Free Stampede of the Supermarket Slugs by Bill Doyle Page B

laughed. “I promise no World’s Greatest Plans for today, all right?”
    Keats groaned. “I’ve heard that before.”
    “This time I mean it, I swear.” Henry drew an X across his heart with a finger. “Let’s just catch the slug and get back to the picnic.”
    They decided to split up to search the store. Henry headed off to hunt through the meat department, snack aisle, and cleaning products. Meanwhile, Keats checked produce, frozen foods, and the bread aisle. But he found no sign of the slug among the bananas, ice cream, or bagels.
    Keats was digging through loaves of bread when he heard a clattering sound. Henry flewaround the corner on the back of a shopping cart.

    “Whoa, Thunder!” Henry said. He came to a halt and stepped off the cart.
    “Thunder?” Keats asked, trying to hide his smile.
    “What?” Henry grinned back. “You call your bike Roget after the thesaurus guy. Why can’t I name a shopping cart?”
    Keats laughed, and then glanced at his watch. They’d already been in the store fortwenty minutes. “If we don’t hurry, we’ll miss the whole picnic. And the fireworks!” he said. “We need to be smarter about hunting the slug.…” He snapped his fingers. “I got it!”
    Keats pulled Henry over to one of the checkout lanes. He ducked behind the counter and pushed aside a few grocery bags on the shelf. Behind them, he saw what he was searching for—a stack of coupon books.
    “Mom brought one of these home yesterday,” Keats said, grabbing a book off the top of the pile. “A map of the store is on the back. We can use it to check—”
    “ATTENTION, ALL SLUGS!”
    The words made Keats jump. Henry had picked up a microphone for the sound system and was yelling into it. His voice boomed out of speakers around the store.
    “Attention, all slugs!” he repeated. “Supersavings specials on slug snacks await you in aisle eight!” He took a breath. “And now I’d like to entertain you with a song—”
    Keats lunged for the microphone. He clicked it off before Henry could start singing.
    “Henry, this is serious,” Keats said. “Our moms will lose their jobs. We need to find that slug before—”
    “No problem, cuz,” Henry said, gazing over Keats’s shoulder. “Done deal.”
    “Ha,” Keats said.
    Henry pointed behind Keats. “No, really. Look.”
    Keats turned around. His jaw dropped. The slug was wriggling down aisle eight toward them … as if it had heard Henry.
    “Holy moly,” Keats said.
    In many ways, the slug looked like the ones in his dad’s vegetable garden. Its slimy bodywas shiny yellow with bright orange speckles. Red eyes waved on the ends of two stalks on its head. And as it crawled along, a thick trail of gray slime oozed behind it.
    But in one major way, this slug was nothing like other slugs.
    “Oh man!” Henry shouted. “That thing is huge!”
    The slug was the length of Keats’s arm and looked like it weighed at least twenty pounds.
    “This can’t be real,” Keats said. He rubbed his eyes. But the creature was still there.
    Keats tucked the store map in his back pocket as the cousins slowly approached the giant slug. Henry crouched down next to it.
    “Careful!” Keats warned. “It might be dangerous!”
    “Don’t be a chicken,” Henry said. “It’s just a big bug.”

    “A slug’s not really a bug,” Keats couldn’t resist saying. “It’s a gastropod. Kind of a snail without a shell.”
    “Yeah, yeah,” Henry said, not really listening. He grabbed the middle of the slug and picked it up.
    The slug’s eyes squinted shut. With a
phlurrrrth
, slime squirted out of its skin.
    “Yuck!” Henry cried. He dropped the slug. Keats jumped back as its jiggly body bouncedagainst the floor. The slug’s eyestalks waved in opposite directions. Then it turned around and started back down the aisle.
    Henry snatched a dish towel from a display rack and wiped the slime off his hands. “Ugh,” he said with a wrinkled nose. “I feel like a