My Life as Crocodile Junk Food

By Bill Myers

Classic stories from the Wally McDoogle series now with new designs and spot illustrations throughout.

Chased by thieves through roaring rapids, over a killer waterfall, and into the hands of jungle natives!

This isn’t exactly what Dad had in mind when he took his son on a mission trip to the South American rain forest. But he should have known better. After all, we are talking about Wally-If-Anything-Can-Go-Wrong-It-Will McDoogle.

My Life as Crocodile Junk Food keeps readers laughing as Wally stumbles into a whole new set of impossible (and man-eating) predicaments … until he finally understands the need and joy of sharing Jesus Christ with others.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Thomas Nelson
• Release date: Jan 7, 2020
• ISBN: 9780785231233

Bill Myers

Bill Myers (www.Billmyers.com) is a bestselling author and award-winning writer/director whose work has won sixty national and international awards. His books and videos have sold eight million copies and include The Seeing, Eli, The Voice, My Life as, Forbidden Doors, and McGee and Me.

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Other My Life As . . . Books

a Smashed Burrito with Extra Hot Sauce

Alien Monster Bait

a Broken Bungee Cord

Crocodile Junk Food

Dinosaur Dental Floss

a Torpedo Test Target

For other books by Bill Myers, including more of the My Life As . . . series, stop by www.billmyers.com.

My Life as Crocodile Junk Food

© 1993, 2020 by Bill Myers

Illustrations © 2020 by Thomas Nelson

Tommy Nelson, PO Box 141000, Nashville, TN 37214

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Tommy Nelson. Tommy Nelson is an imprint of Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of HarperCollins Christian Publishing, Inc.

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are taken from the International Children’s Bible®. Copyright © 1986, 1988, 1999 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

ISBN-13: 978-0-7852-3122-6 (repack)

Epub Edition January 2020 9780785231233

Cover and interior illustrations: Julianne St. Clair

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Myers, Bill, 1953–

My life as crocodile junk food / Bill Myers.

p.   cm. — (The Incredible worlds of Wally McDoogle ; #4)

Summary: Twelve-year-old Wally visits missionaries in the South American rain forest, and stumbles into a series of what he thinks are impossible predicaments, until he understands the commandment to put others first.

ISBN 978-0-8499-3405-6

[1. Missionaries—Fiction. 2. Christian life—Fiction. 3. Humorous stories.] I. Title. II. Series: Myers, Bill, 1953–    . The incredible worlds of Wally McDoogle ; #4.

PZ7.M98234Mys   1993

Printed in the United States of America

20 21 22 23 24 LSC 5 4 3 2 1

To Mackenzie—

Thank you for your joy, laughter, and love.

[Jesus] said to them, There are a great many people to harvest. But there are only a few workers to harvest them. God owns the harvest. Pray to God that he will send more workers to help gather his harvest.

Luke 10:2

Contents

1. Just for Starters

2. Techno Boy to the Rescue

3. Hello in There

4. A Little River Cruise

5. Guess Who’s for Dinner?

6. Party On

7. Farewells

8. Reunion with Some Old Buddies

9. McDoogle Munchies

10. Wrapping Up

Chapter 1

Just for Starters

What are you doing? I shouted over the roar of the airplane engines.

The pilot threw our plane into a steep turn. By steep I’m not talking your average tilt-the-wing-and-turn stuff. I’m talking your getting-thrown-across-the-cockpit-until-your-seatbelt-digs-into-your-gut, worse-than-riding-the-Octopus-at-the-carnival, I-wish-I-hadn’t-eaten-all-that-pizza-’cause-it-looks-like-I’m-going-to-be-seeing-it-all-again-real-soon type of steep.

We’re buzzing the landing strip! the pilot shouted back to me. We’ve got to scare off all those cows grazing on it!

What are cows doing at an airport? I cried. But as soon as I looked out the window, I realized I’d asked the wrong question. It should have been, What are we doing landing on a cow pasture?

Suddenly my life flashed before my eyes. Well, not all of it. That would have been too painful. And the way the plane kept rushing at the ground, it looked like I’d be feelin’ plenty of pain soon enough. So, instead, I just remembered the part where Dad talked me into all of this.

It’ll be great, son, he had said, slapping his brawny hand on my not-so-brawny back. After I finished coughing to death and checking for broken bones, he continued. It will show you a whole different part of the world. It’ll let you see what other Christians are doing. And most importantly—

Uh-oh, I thought, here it comes . . .

—it’ll teach you to be a real man.

"To be a real man." How many times have I heard that? It seems to be Dad’s only concern for my life. Maybe it was because he was All-State something or other in college. Or because I want to be a movie writer when (or if) I ever grow up. Or maybe it’s just because I look like the before picture in all those muscle-building ads.

In any case, when Dad signed up at church to help build a clinic for a bunch of missionaries in South America, my name mysteriously appeared on the form too. What a coincidence.

Cheer up, he said. It’ll be a great week.

Right . . . a whole week of sitting in a hut, slapping flies, and preaching to a bunch of strangers. I can hardly wait. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure these missionary guys think they’ve got a life . . . but seven days without TV, computer games, or my cell phone sounds like seven days of non-stop boredom.

Unfortunately my arguments didn’t do much to change Dad’s mind. So here I was, up in a little plane diving toward the not-so-little ground. I reached for ol’ Betsy, my laptop. If we were going down, we’d go down together.

I took one last look out the window. Our little buzz over the pasture did the trick. It scared off the cows. It did a pretty good job of scaring me off too. But since I didn’t have any place to run, I just sat there, strapped into our flying coffin, as we finished circling around for the final approach.

It was late in the day. Below us two or three dozen buildings stood in the low light. Each had brown thatched roofs like something out of Survivor. Past the buildings was a winding little river, then jungle, more jungle, and . . . you guessed it, even more jungle.

Keep an eye out for any major holes! the pilot shouted to Dad, who was sitting beside him in the front seat.

Got it! Dad yelled back.

The pilot leveled off the plane, and we started for the pasture.

I guess lots of the natives heard us buzz