CHAPTER 3 WHY THE SHARKS ATE TERRY’S UNDERPANTS I look at Terry for a minute as I try to understand what he just said. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, ‘I must have misheard you. It sounded like you said the sharks ate your underpants.’ ‘I did say that!’ says Terry. ‘And now the sharks are really sick! They’re just lying on the bottom of the tank not moving.’ ‘But why did they eat your underpants?’ I say. ‘I mean, how did they even get them?’ ‘Well,’ he says, ‘I came up with the idea of using the shark tank to wash my underpants. I dangled a dummy over the top of the water and the sharks thought it was a real person, and were jumping all around trying to bite it, and that churned up the water—you know, like in a washing machine. ‘So then I put my underpants on the end of a stick and lowered them into the water. ‘But the sharks were jumping around so much they knocked the underpants off the stick and then they ate them. Now the sharks are just lying on the bottom of the tank and they’ve gone a weird green colour!’ You know, Terry has done some dumb things in the past but this has got to be the dumbest ever! ‘What are we going to do, Andy?’ says Terry. ‘I’m not sure,’ I say. ‘If only we knew somebody who loves animals and knows all about them and lives close by so they could get here in a hurry.’ ‘Yeah,’ says Terry, ‘somebody like Jill.’ ‘Yeah,’ I say, ‘somebody exactly like Jill.’ ‘Hey, I know!’ says Terry. ‘Why don’t we call Jill?’ ‘Great idea!’ I say. In case you don’t know who Jill is, she’s our neighbour. She lives just on the other side of the forest and she loves animals and knows all about them. She’s got two dogs, a goat, three horses, four goldfish, one cow, six rabbits, two guinea pigs, one camel, one donkey and thirteen flying cats. Terry leaps up. ‘I’ll call her on the video phone right now!’ ‘But Jill doesn’t have a video phone,’ I say. ‘No problem,’ says Terry. ‘I’ll use my new super-flexible, endlessly extendable, titanium-coated talking tube instead.’ ‘Hey, Jill,’ says Terry. ‘Can you come over right away?’ ‘I’m kind of busy right now,’ says Jill. ‘I’m having a tea party with my catnaries.’ ‘But it’s urgent!’ says Terry. ‘The sharks are sick!’ ‘What’s wrong with them?’ says Jill. ‘They ate my underpants,’ says Terry. ‘Your underpants?’ says Jill. ‘Oh no! How many pairs?’ ‘Three,’ says Terry. ‘I hope they were clean,’ says Jill. ‘Well, no,’ says Terry. ‘That’s the thing, you see—I was trying to wash them.’ ‘OH NO!’ says Jill. ‘I’m on my way—meet you at the shark tank!’ ‘Here she is now!’ says Terry. ‘Wow,’ I say. ‘That was fast!’ ‘Yes,’ says Jill, ‘these flying cats are great! Turning Silky into a catnary was the best thing you ever did, Terry—unlike feeding your underpants to the sharks, which has got to be pretty much the worst.’ Jill peers into the tank. ‘The poor things,’ she says. ‘I’d better get in and take a closer look.’ We watch as Jill and her cats dive into the tank and set to work. She tries aquapuncture . . . dorsal-fin massage . . . guided meditation . . . shark aerobics . . . and motivational movies . . . but nothing seems to work. Finally, Jill rises to the surface. ‘They’re definitely the sickest sharks I’ve ever seen,’ she says. ‘They’re so sick, in fact, that I’m going to have to operate.’ ‘Operate?!’ I say. ‘Yes,’ says Jill. ‘I’m going to have to perform open-shark surgery!’