Mystery in the Old Museum
Talitha’s
curls bounced as she hopped up the worn concrete steps of
the museum, through the open door, and straight to the information
desk. “Hello. I’m here to see Big T,”
she announced.
“I beg your pardon?” The woman had been rummaging through her desk. She suddenly sat up, gave a little sneeze, and blinked her puffy eyes. “I’m afraid the museum doesn’t open for a few minutes yet,” she said. “I’m Mrs. Watson.”
“The door was open,” Talitha said, “so I came in to see Big T.”
“Big T?” Mrs. Watson asked.
“Tyrannosaurus rex,” Talitha said. “You know, T. rex, forty feet long, big head, little arms, big sharp teeth.” She put her hands out in front of her face and slapped them together like jaws.
“Yes, of course.” Mrs. Watson wiggled her nose and looked under her desk. “It was just here,” she said.
“It was?”
“I meant my handkerchief,” Mrs. Watson said. She sneezed again. “The air-conditioning system isn’t working, so all the windows and doors are open, and the trees are blossoming, the flowers are blooming, the grass is growing, my allergies are attacking, and I can’t find my handkerchief.”
“Here,” said Talitha. “You can use these.” She pulled a small packet of tissues from her jeans. A pink ribbon was left dangling from her pocket.
Mrs. Watson smiled. “Thank you,” she said. She blew her nose.
“You’re welcome,” Talitha said. “May I see Big T now?”
“Certainly,”
Mrs. Watson said. “Dinosaur Hall is at the end of
that corridor.”
Talitha skipped around the corner and stopped.
A maintenance worker was on the floor, crawling on his hands and knees. “Lose something?” Talitha asked.
“Yes,” the man replied. “My ‘to do’ list. I dropped it on the floor, and when I turned to pick it up it was gone.”
Talitha helped him look. She found a small scrap of paper. It said Fix air cond.
“Is this it?” she asked.
“It might be,” he said. He looked at the paper and frowned. “That’s part of it.”
A woman in shorts and a safari hat came hurrying around the corner and into the corridor. “Who’s been pulling the straw out of my saber-toothed-tiger exhibit?” she said before jumping over the maintenance man. She landed lightly on the floor beside Talitha, then rounded another corner and disappeared.
A man with curly red hair came out of an office holding a vase full of daffodils.
“Someone has been pulling the petals off these flowers,” he said. “There are yellow petals all over my desk.”
Talitha walked toward the dinosaur room. “There is something strange happening here,” she thought.
Dinosaur Hall was full of fossils. Most impressive of all was the Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton, right in the middle of the room.
“Whoo-wee, Big T, you are one mean-looking dinosaur,” Talitha said.
One large eye seemed to wink at her.
“Hmm.” Talitha stared at the menacing skeleton. “What’s going on here?”
She walked slowly around Big T. On the floor near the tail she found two yellow daffodil petals. Three steps from the daffodil petals was a long strand of straw, and lying near that was a scrap of paper that said Close wind.
As
she read the paper she felt a tug on her pocket. She turned
in time to see her pink ribbon disappearing between Big
T’s sharp, curved teeth like a strand of cooked spaghetti.
Talitha put her hands on her hips. “Wait a minute,” she said. “Dinosaur fossils do not eat ribbons.”
She ran upstairs to the second-floor balcony, where she could see eye to eye with Big T. She lay on her stomach and stared straight into the dinosaur’s huge jaws.
Then she started to laugh. She laughed so hard that it echoed through Dinosaur Hall. Mrs. Watson, the maintenance man, the man with the daffodils, and the woman in the safari hat all came running into the room.
Talitha pointed toward Big T’s mouth. A small brown sparrow, hopping up and down inside the jaws, was tucking Talitha’s pink ribbon into a nest made of straw and bits of paper. Bright yellow daffodil petals could be seen in the nest as well, and in the center was a lacy white handkerchief.
“Big T has company,” Talitha said.
Everyone laughed except Mrs. Watson. She sneezed.
