The Case of the Missing Dinosaur Egg (2 page)

“I know that—
duh
. I just want a closer look!” And—before Aunt Jen or the Secret Service could stop her—Tessa started climbing over chairs to get to the front of the room.

Aunt Jen sputtered, “Oh, for Pete's sake!” and climbed after Tessa, except Aunt Jen was wearing a narrow skirt and high heels, so navigating chairs was maybe not her most graceful maneuver. Nate and I tried not to laugh as she tripped and stumbled forward, but in the confusion, I was pretty sure no one else even noticed.

Meanwhile, I wished I could see what the egg was doing, but there were too many bodies in front of me.

“Jeremy!” I looked around for the tallest Secret Service agent. “Can you see?”

Jeremy stood on tiptoes. “Looks like the little fella's making progress,” he said. “There's part of its head and maybe a shoulder . . . er, if it's even got shoulders.”

“Does it have a crest—can you see?” Nate wanted to know. “Like a velociraptor?”

“What about huge, deadly teeth?” I asked. “Like T. rex?”

Jeremy shook his head. “Hard to tell from here. But if I had to guess, I'd say it had a beak and damp little feathers.”

Nate nodded. “That makes sense. The latest research indicates many dinosaurs did have feathers.”

I said, “Wait—I thought according to you it couldn't be a dinosaur.”

My cousin shrugged. “It's a dinosaur egg, isn't it?”

Over all the noise in the room, I heard something new—laughter, which turned out to be Professor Bohn's.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “if I can reclaim your attention? I'm afraid those of you hoping for something prehistoric are going to be disappointed. On the other hand, you could call this chick a modern-day dinosaur.”

Nate grabbed my arm. “Come on. Let's get closer to the action.”

Jeremy followed us as we made our way through the crowd. Soon we could see the chick's busy beak,
chipping away at its prison, and pieces of white shell littering the floor and table.

“Hey,” I said when I finally got a good look. “I've got a book about birds at home. Isn't that an ostrich?”

Professor Bohn heard me and nodded. “Very good, Cameron.”

“I knew that,” said Nate quickly.

Tessa shook her head. “Wow—nature is sure awesome! Who'd've thought an ostrich could come out of a dinosaur egg?”

Professor Bohn made a face that meant he was trying not to smile. “Well, actually, Tessa, the truth is this egg never belonged to a dinosaur. Dinosaur eggs, as you'll see when you tour the rest of the exhibit, are fossilized and look like rocks.”

Aunt Jen said, “In that case, you must have known this egg belonged to a bird. Why didn't you say anything?”

Professor Bohn looked down at his shoes. “My bad.” Then he looked up, and I noticed there were lots of laugh crinkles around his eyes. “I have a soft spot for pranks, and it was obvious to me that's what this was. I didn't want to spoil the fun, so I'm afraid I asked the museum staff if we could wait and see how it played out.”

My aunt does not have what you'd call a big sense of humor. Without smiling, she nodded and said, “Ah.”

Meanwhile, Nate asked, “Where's the real dinosaur egg?”

Professor Bohn started to answer, but the lady from
the museum beat him to it. “Nothing to worry about. We have the case well in hand.”

“Case?” Tessa perked up. “Are you saying there's a mystery?”

“Oh, no, no, no.” The lady shook her head. “It's not a mystery at all. The egg has, uh . . . just been misplaced. I'm sure it will turn up soon.”

Tessa folded her arms across her chest and frowned. “Well,
that's
disappointing.” The other grown-ups all looked super serious, but Professor Bohn laughed.

I was beginning to think I liked Professor Bohn.

Also, I knew what Tessa was thinking. She wanted a new mystery for us to solve! Since January, when Mom got to be president and our family moved into the White House, Nate, Tessa and I have investigated four different cases—and we've even been on the news.

By now we could see the ostrich chick's head—big beady eyes and a fierce-looking beak at the top of a long spotted neck. Honestly? It was ugly. But I remembered one time we had chicken eggs hatch in my class at school. The chicks started off disgusting, but then they dried off, fluffed up and got cute.

Tessa must have had the same idea, because she said, trying to sound casual about it, “So, who gets to keep the ostrich?”

“Oh, no.” Aunt Jen shook her head. “Unh-unh, Tessa. Not happening.”

Tessa said,
“Ple-e-ease,”
Aunt Jen said,
“No-o-o,”
and finally a guy in a blue shirt explained it would take the chick hours to get out of its egg, and then it would need to be washed in special soap to kill germs, and after that it would have to live in a special kind of electric box for a few days while it got used to life in the world.

“As it's growing up, it needs a pen and the company of other chicks,” he said. “Plus there's one more thing. About half of ostrich chicks die . . . even if you do everything right.”

My sister looked horrified.

Aunt Jen said, “You seem to know a lot about ostriches.”

The man smiled and said he worked at the National Zoo. “We don't have ostriches,” he said, “but we have rheas and emus, which are also ratites—big birds that don't fly.”

Aunt Jen looked at Tessa. “Since the zoo has the equipment to raise a chick, why don't we let them take care of this guy? Then when he's bigger, you can go visit.”

Tessa sighed. “I guess, but can we name him, at least?”

“What did you have in mind?” Aunt Jen asked.

“Uh . . .” Tessa looked at me. “Cammie, you do it.”

I grinned. “Isn't it obvious? Dino!”

By this time, almost everyone had left the lecture room. Some of them were probably still running for
their lives, but the rest were looking at the dinosaur egg exhibit, which was down a hallway. Professor Bohn said he didn't mind losing his audience. Nothing he had been planning to say was as exciting as watching a dinosaur egg hatch.

“Since we're finished here, would you kids like to take a quick tour of the exhibit?” Professor Bohn asked us.

We kids never had a chance to answer. Aunt Jen did it for us: “They would
love
to.”

Professor Bohn led us to the exhibit hall, where a sign over the doorway read:
CRACKING UP: THE INNER LIVES OF DINOSAUR EGGS
.

We went in. Along one wall there were windows looking onto 3-D scenes of mama dinosaurs taking care of eggs and hatchlings. In the middle of the room were glass cases containing real fossilized eggs and the fossils of young dinosaurs. A few contained fossils of broken eggs with the bones of never-hatched hatchlings inside.

Poor hatchlings.

The reason the fossils look like rocks, Professor Bohn explained, is simple: They
are
rocks. An egg fossil is made when an egg gets buried in sand and the sand gets flooded with water. Over millions of years, minerals in the water mix with minerals in the eggshell and form rock.

Here are some more things I learned about dinosaur eggs that day:

• Dinosaur nests have been found at more than two hundred sites around the world.

• In Montana, a whole lot have been found that were made by a kind of dinosaur that took really good care of its hatchlings.

• Most dinosaurs buried their eggs in leaves, grass or dirt to keep them warm and safe.

• The biggest dinosaur eggs are about two feet long, and the smallest are about the size of goose eggs.

It's true I started the afternoon with a bad attitude, but the stuff Professor Bohn told us was pretty cool—especially what he told us last.

“The more we learn about dinosaurs, the more we find out how much they're like birds,” he said. “They apparently had feathers—”

“I knew that,” Nate said.

“—and their eggs and bodily structure are also avian, which means birdlike. In fact, some scientists believe birds and dinosaurs are the same type of animals and shouldn't be considered separate at all.”

By then it was time for us to leave the museum.

“What did you think of the exhibit, kids?” a reporter called as we walked through the rotunda. That's the big round room at the front where there's a huge stuffed African bull elephant.

Nate and I smiled, gave thumbs-up signs and kept walking.

But Tessa stopped, which—as usual—caused all the photographers in the room to go crazy snapping pictures. “We saw a dinosaur hatch,” she said. “It was so-o-o cool!”

The reporter scribbled something, and a lot of people laughed. Aunt Jen said, “A dinosaur, Tessa? Or an ostrich?”

“Same thing!” Tessa said. “That's what Professor Bohn told us.”

This led to more questions, and Tessa would happily have stayed all day, explaining and having her picture taken, but Aunt Jen thanked the news guys and shooed us forward. Meanwhile, Professor Bohn and the woman from the museum hung back and took questions. The woman was a paleontologist, too: Professor Teresa Rexington. She and Professor Bohn and a team of scientists from a certain nearby nation had found the dinosaur egg fossil that was now missing.

Our van was parked outside at the curb. We were about to climb in for the short ride home when I noticed two familiar men on their way up the steps to the museum. Among all those people wearing jeans and T-shirts, they stood out because they were wearing suits.

Nate had seen them, too, and he nudged me. “Cammie, isn't that—”

“Mr. Morgan and Mr. Webb!” I waved. “Hey, hi! How are you?”

Mr. Morgan and Mr. Webb are security guys for the Smithsonian. Now they came over to the van and
nodded hello. Neither of them smiles much, and Mr. Webb hardly even talks.

Tessa got right to the point. “Are you here to investigate the missing egg? It's okay”—she winked—“you can tell us.”

Mr. Morgan made sure no one was listening before he answered: “In fact, we may need to ask for your help. From what we've been told, the situation is, uh . . . complicated.”

Tessa pumped her fist. “
Woot
—I knew it! The First Kids are back on the job!”

Or were we?

All the rest of that day, we waited for a call . . . but none came.

I did get my wish to play with our big furry mutt, Hooligan, outside on the South Lawn. Nate practiced piano—did I mention he is some kind of piano genius? And Tessa cleaned up after the stray cat and kittens we found a couple of weeks ago near the Rose Garden. They live mostly in a box in Hooligan's room, which is two doors down from ours on the White House second floor.

Tessa and I ate dinner with Granny and her special friend, Mr. Bryant. Nate ate with his mom in their apartment on the third floor. After Mr. Bryant went home, Tessa, Nate and I played a few hands of hearts with Granny in the solarium, which is kind of like our rec room.