose,” Larry said. “Unlike thousands of other mouses standing noseless in some nose-removal factory.”
    Larry paused for effect, then continued.
    “Noses in boxes, noses in the back of a truck, noses on toast. Noses gurgling about in a horrible human tummy. It’s enough to make you sick.”
    No one said anything to this. What could they say? Larry was right, and only a mouse with an apple pip for aheart could hear his words and not feel moved.
    Larry leaned against the wall, scratching his ears in thought. “What we need now,” he said, “is Direct Action. We strike, and we strike hard.”
    “How do you mean?” Paul said, standing up.
    “If they want noses, we give them noses. More noses than they can stomach!”

THE MOST PATIENT DOG IN THE WORLD
    T HEY HAD THE NOSES, A HUGE BOXFUL. T HE PROBLEM was how to transport them to the room above the dining area without being seen.
    “We set up a system of pulleys,” one of the mouses suggested. “Out the storeroom window, up and in.”
    “Too complicated,” Larry said.
    “I could carry them up,” Graham said, flexing his muscles.
    “Too heavy,” Larry said.
    “We throw them up the stairs one at a time,” one of the twins suggested.
    “Too tiring,” Larry said.
    “We eat them,” the other twin said, “scamper up the stairs and be sick.”
    “Too disgusting,” Larry said.
    The youngest of the mouses, a tiny, squeaky mouse named Inch, thought they should use magic.
    “Too impossible,” Larry said.
    “We tie the whiskers together to form a mouse-nose snake,” Paul said, “and drag them up.”
    “Too stupid,” Larry said.
    “We build a time machine,” said a mouse who had watched too much Cheddar Television, “and travel to a time in the future when the problem has been solved.”
    “Too idiotic,” Larry said.
    It was Sandra who came up with the best idea. “All we need to do,” she said cleverly, “is give the dog a bone. We buy Rowley Barker Hobbs a bone as a present, and he will carry the noses for us.”
    There was one problem. They didn’t have any money, and you can’t buy a bone without money, not even in a story.
    “Where is Rowley Barker Hobbs?” Larry asked.
    “Out on the sidewalk,” Paul replied.
    “He’s been waiting out there all this time?”
    Paul nodded. He knew Rowley Barker Hobbs like the back of his paw, and he knew that the shaggy sheepdog would never wander off without saying hello.
    “It seems to me,” Larry said, “that Rowley Barker Hobbs is the most patient dog in the world. I suggest we write him an IOU and buy the bone later.”
    “What’s an IOU?” squeaked Inch.
    “An IOU is a piece of paper that means I owe you something,” Larry explained. “The something is whatever is written on the piece of paper.”
    “Or drawn on the piece of paper,” Sandra said. “Rowley Barker Hobbs can’t read.”
    The next problem was how to lower the box of noses to the storeroom floor. They needed string, and they had none.
    It was Graham who solved this problem. He emptied the noses onto the shelf and sent the cardboard box sailing down to the dusty storeroom floor, just as Sandra had done with the wine bottle. They only hadto shove the noses off the shelf and they would land in the box with a soggy plop.
    While