Free Beetle Blast by Ali Sparkes Page A

away toward some interesting buttons near a collection of wildlife pictures. They made wildlife-y noises when he pressed them.
Ribbit
. “Toad,” said Danny. Chirrup. “Grasshopper,” said Danny. Zzzzzzz. “Bluebottle.”
    â€œSee,” said Josh. “You’re quite good at this stuff.”
    â€œOnly because…” said Danny, “… we’ve either been one of them or nearly been
eaten
by one of them.”
    â€œShhhh!” hissed Josh, looking around uneasily. “Don’t tell everyone!”
    â€œWhat? That our crazy next-door neighbor keeps turning us into creepy-crawlies?” said Danny, making no effort at all to be quiet. “Yeah, right. Everyone’s going to believe
that
!”
    Someone poked Danny hard in the ribs and said, “Shhhhh, you numbskull! You never know who might be listening! And I am not crazy. I am a genius!”
    Danny and Josh spun around, gaping with shock. There stood Petty Potts, the old lady from next door. She was wearing a tweedy hat and glasses, carrying a straw bag and smiling sweetly. You would never guess what she truly was. A brilliant scientist with a secret laboratory hidden beneath her garden shed! Earlier that year Josh and Danny had stumbled into it. She was in the middle of one of her astonishing experiments—to change things into creepy-crawlies.

    They had gotten caught up in a jet of her S.W.I.T.C.H. spray and shortly afterward morphed into spiders. That was a bit of a shock. It was a small miracle that they hadn’t been squashed flat, drowned, or eaten. And since then, despite trying really hard to steer clear of any further spraying, they had each been turned into a bluebottle, a grasshopper, an ant, and a crane fly. Thankfully, only temporarily.
    â€œWhat are
you
doing here?” spluttered Josh. “It’s a free country!” said Petty. “I’m allowed into my local wildlife center, aren’t I?”
    Danny eyed her bag nervously, looking for the telltale plastic spray bottle.
    â€œYou needn’t look so petrified, Danny!” she said. “I haven’t got any S.W.I.T.C.H. spray with me today.”
    Danny sighed with relief. It wasn’t so much the “being a creepy-crawly” he minded. More the “nearly being eaten” so very often. He’d also once spent more time than he wanted to remember hiding in a cat’s ear while he was a grasshopper. And he was haunted still by the things he’d eaten when he was a bluebottle.
    â€œNo,” said Petty, reaching into her bag and pulling out a small tin. “No spray today. This time it’s in pellet form. I want to S.W.I.T.C.H. a rat. I need to try out more mammals—other than you two. I’m going to hide the pellets in some food!” She leaned in toward them and whispered. “Don’t forget to keep looking out for the REPTOSWITCH cube! Only one more to find.” She looked edgily around her. “And never forget you might be being watched! Victor Crouch’s people are everywhere!” And she strode off, before Danny or Josh could say anything else.
    Josh shrugged. “Well, at least there’s no chance we’ll get fooled by
pellets
,” he said. “Let’s just pretend we don’t know her.”
    â€œShe’s never going to let up about that blinkin’ cube, is she?” muttered Danny. “We’ve found four of them, and she already had one. You’d think she’d be happy with that!”
    â€œYes—but without the
last
cube, she can’t figure out the REPTOSWITCH code, can she?” said Josh. “And without the code she’ll never be able to make the spray. And we’ll never get a chance to be alligators or snakes.”
    Josh and Danny looked at each other and bit their identical lips. Most of their adventures as creepy-crawlies had been terrifying. But they’d also been exciting and, at times, quite