Greenscale’s Revenge
Copyr. 2011, Mikro Coyne
(Dictated to Secretary Mom, who typed it up.)
In the rainforest, it was warm and humid. Monkeys swung through the trees, up in the canopy. Down below, near the forest floor, a group of lizards were gathered together inside a hollow fig tree. There were green ones, brown ones, and red ones. Most of them were red, several were brown and few were green. Some were big, and some were small. They were long and thin, with long tails. At the front of the group, there was an older, fatter lizard, who was the teacher. This was Lizard School. School started every day with a talk about what was to happen that day. Then they would break up in groups and do some experiments. For example, they collected and studied bugs. Their interest in entomology was to find out which bugs were tastiest and safe to eat. Finding out about the habits of the bugs made them easier to find, catch and eat. Today they were studying mantises. A large enough mantis could kill a lizard, but they were dealing with small and young ones.
“The front limbs are called raptorial limbs. They pull them out quickly, stab their prey with the spikes on them, and pull it in to eat it. They also usually eat the head off first, so it will struggle less and can’t escape.” said Fat Tail, the teacher. (A fat tail means a lizard is healthy, so his name was actually a compliment.)
After science class, the lizard students were sent out to hunt for lunch. Once they caught it, they would stop to eat, and then have outside playtime before afternoon lessons began.
Greenscale, a small green anole, had just caught a large field cricket and was about to eat it when he was surrounded by a gang of red lizards. Most of them were bigger than him.
Volcano, the leader, pushed Greenscale off his perch on a rock and grabbed his cricket. “Gimme that, booger breath. It’s too good a meal for a green like you.” Volcano snarled.
Greenscale knew that he couldn’t fight all those reds, so he went to tell Fat Tail that they had stolen his lunch. Fat Tail was not happy to hear about what the reds had done. But he told Greenscale that it would be better to solve his own problem, because the reds might pick on him more for telling a teacher.
Greenscale was quiet in class that afternoon because he was trying to think of a way to get the reds to leave him alone. “Those red guys think they are so much better than me, just because I’m green. Well, I’ll show them!” he said to himself.
The next day, Greenscale got up early and went to the fig tree. He hunted and gathered up three bush crickets and a bunch of very sour green berries. He cut open the crickets and stuffed them with green berry goo. Then he hid them behind the rock that Volcano had pushed him off of.
He could barely pay attention to Fat Tail in morning class. Finally it was lunch time and he went out and got the three bush crickets. As he expected, Volcano and his gang found him. They didn’t even bother insulting him, they just stole his lunch and wolfed it down. “Eeew. There’s something wrong with this!” said Volcano.
“This is disgusting said Firebreath. He was gagging and then vomited up the stolen food. Pretty soon all the reds were puking. They were pale and greenish faced.
“That’s what you get for stealing!” said Greenscale. “Enjoy turning green. You may be bigger than me, but I am smarter.”
Volcano groaned. Greenscale started to feel a little guilty about making the reds throw up. He went and got a sweet mango and offered it to them. “Here, this will get the bad taste out of your mouth. It’s sweet.”
Volcano said “I guess I deserved that. We should not have stolen your food.”
And the reds never picked on Greenscale again.
The End.
