On the Dog (6 page)

Don’t miss Andrew’s next hair-raising
adventure, when Andrew, Judy, and Thudd
are lost…

IN THE BATHROOM!

In stores July 23, 2002.

Thudd knows a lot, and what Thudd says is true! Thudd wanted to say more about what happened on the dog, but Judy gave him that “not one more word” look. Here are some things he wanted to tell you:

• Dogs can find someone buried under snow because they can “smell” heat!
  

• Dogs can follow a person’s trail after many hours or days. That’s because wherever we go, we leave behind a trail of skin flakes, which dogs can smell. These skin flakes are falling off us all the time, like an invisible blizzard!
  

• A dog can smell your fingerprint on glass you touched three weeks ago. A dog can sniff a swimming pool and tell if you’ve taken a dip. If you want to find out why dog noses are so powerful, visit Andrew’s Web site at
  www.AndrewLost.com
  .
  

• When humans are scared or happy or sick, we smell just a little bit different. These different smells are a language that dogs understand.
  

• Our noses understand the language of smells, too! “Pizza. Delicious! Dog poop. Don’t eat!”
  

• Dogs’ noses sweat! That’s why dogs’ noses are wet! The only other parts of a dog that sweat are its feet.
  

• The only colors dogs can see are yellow, blue, and gray. When a human sees a red ball, a dog sees a yellow ball. Grass that looks green to us looks gray to a dog! But for dogs
  and
  humans, the sky is blue!
  

• Fleas hatch from eggs. When a flea hatches, it is a tiny, worm-like creature called a larva. The larva lives by eating dirt and skin flakes.
  

• After a few days, the flea larva spins itself into a cocoon. Inside the cocoon, its wormlike body changes into an insect body.
  

• A flea must drink blood as soon as it comes out of its cocoon. So it won’t come out until it knows an animal is nearby.
  

• Inside its cocoon, the flea can’t see anything. But it can feel a lot. It can feel an animal moving nearby. It can feel the heat from an animal’s body. It can even tell if an animal is breathing close by. Then the flea pops out of its cocoon and leaps aboard its meal.
  

• A flea can wait inside its cocoon for a year!
  

• All insects wear their skeletons on the outside. The skeletons of fleas are very hard, like little shells.
  

• Insects don’t have noses. They breathe
  through holes in their skeletons. They smell things with their antennae!
  

• The longest insect on Earth is about twice as long as this book and looks like a twig. The heaviest insect weighs about as much as a hamburger!
  

• There are many different kinds of fleas. There are dog fleas and cat fleas and bird fleas and human fleas. Each kind of flea would rather bite its own animal. But if a flea needs a meal and its favorite animal isn’t around, it will bite other animals.
  

• Most fleas have very narrow bodies, so they can slip easily between hairs and feathers.
  

• There are special mites that live on fleas and bite
  them!
  

  You can find out more about fleas and dogs—and many
  other
  things!—at
  www.AndrewLost.com
  .
  

There’s nothing weirder than what lives in your house—and on you! See it all in these two books:

• MicroAliens: Dazzling Journeys with an Electron Microscope
  by Howard Tomb and Dennis Kunkel (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1993)
  

• Hidden Worlds: Looking Through a Scientist’s Microscope
  by Stephen Kramer, with photo graphs by Dennis Kunkel (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001)
  

  If you want to find out more about bugs and
  see some incredible pictures, look into these books:
  

• Micro Monsters
  by Christopher Maynard (New York: DK Publishing, Inc., 1999)
  

• Megabugs
  by Miranda MacQuitty with Laurence Mound (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1995)
  

• You can learn a lot about bugs from this book—and it’s funny, too!
  

• Ugly Bugs
  by Nick Arnold (New York: Scholastic Inc., 1996)
  

  Do you want to know what your dog is saying to you and be able to talk back? Find this book!
  

• How to Talk to Your Dog
  by Jean Craighead George (New York: HarperCollins Juvenile Books, 2000)
  

  You’ll find many more books—and Web sites and games!—at
  AndrewLost.com
  .
  

Turn the page
for a sneak peek at
Andrew, Judy, and Thudd’s
next adventure—

ANDREW LOST
IN THE BATHROOM!

Available July 23, 2002.

“Are we going to get out of this alive?” yelled Judy Dubble.

“Sure!” her cousin Andrew yelled back. But he was thinking,
If we get out of this alive, I’ll never, ever do anything like this again, ever!

Thanks to an accident with his newest invention, the Atom Sucker, Andrew Dubble was smaller than a flea’s knee. And so were Andrew’s cousin, Judy, and his robot buddy, Thudd. Now they all were dangling from a hair of a dog’s floppy ear.

Ahwoooo!

The dog, Harley, was standing in the big white bathtub. Harley’s owner, Mrs. Scuttle, was about to give him a bath! Water thundered out of the faucet. Hot steam curled into the air. Mrs. Scuttle’s face was a huge grumpy storm cloud above the tub.

Andrew thought about the two things that might save them. One was a cube of Umbubble in his back pocket. The other was the helicopter that had gotten shrunk, too. Andrew and Judy had been searching for it in the endless furry forest of dog hair. They hadn’t found it yet.

Mrs. Scuttle wrapped her giant squidy fingers around Harley’s collar.

“Get over here, mister!” she yelled. She yanked Harley to the front of the tub.

Woof!

Harley shook his head. His long brown ear flapped toward the roaring faucet.

meep …
“Hang tight!” squeaked Thudd
from one of Andrew’s shirt pockets.

Harley’s ear hit the spray. Water drops sloshed over Andrew and Judy.

Andrew coughed and blew water out of his nose.

Thudd pinched his way up Andrew’s shirt.

meep …
“Oody okey-dokey?” Thudd squeaked as loudly as he could.

Judy pulled a strand of frizzy brown hair away from her eyes. “I’m smaller than the eye of a fly and hanging on to a soggy dog hair!” she yelled down. “What do you think?”

“I’m really sorry about this,” Andrew called up to Judy. “I just wanted to write a great report on ants!”

“Dirty dirty dog!” said Mrs. Scuttle, high above them. “This is what you get for rolling in garbage!”

A shower of pink dust rained down past Harley’s ear. Andrew looked up to see it was
pouring from a jar in Mrs. Scuttle’s hand. The label on the jar read “htaB elbbuB.”

Whoops!
thought Andrew.
I’m reading it upside down!

“Bubble bath!” he said.

“Ahhhh …
chooof!
” Judy sneezed. I’m
allergic
to bubble bath!”

Bubble bath dusted Harley’s head like pink snow. Harley shook his head. His ear flapped out like a furry magic carpet!

“Andrew!” screamed Judy. “I see something shiny inside Harley’s ear! I think it’s the helicopter!”

WHAPPPP!
The ear smacked into the tub!

“Yaaarghhh!”
Andrew screamed as he lost his grip on the dog hair. With one hand he pushed Thudd into his shirt pocket. With the other, he reached for the little cube of Umbubble in his back pocket.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

J
UDITH C.
G
REENBURG
has edited and co-written many science books for young people. She is a frequent visitor to schools and is always interested in what kids want to know. She is also interested in all areas of biology—the stranger, the better! Recently, Judith has been learning how to care for tigers, including how to feed four-week-old Donya and how to help her learn to swim. Judith is married to Dan Greenburg, author of the popular series The Zack Files and Maximum Boy.