Daisy and the Trouble with Life (11 page)

But the
trouble with holding
snakes is, without telling you or anything, they can poo on you just like that.

That's what Shooter did to me. I'd only been holding him for about a minute. I was looking at his tongue going in and out when he suddenly started to wriggle.

I tried to stop him from wriggling, but Dylan said I must have squeezed him too hard. Anyway, he pooed all over my hands. That's when I dropped him.

The
trouble with dropping snakes
is they are ten times worse than hosepipes.

At least hosepipes stay still at one end. Snakes don't. They don't stay still at either end, they just wriggle across the carpet really fast and then disappear out of the door.

That's the last time we saw Shooter. At least that was the last time we saw his face. Dylan saw his tail disappear down a crack between some upstairs floorboards, but by the time his dad pulled the floorboard up with a big hammer, he was gone.

We did find five pence and a paperclip though.

Dylan was really upset. He'd only had Shooter a month. I was even more upset. I had snake poo all over me.

Dylan's dad said it wasn't poo, it was ”musk“. He said it's the same sort of thing that skunks spray on people when they feel threatened. That made me feel even worse! Now I had skunk poo on me!

I said sorry to Dylan for dropping his snake and went home after that. My mum said she could smell me when I walked through the kitchen door, and when I made her smell my hand, she nearly fainted.

It took a whole bar of soap, some washing-up liquid, some disinfectant and a dishwasher tablet to get the smell off. Plus I rubbed all the fluff off TWO towels!

Next time I saw Dylan, I asked him if he'd found Shooter. He said he hadn't, but he hadn't given up looking. He said the central heating pipes under the floorboards might act like heat pads and keep him warm so Shooter still might be OK.

Dylan sleeps under his bed in a sleeping bag now. That way he can sleep with his ear pressed to the floor. That way if Shooter wriggles back in the night, Dylan will hear him.

I hope he finds Shooter one day. Stinky or not.

Oh dear.

I just gurgled . . .

Oh dear, I just gurgled again.

Now then . . .

Are those germ gurgles?

Or hungry gurgles?

I'm going to run to the loo just in case. Back in a minute!

Fantastic news! It was a hungry gurgle! I must really be getting better!

I haven't had breakfast or lunch today, so no wonder I'm getting hungry gurgles.

My mum said drinking water would be all right, but for a while eating food wouldn't be a very good idea at all. She said she got up to rub my back seventy-three times last night and even if I tried to eat anything, it would probably go straight through me.

To be honest, I haven't felt even the slightest bit hungry till now. And even now I don't feel that hungry.

I was opening loo roll number eight this morning when Mum told me I was grounded. She said she didn't like grounding me, but because eating a sweet off the pavement was such a disgusting thing to do, I had to learn my lesson. Otherwise I might do it again. I s'pose she's right.

I promised her I would never ever EVER do it again. And I double promised I would never pick anything up off ANY floor again EVER EVER, except for the toys in my bedroom. Then I triple promised that even if I saw a hundred strawberry dib-dabs lying on the pavement, still in their packets, with a PLEASE EAT ME sign next to them, I still wouldn't pick them up. Which was a bit of a fib, but I really didn't want her to ground me. And then, for luck, I four times definitely promised I wouldn't even go into a sweet shop again, which is a huge fib, but it was worth a try. I said if I ever saw a sweet shop again, I'd shut my eyes and walk straight past. Cross my heart, hope to die.

But I was still grounded. That's the
trouble with my mum when she's really cross
. When she says something, she means it.

I suppose at least when Gabby called for me earlier, Mum didn't tell her what I'd done. The
trouble with telling Gabby
is she might tell someone at school.

Like Jack Beechwhistle. If Jack Beechwhistle finds out I've eaten a germy dib-dab, he'll tell my whole class.

And he'll call me names, like Germbelly or Dib-dab Gob. That's the
trouble with Jack Beechwhistle
, he's really good at calling people names.

In fact he's the best in the school.

But I think he's an idiot with knobs on.

So's Fiona Tucker. She sits next to me in class. I used to sit next to Gabby, but Mrs Donovan moved me because Gabby talked too much.

Last month it was ”Lend to a Friend Week“ at school, so I lent Fiona Tucker my kaleidoscope to play with. And guess what?

She broke it.

She said it wasn't her fault. She said she was walking along the street with her dad, looking at all the different patterns it could make, when she walked into a lamp post.

I was really cross with her when she told me. I told her she should have been looking where she was going, but she said you can't see lamp posts through a kaleidoscope. You can only see pretty patterns.

I said it was still her fault, because she shouldn't have borrowed my kaleidoscope if she was going to crunch it into a lamp post or anything made of concrete. I was sooooooooo cross with her, I nearly asked Jack Beechwhistle to think up some really horrible names to call her.

Except she got a black eye. It was red to start with, then it went blue, then it went black.

So I didn't think it would be very kind to call her names on top.

That's the
trouble with black eyes
: they make you feel sorry for people. Even if they've broken your toys.

Not if they're boxers on the telly though.

If you're a boxer on the telly, then it serves you right if you get a black eye, because you shouldn't be fighting someone in the first place. And you definitely shouldn't be doing hard punches.