Mouse Noses on Toast (9 page)

“That,” Larry said, hopping onto the Prime Mouse Minister’s rafter, “was the Tinby.” And he told the Prime Mouse Minister all that had happened, and about their political work as the MADAMNOTs, Mouses, Angels and Dogs Against Mouse Noses on Toast.

The Prime Mouse Minister was impressed. “Nothing could be more abhorrent than a plate of mouse noses on toast. Alas, no Prime Minister could publicly support a group of terrorists, but off the record I wish you the best of luck.”

“We’re not terrorists,” Sandra said. “This is a peaceful campaign.”

“It doesn’t look peaceful to me,” the Prime Mouse Minister said.

“The Tinby isn’t a MADAMNOT,” Sandra said. “Mad, yes. MADAMNOT, no.”

“Peaceful protest can only achieve so much,” the Prime Mouse Minister said. “Your bar of soap has the right idea. If the campaign is to bear fruit, you may have to take a more, shall we say, direct approach.”

“Direct Action!” Larry said with a cheesy grin.

M
OUSES ARE NOT THIEVES
. T
HE ONLY THING MOUSES
steal is cheese, which isn’t really theft, as mouses secretly own all the cheese in the world.

But the mouses were on a special mission.

On Larry’s orders, Suzie and Mazie scampered into a human clothes shop and stole three pairs ofwoolly gloves.

The marines wear black woolly hats pulled down to cover their faces, with a hole for each eye. Larry explained that these were called balaclavas, and that mouse balaclavas were made from woolly gloves by gnawing off the tips of the fingers and poking eyeholes with a stick.

Sandra chose not to wear one, as balaclavas are not very angelic.

“Shouldn’t they be black?” Graham said, pulling his balaclava over his ears.

“Pink is in fashion,” Mazie said.

The Mouse Nose Abattoir was on the edge of town, surrounded by forest. The Four-Legged Terrorist Transportation Unit stopped behind the safety of a tree stump, and Sandra and the mouses climbed down.

“I recognize that building,” Paul said.

“Me too,” Sandra said. “It used to be a shoe shop. It was where the Tinby found the shoe box we call home.”

Where the words BOB’S SHOES had been, it now said MOUSE NOSE ABATTOIR in black plastic letters.

“This building,” Larry said dramatically, “is the most evil building on earth. To the right you can see a line of mouses standing by a huge human door. Inside, the mouses are taken into a dark room, where they hear a terrible snipping sound. SNIP!”

Inch covered his ears with his paws.

“What happens to the other parts of the mouse, I do
not know,” Larry said, “but the noses are packed into boxes, carried out the back and loaded onto a huge truck.”

“Why don’t the mouses run away?” asked Paul.

“They’ve been brainwashed. They think they’re here to test a new type of cheese.”

“How do you know all this? Have you been inside?”

Larry shook his head. “I hear rumors, Paul. I have big ears.”

“So what’s the plan?” Sandra said.

“Plan?”

“I have a plan,” Paul said. “We forget the whole thing and go home.”

“This is no time for homely thoughts,” Larry said. “If you need courage, think of the millions of mouses who have lost their noses. To those noseless mouses, a lump of cheese is as odorless as a stone.”

Beneath his pink balaclava, Paul blushed bright red.

Suzie had a plan too. “The easiest way into a building is through the door. We wait for the door to open, climb aboard the Four-Legged Terrorist Transportation Unit, and we’re in!”

“I was about to think of that myself,” Larry said.

The hardest part was the wait. What would they find inside? Humans with knives? Or a denosing machine with metal teeth?

They were about to find out. The huge door swung open and in walked the first brainwashed mouse.

Larry clapped his paws. “This is it, MADAMNOTs. Victory is but a whisker away!”

R
OWLEY
B
ARKER
H
OBBS HAD NEVER BEEN A
F
OUR-LEGGED
Terrorist Transportation Unit before. He was very excited. The moment Sandra and the mouses were aboard, he was through the door in one happy leap.

The door slammed closed, missing his tail by inches. Inside, he bounced about the abattoir at full speed, saying hello to anything that stood in his path.

“Slow down!” Larry yelled. “You’ll get us all killed!”

But Rowley Barker Hobbs was saying hello too loudly to hear.

“We have to make a jump for it,” Larry said to Sandra and the other mouses. “Abandon dog!”

They tumbled to the floor and landed in a confused, furry heap.

“Watch out for the knives!” Larry cried, and buried his nose in his paws.

But the knives never came.

A mouse approached, a friendly mouse with a pencil behind his ear. “What’s all this about?”

“We’re here to rescue you,” Larry said. “Let’s get out of here, before the humans cut off our noses.”

The mouse just laughed. “No humans in here. If a human entered this building, we’d be out of business in a squeak.”

“I don’t understand.”

“This isn’t really an abattoir,” the mouse explained, helping Larry to his feet. “This is a nose factory, run entirely by mouses. I’m the Foremouse. This is Annie Mouse, my assistant.”

“You mean the noses aren’t real?” Larry said, taking off his balaclava. The other mouses took off their balaclavas too.

“We make them out of marzipan,” the Foremouse said.

Annie Mouse adjusted her glasses and read some words from her clipboard. “Marzipan is a paste made from sugar, almonds and eggs. Humans use it to decorate cakes.”

“Put on these white coats,” the Foremouse said, “and we will show you around. Your shaggy friend will have to wait here. They don’t make mouse coats in dog size.”

“Sorry, Mr. Hobbs,” Larry said, patting Rowley Barker Hobbs on the paw.

The Foremouse led Sandra and the mouses through a second huge human door. The door was opened by fifty stunt mouses in crash helmets, who stood on each other’s heads to form a daring mouse tower.

“Clever,” Paul said with a nod.

“That’s just the start,” the Foremouse said.

The back room was bustling with hundreds of busy mouses in white coats.

“This tub is full of marzipan,” Annie Mouse said, lifting the lid from a plastic tub and scooping some out with her paw. “Taste it.”

“It looks like soft cheese,” Paul said.

“Wow!” cried Inch. “It tastes like sweets.”

“These mouses are forming the marzipan into nose
shapes,” Annie Mouse explained. “We could shape the noses by machine, but to fool the humans every nose must be different.”

“Are these the brainwashed mouses we saw in line outside?” Larry asked.

The Foremouse laughed. “The mouses aren’t brainwashed. Our workers are paid in good quality Cheddar.”

“Over here,” Annie Mouse said, “the noses are placed on a conveyor belt that carries them to the painting area.”

She led them to where several hundred mouses were sitting at tables, painting the marzipan noses with mouse paintbrushes.

“We use a special paint made of snot and brown food coloring. The snot gives the noses a snotty, nosey taste.”

Inch chuckled.

“And over here we add the finishing touch, the whiskers,” Annie Mouse said. “Some humans like their noses with whiskers, some like their noses without.”

“How do you make them sniffy and soggy?” Inch asked.

“Simple,” Annie Mouse said. “We leave them out in the rain.”

“This factory is amazing,” Larry said.

“Thank you,” the Foremouse said proudly. “We talk to the humans on the telephone. That happens up here.”

They all scampered up a shoe-box stairway, up onto the huge wooden desk where the old shoe-shop owner used to do his accounts.

A mouse was shouting into a microphone. The mouse was butch, and had a deep voice, more of a rasp than a squeak. A cable led from the microphone to a loudspeaker, where the voice could be heard as loud as a human voice. Another group of mouses held a cell phone to the loudspeaker with their paws.

“The order will be ready at twelve o’clock tonight!” the mouse shouted. “Not a moment before!”

“Do the humans pay for the noses with human money?” Sandra asked.

“That is the cleverest part of all,” Annie Mouse said, leading them through another huge door. “We told the humans that the factory is owned by a fat millionaire who loves cheese. The humans pay us in fresh Cheddar!”

T
HE LAST ROOM CONTAINED THE BIGGEST, STINKIEST,
cheesiest pile of cheese you could ever imagine. It smelled as though five hundred ballplayers had taken off their shoes and socks and wriggled their cheesy toes.

It was a stink all right. The sort of stink that mouses like!

“This,” Annie Mouse said proudly, “is Cheddar Mountain.”

Sandra and the mouses just stared. Paul had never seen anything this scary in all his life. If this didn’t make his bottom fall off, nothing would.

Every few minutes, a mouse would take off its white coat and scamper to the top of the mountain, its ears
almost touching the ceiling, and stuff its greedy mouth with cheese.