Skunked! Read Online Free PDF

the corner.
    â€œOh no,” said Travis, but a second later Winky got up and shook himself. He didn’t look hurt, but he didn’t look happy, either. He raised his tail.
    Uh-oh.
    He stamped his tiny feet.
    Oh no.
    Miss Harbottle backed away, but just then Stinky emerged from under the desk, trapping her between them.
    I called out, “Try to stay calm, Miss Harbottle.”
    Travis begged again, “Please don’t rile them.” He crept forward with his satchel. “If you’ll just stay calm, I think I can get them.”
    She looked at him as if he were crazy. “Stay back! They’re wild.”
    â€œActually,” he said, “they’re—”
    â€œYes, Travis,” I shouted, “they’re wild. Can’t you see how wild they are?”
    Travis crept closer. Stinky advanced on Miss Harbottle. She took a swing at him and missed. He stamped his feet. But Winky beat him to it, letting loose a poof of mist from his hind end that settled on the floor and the blackboard.
    â€œNoooo,” shrieked Miss Harbottle.
    Stinky turned his back to her and raised his tail. He was only four feet away. It would be a direct hit. Except that at the very second he fired, Travis launched himself through the air like a flying human shield, saving our teacher from the spray.
    Coughing and gagging, we stumbled to the door and pitched down the steps into the fresh air. Travis reeked to high heaven. His streaming eyes were bright red. The other children backed away from him as fast as they could, which was just as well, since he then did the only thing he could possibly do to make things worse. He bent over and put his hands on his knees and threw up his breakfast.
    Stinky and Winky scampered away in the confusion and were never seen again.
    *   *   *
    Mother ended up burning Travis’s shirt. And for a while he had to eat his meal on the back porch with no company except for the dog Ajax.
    Thus ended the episode of the “wild” skunk invasion of the Fentress School. Travis, who was entirely at fault for the whole thing, ended up a total disgrace in my eyes but a hero to our teacher and all our classmates. You see, because the classroom smelled so horrible, the school had to be closed and we were let out early for summer vacation.
    If anyone had asked me, I could have told them that swabbing down the floor and blackboard with a mixture of five parts hydrogen peroxide, five parts baking soda, and one part soap would have fixed things well enough so that we could have held classes for that last week.
    But no one asked me.
    And I didn’t bother to tell.

 
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    Text copyright © 2016 by Jacqueline Kelly
    Illustrations copyright © 2016 by Jennifer L. Meyer
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    First edition—2016
    eISBN 9781627798693
    First eBook edition: August 2016