Geyser
for her arthritis treatments,” I
explained.
Hercule
LOOKED
at me
slyly. “Geronimo, no one else
comes to mind?
No one?
I know someone perfect
for our team — and for
you
!”
CLARISSA WITH HER
PET DINOSAUR, FIFI
“W-wait a m-m-minute!” I stammered,
turning as red as a Paleozoic
hot
pepper
.
“Y-you’re not thinking of . . .”
“Of course I am!” Hercule said, grinning.
“We’ll ask
Clarissa Conjurat
, the shaman’s
daughter!”
But . . . but . . . but . . .”
Hercule shook his snout. “No
buts
—
I’m heading to her cave right now! In the
meantime, you go get Trap and Benjamin.
We’ll all meet for dinner at the Rotten Tooth
Tavern!”
I stood there, as
petrified
as a block
of granite. You see,
Clarissa
is the most
beautiful, charming, determined, brave
mouse in the Stone Age. I have a huge
crush
on her!
As it turned out, Clarissa accepted
Hercule’s invitation without twitching a
whisker. But before she left, she stuffed her
purse with bottles and bottles of perfume
(
lily of the valley
, her favorite scent).
“You said that this treasure hunt
stinks
of trickery,” she explained with a grin, “so I
figured I’d better bring along a good supply
of perfume. It’s going to be a
smelly
search
!”
SPRITZ! SPRITZ!
SPRITZ!
As planned, we met that evening at the
Rotten Tooth Tavern. Our team was now
complete, and we’d named ourselves the
Super Stiltonoots. We were ready for the
most mousestastic
TREASURE HUNT
in
the Stone Age!
Trap was jumping out of his
fur
with
excitement. “This is going to be easy-cheesy!
I’m a riddle-cracking genius!”
“
Actually
. . .” I started.
Trap grinned. “Do you remember the
time I solved the brainteasers at the
Ice
Age Puzzles Competition
all by
myself?”
Huh?
Huh?
I remembered that competition
well — because I had whispered
the answers to Trap! But this wasn’t
the time to
point
that out.
Instead, I sniffed and noticed that
Clarissa
was spraying her lily of the
valley perfume all over the
Rotten
Tooth Tavern
.
“
Fossilized feta!
” grumbled
Hey!
Greasella Stonyfur. Then she turned
to Clarissa, frowning. “Are you
trying to say that my restaurant
stinks
?” she asked.
“Of course not, Greasella!” Clarissa
said with a
smile
. “Your tavern is
squeaky clean. It’s your customers
who don’t wash often!”
Greasella
sniffed
and made a
face. “
FUNKY FUR!
You’re right!”
“
I object!
” exclaimed Trap. “I took a
bath a month and a half ago!”
“And I washed myself about a month ago,”
I said. “I even lathered my
whiskers
!”
Greasella pinched her snout. “
News
flash: You stink!
”
That’s when we noticed that Hercule
was unusually quiet. He looked awfully
uncertain
.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I was just thinking,” he said. “I still feel
like Sally’s invitation is
very
,
very
strange
!”
“I think so, too, Uncle Geronimo,”
Benjamin
piped up.
“Yes,” said Hercule. “Sally isn’t the type to
organize something without an
ulterior
motive
, a
trick
, a
scam
, a —”
I just had a
thought!
Bones and stones!
“Enough squeaking!” Clarissa interrupted
him. “Let’s have
dinner
and then get to
bed. Tomorrow is going to be a long day,
and it sounds like we need to be ready for
anything!”
“I just had a thought!” Hercule squeaked.
“Be sure to bring your
clubs
, and keep
them close to you. With Sally, you never
know what might happen . . .”
I was
stunned
.
Hercule was right!
Good night,
Geronimo!
C-C-Clarissa!
What kind of the dangers would we face
the next day? Thinking of the possibilities
made my whiskers curl with fear.
Squeak!
But then a sweet voice said, “Good night,
Geronimo!”
I turned to see Clarissa blow me a
kiss
and saunter off to her cave.
Ah, Clarissa . . . what a fabumouse rodent!
BY THE GREAT ZAP!
I suddenly realized something.
The treasure hunt might be dangerous,
treacherous
, and very risky — risky
enough to make us extinct. But I would get
to spend a lot of time with the rodent of my
dreams!
My whiskers quivered . . . but this time
with
excitement
!
Gulp!
JURASSIC
CHEDDARSNOUTS AND
MEGALITHIC MICE
The next morning, we showed up at Singing
Rock Square, as
fresh
and
nimble
as
cricketosauruses. There were two other
teams: the
Jurassic Cheddarsnouts
,
led by Squeaks McStone, and the
Megalithic
Mice
, led by Bobby Bouldermouse.
“Don’t the Jurassic Cheddarsnouts look
like a bunch of boneheads?” asked Hercule.
“Beating them will be mouseling’s play!”
I had to admit, the members of the first
team did look like
boneheads
!
On the other paw, the Megalithic Mice
looked like real
brains
! As I walked
closer, Sally Rockm
ousen gave me a
JURASSIC
CHEDDARSNOUTS
Megalithic
Mice
dirty
look. She
stood between two
enormouse rodents.
Squeak!
“The rules are
very simple,”
Sally
explained. “You each
have to solve a
riddle
that will lead you
someplace in the city.
Once you get there,
you’ll find a second
riddle
that will point
you to the third
riddle
,
and then to the fourth,
and so on until you find
the
TREASURE
! The
first one to the treasure
wins. Simple!”
“Yeah, right!” Hercule whispered in my
ear. “It may sound simple, but
underneath
it all, I smell a rat. Mark my squeaks!”
Sally handed out the first
riddles
to each
of the three team leaders. Squeaks McStone,
the Jurassic Cheddarsnouts’ leader, was the
first to read his note out loud:
“Hmm, could it be Gossip Radio?” asked
“
It could be
. . .” said her sister Tracy.
“Fabumouse! Let’s go there now!”
squeaked the third sister, Maisy.
Oh, for the love of cheese!
Gossip Radio was the
only
radio show in
the Stone Age!
“The most famouse
radio show in the
Stone Age!”
Hmms. . .let’s see!
Is it . . . Gossip Radio?
It could be . . .
Next up was BOBBY BOULDERMOUSE,
who read the Megalithic Mice’s riddle:
“Gossip queen of the Stone
Age. Her name begins with
an
S and ends with a Y!”
Now we know
where to go!
“It’s Sally, of course!” Matt, Pat, and Nat
Stoneford answered in unison. “Couldn’t
our riddle be something harder? Rats!”
“Don’t
complain
— now we know that
we have to go to Sally’s
CAVE
,” replied
Annie Ablepaws
.
Hercule had been listening to the other
teams, too, and he
winked
at me.
“Pawsome! The riddles are all
easy-
cheesy
! We’ve got victory in our paws,
Geronimo!”
But maybe he had spoken
too
soon . . .
BENJAMIN THE
BRAIN!
‘When he’s full,
he’s lighter!’”
Trap, who had named himself our team
leader, read our riddle and
scratched
his
snout.
“Hmm. I don’t get it!”
“Aren’t you supposed to be the
king of
riddles
?” asked Clarissa.
“Sure as Swiss, but this is a Jurassic
brainteaser!” Trap said. “Listen to this:
We all twirled our whiskers and thought
about it.
Fossilized feta!
Smoke
was coming out
Hmm
. . .
Um . . .
Any idea?
of our ears from all that thinking!
“The other two teams are already on their
way,” said Clarissa, “and we’re standing
here like
boulders
!”
“Petrified Parmesan, it’s not fair!” Hercule
grumbled. “The other teams got
super-
simple
riddles. I knew that rat Sally was
going to trick us!”
“Let’s not get discouraged,” Benjamin
squeaked. “Let’s concentrate, instead. Who
is
lighter when he’s full?”
“If you’re full because you drank ten cups
of steamy hot cheese, then you obviously
don’t feel lighter,”
Clarissa
said.
“I agree,” I put in. “And if your skin is
full of megalithic
mosquito bites
, you
definitely don’t feel any lighter.”
Crusty cheese crumbs! We weren’t a single
pawstep
closer to solving the riddle!
All of a sudden, Benjamin remembered
something. “I think I’ve got it! There’s
someone in
Old Mouse City
who
becomes lighter when he’s full — and then
he
FLIES
!”
Clarissa jumped to her paws.
“Of course! Why didn’t we think of it
sooner? It must be a
balloonosaurus
!”
We scurried toward Old Mouse City’s
flightport
as fast as our paws would
take us. That’s where they keep all the
balloonosauruses that we cavemice use for
long
air trips!
DID YOU HEAR ME?
Screech!
Screech!
The
flightport
was filled with
balloonosauruses that were ready for
takeoff
. Some were filling up on flight
fuel:
superbean concentrate
for the
big ones, and
Huh?!
CONCENTRATE
for the faster ones.
Gas from the beans is how they fly!
“Let’s get our tails in gear!” I urged my
teammates. “We have to find the tablet with
the second
riddle
!”
Easier squeaked than done! Where could
it be? We
SEARCHED
everywhere.
We looked between the balloonosauruses’
paws:
Nothing!
We looked inside
the baskets tied to the balloonosauruses:
Nothing!
We looked along the balloonosaurus
runway:
Nothing!
Then Hercule got a fabumouse idea! “Let’s
ask somebody for
help
— a rodent who
knows the flightport well.”
“Mouserific plan,” Clarissa said. “How
about the manager?”
Ah,
Clarissa
. . . what a determined
mouse!
We found the manager easily enough. He
was very, very
tall
and very, very
skinny
.
He was a rodent of few words — gruff but
polite.
“If you haven’t found what you’re looking
for among the balloonosauruses on the
runway
, try looking in their training
pen,” he suggested.
He led us to a
fenced-in
compound.
“
This is where we train the baby
balloonosauruses,” he explained. “Here,
they learn to stretch their wings and
fly
.
They exercise until they’re big enough to
take flight on their own. And when they
do, you can
smell
them coming from a
thousand tails away!”
Blech!
CAN YOU FIND THE TABLET
THAT HAS THE SECOND
RIDDLE FOR THE SUPER
STILTONOOT TEAM?
Answer:
Look in the superbean concentrate
cauldron on the left page!
Slithering on our bellies, we approached
the little
balloonosauruses
. We
didn’t want to frighten them!
The compound was filled with cute but
lively
little balloonosaurus pups!
Trumpeting triceratops! They didn’t stay
still for a second! They
skipped
here
and there, squealed and squeaked, and
tooted
away. (After all, they were full of
superbean gas!)
PFFFFT!
PFFFFT!
PFFFFT!
“Maybe the manager is right,” said
Benjamin, covering his snout. “The
riddle
could be inside the pen.”
We wanted to look around, but the pups
were so wild that crossing the
pen
seemed
impawssible!
But Clarissa took matters into her own
paws.
Enough!
“
Stop it!
” she bellowed at the crazy
pups. “If you don’t stop moving around
right now, I’ll make you all take a bath —
with soap!
Did you hear me?
”
The pups froze in their tracks. Then, with
their little tails between their
paws
,
they trotted silently to one corner.
Ah,
Clarissa
— what a mouse!
Trap, Benjamin, and I searched all over
Tavern
Cavern
Lantern
the pen, but Hercule was the one who finally
found the tablet with the
riddle
.
It was inside a big cauldron of superbean
concentrate!
YUCK
— this was one seriously
smelly
search
!
The little tablet was chiseled with three
words:
While Trap, Benjamin, Hercule, and I