Flat Like Fred

By Susan Katz

All your life you've probably wondered where the famous expression "Flat like Fred" came from. Probably you've heard about the invasion of alien tadpoles in Wampler, Wisconsin and the terrible mouse-elephant rampages on the planet Bovine. Maybe you even realize that those events are connected to the true origins of the Loch Ness Monster. But do you know what three mistakes Fred Floodle made on that fateful Wednesday morning when it all began? If not, you'll want to read this book.

"Flat Like Fred" is a humorous science fiction novel for kids of all ages telling the myriad adventures of young inventor Fred Floodle as he tries to save the Earth (among other planets) from disaster.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Susan Katz
• Release date: Dec 18, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465788306

Book preview

Flat Like Fred

by Susan Katz

illustrated by Benjamin Pannell

Copyright 2011 Susan Katz.

Smashwords Edition

(version 1.0, December 18, 2011)

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

To Otto Ray Katz, who has just arrived on this planet, August 12, 2011.

Table of Contents

1. Tadpoles Are Falling on My Head

2. Take Me to Your Sneaker

3. Major Colonel Captain Frisby

4. Black Dogs and Other Flying Objects

5. Out of the Flying Plan

6. And Into the Mire

7. Wholly Cow

8. A Scrambled Egghead

9. The S.P.C. Egg

10. A Moomentous Meeting

11. We Don’t Talk About Chi -

12. Cow Falls

13. More Eggsperiments

14. Udder Chaos

15. Cock-a-doodle Don’t

16. Rampage, Rampage (or Fred Goes Squoosh)

17. Major Trouble

18. Corn, Corn, Corn.

19. A Dangerous Muenster

20. The Queen’s Butter

EPILOGUE

Chapter 1.

Tadpoles Are Falling on My Head

All your life you’ve probably wondered where the famous expression Flat like Fred came from.  Probably you’ve heard about the invasion of alien tadpoles in Wampler, Wisconsin and the terrible mouse-elephant rampages on the planet Bovine.  Maybe you even realize that those events are connected to the true origins of the Loch Ness Monster.  But do you know what three mistakes Fred Floodle made on that fateful Wednesday morning when it all began?  If not, read on.

It was a school day.  The alarm clock Fred Floodle had invented, which he called the Fred-o-matic, woke him in the usual way that morning.  First a long metal arm with a needle attached poked Fred sharply in the stomach.  When he screamed, another long metal arm reached out and stuffed a marshmallow into his mouth. 

Fred opened his eyes, which were blue and bulgy.  He rubbed his stomach, which was pink and bulgy.  Then he ran one hand through his hair, which was blonde and looked like it had been cut with a lawnmower.  Chewing the marshmallow, he heaved himself out of bed. 

That was Fred’s first mistake.  He took two steps and tripped over his dog. (Like most dogs you’re likely to meet, this one preferred to sleep in the middle of the floor, with her paws sprawled in four different directions.)  Oh, Barf! Fred said as he fell on his face.

Barf was the dog’s name.  Her fur was black with a few small reddish-brown patches that looked like squashed tomatoes.  She was very large.  Next to Barf, the hound of the Baskervilles would have looked like a midget.  Whenever anyone bothered Fred, he simply said, Eat that person’s head, Barf.  No one ever hung around to see what would happen next. This was a lucky thing since what usually happened was that Barf wagged her tail and drooled.  She did that now, and then she began to lick Fred’s bare feet.

Cut that out! Fred said, yanking his toes out of reach.  He’d coated them the night before with Protect-o-Fred, the new anti-licking wax he’d invented.  But it still wasn’t working right.  Fred kept trying to make it taste like something Barf hated, only she didn’t hate anything.  Judging by the remains on the floor, she’d recently eaten half a sweat sock.

Fred reached behind him and turned on a piece of machinery that was sticking out of a half-open bureau drawer.  Carefully he spoke into a long tube.  (You don’t want to know what Fred’s mother said when she found out that this tube was no longer attached to her vacuum cleaner.)

After six seconds of buzzing, the machine barked: Growf woof-wff-wff snorp!  Fred hoped that meant Get your soggy tongue off my foot, you flea-bitten nitwit!

This machine, the Fred-o-Bark, would translate Dog into English too.  But Fred couldn’t persuade Barf to bark into the speaking tube.  So far she’d bitten it in half three times.  Fred had patched it together with duct tape, but his mother was going to have a hard time vacuuming into corners. 

The only time Fred and Barf had truly communicated was on the day they’d met.  Fred had been visiting his Grandma Frickle, who baked the worst rhubarb pies in the northern hemisphere.  That day she’d set a batch of them on her kitchen windowsill to cool.  Fred was sitting at the kitchen table, wishing he had time to invent a pie-destroying machine before supper, when he heard a strange noise outside.  Something halfway between a slurp and a woof.

Suddenly a huge black head appeared at the window.  Its ears flapped in the wind.  Its enormous mouth opened.  Sloop!  Wurf!  Its jaws closed on one of the pies.  Clang!  The head looked surprised.  Ptui! it said and spat out the pie pan, slightly bent but licked clean.

Good dog! Fred said (having decided the animal was not a buffalo).  He got up.  By the time he reached the kitchen window, the dog was spitting out the last pie tin.

You ate three of Grandma Frickle’s rhubarb and vinegar pies?! Fred said.  Who are you?  What’s your name?

The dog wagged a tail the size of a tree branch and licked the edge of the windowsill.  Barf! she said.

I believe it, Fred said.

At first Fred’s parents didn’t want him to keep Barf.  But when they found out it was Barf’s fault that Grandma Frickle didn’t have rhubarb and vinegar pie for supper, they had to admit the dog deserved a good home. 

(If you’d like to try this technique for acquiring a new pet of your own, you could contact Dromodea Frickle in Wampler, Wisconsin, and she’d be delighted to send you a sample pie.  Persuading your parents and the new pet to taste the pie, of course, is your problem.)

Since that first day, Barf had devoted her life to licking Fred’s feet.  Stop it! Fred shouted now.  Muttering under his breath some words it isn’t nice to mutter, he put on a sweat sock and a half and looked out his bedroom window. 

It was raining.  Oh, no, it’s Monday! he said.  It always rained on Mondays in Wampler, Wisconsin.

And that was Fred’s second mistake.  In fact, it was Wednesday, and Wednesday was Fred’s bad day.  Usually on Wednesdays, Fred woke with a peculiar tingle in the back of his neck which warned him to be careful.  But that particular morning his tingler wasn’t working.  And so when he saw the rain, he said, Mondays are so boring.  I wish something unusual would happen today. 

Always a dangerous wish, but especially on Wednesdays.

Slowly Fred got dressed.  This was the worst Monday he could remember.  He was as tired as if he’d put in two days of school already.  And the rain this morning was the ugliest rain he’d ever seen.  The raindrops were short, squat, and greenish-gray like tadpoles.

Sadly Fred left the room, without even remembering to put on his sneakers.  Barf followed.

In the next room, Fred’s father was snoring.  It sounded like the section of the 1812 Overture where someone shoots off a cannon.  I’m going outside, Fred whispered to Barf, to take  a closer look at that weird rain.

And that was his third mistake.  The moment he stepped outside the back door, with Barf at his heels, Fred realized why the raindrops looked like tadpoles.  They were tadpoles.

Chapter 2.

Take Me to Your Sneaker

Luckily Fred was wearing the new glasses he’d just invented, which he called Fred-o-Vision.  He punched a button, and an awning shot out above the lenses.  He pressed another button, and a spotlight beamed out into the yard.  If he pushed one more button, a foghorn would sound.  But Fred didn’t do that.  The last time one of his inventions woke his father, Fred wasn’t allowed into his invention laboratory for a month.

Besides, the tadpoles were closing in.  A whole group of them rained toward Fred and clustered around him, growling.  (Tadpole growls, as you may know, sound a lot like a French poodle singing opera with its head inside a bucket.)  The tadpoles’ little bug eyes did not look friendly.  Neither did the little black guns they were waving around.  Barf whimpered.

The tadpoles began opening and closing their mouths. 

A stream of colored bubbles blew toward Fred.  Inside them, tiny letters flashed on and off.

Fred couldn’t believe it.  The tadpoles had invented Float-o-Fred, an idea so new Fred hadn’t started working on it yet.  He hadn’t even mentioned it to his friend Bill Yards, who was the only other inventor Fred knew.  Bill lived in England and was building a time machine in a potting shed in his back garden.  Fred secretly talked to Bill via ham radio twice a week at midnight. 

(You may be wondering why Fred would use a ham radio instead of the Internet.  One reason was that Barf was fond of chewing computer cords.  But mostly it was because of Fred’s Grandpa Klinglebaum who, back in 1938, had used his ham radio to singlehandedly capture a Nazi spy ring sending coded messages to Wampler.  Well,