GIVE ME A wait stop that my father says blushing beneath his squirrel beard You’re not taking this seriously W B That’s your biggest problem You don’t take science seriously He’s probably right But he’s also a squirrel which makes it rather hard to take him seriously If you could put your mind into the body of any animal in the world why did you choose a squirrel I ask I thought you hated squirrels A squirrel is the only animal I could catch And I don’t hate them my father replies defensively twitching his little nose and stroking his puffy tail I just hate when they get into the garage and chew on my experiments You used to do the same thing when you were an infant You always chewed and drooled on everything At times you seemed more like a camel than a baby Will you be able to put your mind back into your body I ask Actually where is your body It’s rather creepy to think of my father’s body sitting around his work garage without a mind in it Oh your mother is watching it he tells me She has to Otherwise it might get into trouble How can your body get into trouble without a mind in it It does have a mind in it my squirrel father explains I didn’t get rid of the squirrel’s brain That would be cruel So I simply
switched it with mine My body currently has a squirrel brain in it Now that I’ve shown you what your mother and I have been working on I’m going to go switch back Would you please let me out of my cage I open the cage and my swift little squirrel-father bolts out of it and heads towards the door The moment he reaches it he bumps into an excited little prairie dog The prairie dog is also wearing little spectacles and a coat Isn’t this fantastic says the prairie dog in my mother’s voice I feel stronger and quicker than I have in years I think I can even do a cartwheel Watch me a do a cartwheel Sharon my squirrel father squeaks I told you to wait until I was human again before switching your brain with the prairie dog
Which is quite possibly the weirdest sentence a son will ever hear his father say I couldn’t wait my prairie dog mother says spinning around and hunching over in her furry little body It was too exciting But Sharon my squirrel father says desperately don’t you see what this means Before my squirrel father can explain what it means we hear a terrible thundering noise The bodies of P and M now with the brains of a terrified squirrel and a baffled prairie dog come tearing down the hall They are squeaking and shrieking and looking for the nearest tree to climb And that’s when I always wake up I wake up in a cold sweat usually with a cowboy novel on my chest and a bellyache from my late night snack I’m terrified but after a few deep breaths I look around my bedroom and I realize that everything is alright My parents are not squirrels or prairie dogs Their weird scientific-inventor brains are still in their weird scientific-inventor bodies My Aunt Dorcas is still annoying and sings all the time but that’s alright I suppose Everything is normal or at least as normal as it can be here at the Baron Estate which is the name of our home The Baron Estate is located just a few miles outside of the town of Pitchfork which is in the heart of Arizona Territory Pitchfork is one of the wilder
towns in the new American frontier which I like It’s also one of the hottest which I don’t like I suppose you could say I’m sort of a heavyset kid so I don’t do very well in the heat When I wake up in the morning I like to look out the window at the quiet desert that surrounds our home and dream about the heroic gunfights that are happening over in Pitchfork There’s a legendary sheriff there by the name of Sheriff Hoyt Graham who is said to be one of the bravest men in the world He singlehandedly captured a gang of fifty armed bandits led by the dastardly bank robber Benedict Blackwood No one had ever been able to capture Benedict Blackwood before but Sheriff Hoyt Graham had made it look easy There have been hundreds of short stories and novels written about Sheriff Graham’s adventures and I’ve read each and every one of them Even though it makes me sound like a bad person there are times when I wish I was his kid instead of M and P’s At least Sheriff Graham makes sense to me On that particular morning I was feeling excited because I suddenly remembered what was happening in Pitchfork later that day Sheriff Hoyt Graham and his deputies were going to put on a show for everyone in town with wild stunts and rope and horse tricks The sheriff was also going to tell the crowd about some of his greatest adventures including the ones that haven’t been written in books yet I’d been looking forward to seeing him
