Free Ms. Krup Cracks Me Up! by Dan Gutman Page B

boys.
    â€œIt’s already dead, Arlo!” said Andrea, rolling her eyes. “ Tyrannosaurus rex has been extinct for sixty million years.”
    â€œYour face stinks.”
    I bet Ms. Krup was yanking our chain about that missing T. rex . Dead stuff can’t run away. She was just trying to make the boring museum seem interesting.
    â€œFollow me!” she said.

5
The Scary, Dead Zombie Buffalo
    Ms. Krup took a bunch of flashlights out of a box and gave one to each of us. Then we went off to search for the missing T. rex . Everybody was whispering and slinking around like secret agents. It was cool. Me and the guys pointed our flashlights up from our chins and made scary facesat the girls.
    â€œThe first floor of the museum is where we keep most of our dioramas,” said Ms. Krup.
    â€œI had diorama once,” I told her. “My mom gave me some yucky pink medicine and it went away.”
    â€œThat’s ‘diarrhea,’ dumbhead!” Andrea said. “You had diarrhea.”
    â€œSo does your face,” I said.
    Those diorama things were cool. Each one was a little room with animal statues and scenery behind glass. We saw pandas, gorillas, monkeys, beavers, reindeer, bighorn sheep, polar bears, and a moose.

    The sign next to the moose said it weighs a half a ton and eats 20,000 leaves a day. That thing should definitely go to Weight Watchers.
    But next to the moose was a buffalo, and it was even bigger . We pressed our noses against the glass so we could see it better.
    â€œIt looks so real,” Andrea said.

    â€œIt is real,” Ms. Krup told us. “These animals aren’t statues. They’re the real thing.”
    â€œThat means they’re… dead ?” asked Michael.
    â€œThat’s right,” said Ms. Krup.
    Just then I thought I heard scary music playing in the background. It was like a movie I saw once. Somebody said theword “dead” and scary music started playing.
    â€œI’m scared,” said Emily.
    â€œIf that thing was a zombie buffalo,” I whispered, “it could jump out at us. And then we’d become zombies, too.”
    â€œMy uncle lives in Buffalo,” said Neil the nude kid.
    â€œYour uncle lives in a buffalo?” I asked. “Why doesn’t he live in a house like a normal person?”
    â€œIt’s Buffalo, New York!” said Andrea.
    â€œI knew that,” I lied. It would be weird to live in a buffalo.
    â€œI know a song about buffaloes,” Emily said.
    â€œWould you like to sing it for us?” asked Ms. Krup.
    Emily nodded and began to sing:
    â€œOh give me a home
    Where the buffalo roam,
    Where the deer
    And the cantaloupe play….”
    Well, everybody just about died laughing. I slapped my head.
    â€œIt’s not ‘cantaloupe,’ dumbhead!” I told Emily. “It’s ‘ ante lope.’ Cantaloupes can’t play. They’re melons!”
    Emily started crying, of course. What a crybaby! I bet she would’ve run away, too,if there weren’t scary dead animals all over the place.
    Ms. Krup made us tell Emily we were sorry.
    Next to the buffalo was another diorama with some skunks and an opossum in it.
    â€œThese are nocturnal animals,” Ms. Krup told us. “Does anybody know what ‘nocturnal’ means?”
    Needless to say, Miss Smarty-Pants-Know-It-All was waving her hand in the air.
    â€œNocturnal animals sleep during the day and come out at night,” Andrea said, all proud of herself.
    Why doesn’t a nocturnal animal fall onher head? I hate her.
    â€œThat’s right, Andrea!” said Ms. Krup. “Some people claim that our nocturnal friends walk around the museum in the middle of the night.”
    â€œThat’s scary!” Emily said.
    It is not. That girl thinks everything is scary.
    Ms. Krup showed us the rest of the dioramas on the first floor. But we never found the missing T. rex