The Attack of the Frozen Woodchucks

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The Attack of the Frozen Woodchucks

Chapter One

The First Sighting

As Jimmy Weathers helped his mother set the table that Saturday evening in early April, he had no idea that the fate of mankind was about to come crashing down on his shoulders. It happened just as Jimmy was laying a fork on his father's napkin. The front door to his family's small two-bedroom apartment burst open. In ran Imogene, Jimmy's two-and-a-half-year-old sister.

"Woodchuck, Mommy!" she cried, pulling hard on Jimmy's mother's pants. "Big, giant woodchuck!"

Jimmy smiled. He and Imogene shared a small room. He was very used to what he called "Genie-speak."

Jimmy's mother scooped Imogene into her arms.

"A woodchuck? Tell Mommy where you saw it."

The girl flung her purple backpack onto the sofa. "In park!"

The boy saw the smile curling on his mother's lips. Whatever Imogene had thought she had seen, it most certainly had not been a woodchuck. With the exception of squirrels, mice, and pigeons, New York City's Central Park was not known for its wildlife. He doubted there had been a woodchuck there for a hundred years, let alone a "giant" one.

"Now, now, dear," Jimmy's mother said. "Are you sure it was a woodchuck you saw?"

Before Imogene had a chance to answer, Jimmy's father was in the room, eyes wide. He laid the day's mail on the dining-room table and began waving his arms. His whole being took on a wild, excited glow.

"The largest darned one you ever saw, Emma!"

Jimmy and his mom exchanged a smile. By day Richard Weathers was a lawyer at the firm of Weasel, Waxel &Whine—a job he hated. By night he was a frustrated children's novelist who had written an entire shelf's worth of unpublished books, often animal-themed, with titles that ranged from Chickens Who Tango to The Sloth Who Ruled Europe. One of Jimmy's favorites included a character with unusual dining habits, who began each meal with a special poem:

I eats the feets of fried raccoon—
I eats them with a three-pronged spoon.
Dinner comes, my day's complete
Chompin' on them raccoon feet.

Indeed, Jimmy and his mom—and really all of Richard Weathers's friends—were used to the ramblings of his overactive imagination. A giant woodchuck? Jimmy didn't bat an eye.

"Oh, really, Dad?" the boy said, playing along. "How big was he?"

Jimmy's father jumped up on one of the foldout chairs they used in the dining room and stretched his arms all the way to the ceiling.

"Big!" he said. "We're talking twenty, thirty feet!"

"Big, big woodchuck!" Imogene said.

Jimmy's father hopped back to the floor and kept on talking. "It was unbelievable. There I was, watching Imogene playing in the field by the playground, when all of a sudden she decides to run after a squirrel. Naturally I follow. Soon we find ourselves in woods up around 103rd Street. No one was around. That's when we saw it."

"The woodchuck?" Jimmy asked.

"No," his father said, unzipping his coat. "The giant pod!"

Jimmy's mother was serving the spaghetti by now. Pasta was a family favorite.

"Oh, of course," she said, winking at Jimmy. "Like a giant dinosaur egg, I imagine."

"Egg!" Imogene said. "Like in museum."

"Exactly," her father said, rubbing a hand through his daughter's hair. "Just like at the natural history museum." He looked back up at his wife and son. "But when this puppy hatched, it was no Stegosaurus that came out. No, not at all! The egg split, and there it stood—a three-foot-tall woodchuck—completely frozen!"

"Frozen?" Jimmy said. He had to admit he was enjoying the story, one of his father's better ones. "Why was it frozen?"

His father looked disappointed. "Jimmy! Jimmy!" he said, rubbing his son's shoulders. "Don't you remember last week's blizzard? For all we know, that egg was sitting there through the storm."

Jimmy nodded. It was true—New York City had been bombarded by a series of blizzards that winter. Still, over the last few days the weather had finally begun to warm up. It seemed that spring was on its way at last.

"And here's what I think," his father went on. "It was the warmer weather that made it happen."

"Made what happen, dear?" Emma asked.

Jimmy's father looked from his son to his wife, eyes glinting. "Made that woodchuck thaw out and grow!"

With that, Imogene jumped as high as she could, stretched her arms over her head, and shouted, "Grow and grow and grow, grow, grow!"

"All right, dear," Jimmy's mother said, scooping Imogene into her booster seat. "We get the point. Dinner, everyone."

"So what did you do then, Dad?" Jimmy asked, sitting down. "I mean, about this thirty-foot woodchuck?"

His father blinked. "Do? Why Imogene and I did what you or any sane, self-respecting person in the world would have done. First we screamed. Then we ran for it!"

"Stroller motor!" Imogene announced. "Zoom!"

Jimmy and his mother smiled. A week earlier his father and Imogene had attached a toy motor to her stroller. While the motor didn't make the stroller go any faster, it did cough up an impressive amount of dust from the city sidewalks.

"So wait a second," Jimmy said, turning to his dad. "You mean there's still a giant, possibly man-eating, woodchuck at large in Central Park? Like right across the street?"

Despite their smallish apartment, Jimmy and his family were lucky to live just off the park.

His father nodded. "That's right. I stopped a policeman on the way home, but he didn't want to hear about it."

Again Jimmy saw his mother smile, but this time there was a trace of worry. This wasn't the first time his father had come home spinning an outrageous tale. A short week earlier, his subway car had been driven by a giant purple squid; a week before that, Hank, the building's doorman, had magically transformed into a tap-dancing sea lion. In both instances Jimmy's mom had laughed along . . .

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