Anaconda Adventure by Ali Sparkes

“Slithery, slithery, slithery …” Petty Potts pushed her face up against the glass, steaming it up with her breath and bending her nose sideways.
    â€œShe’s going wrong again,” muttered Danny.
    â€œAhem! Who’s she?” demanded Petty Potts, stepping away from the glass and shoving her thick spectacles up the bridge of her nose so she could glare at him. “The cat’s mother? I was merely trying to build the excitement.”
    â€œYou don’t need to build any excitement!” Josh pointed to the enormous snake on the other side of the glass. “You’re just about to S.W.I.T.C.H. Danny and me into one of
those
. It doesn’t get more exciting than that!”
    â€œAlthough we’re not sure why you want to doit
here
,” Danny added. They were in the reptile house at The Wilderness Zoological Park. “I mean—surely it would be safer to do this S.W.I.T.C.H. in the lab?”
    â€œIt would,” Petty said. “But I’m working on a new theory. Will your behavior patterns be affected if you S.W.I.T.C.H. in proximity to a real snake?”
    Josh and Danny stared through the glass and shivered with excitement … and a little fear. On the far side, a yellow and black scaly face rose up, staring back at them through almond-shapedeyes. A black forked tongue waved in the air, trying to scent them.

    â€œA yellow anaconda,” read Danny, peering at the little information plaque next to the display. “Grows up to two or three yards in length and eats birds, reptiles and mammals. Non venomous. Kills prey by constriction. Not large enough to kill humans. Aaaw!” He turned to Petty. “I want to be large enough to kill humans! Why can’t I be large enough to kill humans? It’s not fair.”
    Josh thwacked the back of his twin brother’s head with a rolled-up Wilderness Zoological Park souvenir guide, briefly flattening Danny’s spiky blond hair. “You’re not planning to kill any humans, are you? So it’s not really a problem!”
    â€œI know …” pouted Danny. “I’d just like to know we could if we wanted to …”
    â€œWhich is precisely why you’re getting this S.W.I.T.C.H. spray,” Petty said, holding out a small, white plastic bottle with a spray nozzle on the top. The letters “Y A” for yellow anaconda were written on it in permanent marker. “I do have a green anaconda spray too, and they’re thehuge, human-eating size. But that’s for later. For now, I don’t want you getting overexcited and deciding to crush me to death on a whim. And in any case, you’re only going to be S.W.I.T.C.H.ed for half a minute. This bottle has a very precise spray button, and I’ve calculated the dose for exactly thirty seconds and no more.”
    When Josh and Danny had first been S.W.I.T.C.H.ed, it was by accident—into house spiders. It had been utterly terrifying to be the unwitting guinea pigs for Petty’s Serum Which Instigates Total Cellular Hijack—and it would never have happened at all if Piddle, their dog, (named after a rather unfortunate habit he had when he got excited) hadn’t run into their neighbor’s back garden. It was while rescuing him that they’d stumbled into Petty’s secret underground laboratory—and right into a jet spray of S.W.I.T.C.H.
    Now, months later, it was hard to imagine how they’d resisted getting involved with Petty’s S.W.I.T.C.H. Project. Since they’d helped her find the missing code to the Reptile S.W.I.T.C.H. formula, they’d been more and more excitedabout taking part in the experiments. Being S.W.I.T.C.H.ed into reptiles was going to be amazing!
    Even so, today Josh felt a twinge of worry—a zoological park was a bit public for a brand new S.W.I.T.C.H.. “Are you sure about this?” he asked Petty. “It will definitely only last thirty