âSlithery, slithery, slithery â¦â Petty Potts pushed her face up against the glass, steaming it up with her breath and bending her nose sideways.
âSheâs going wrong again,â muttered Danny.
âAhem! Whoâs she?â 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. âThe catâs mother? I was merely trying to build the excitement.â
âYou donât need to build any excitement!â Josh pointed to the enormous snake on the other side of the glass. âYouâre just about to S.W.I.T.C.H. Danny and me into one of
those
. It doesnât get more exciting than that!â
âAlthough weâre not sure why you want to doit
here
,â Danny added. They were in the reptile house at The Wilderness Zoological Park. âI meanâsurely it would be safer to do this S.W.I.T.C.H. in the lab?â
âIt would,â Petty said. âBut Iâm 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?â
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.
âA yellow anaconda,â read Danny, peering at the little information plaque next to the display. âGrows 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!â He turned to Petty. âI want to be large enough to kill humans! Why canât I be large enough to kill humans? Itâs not fair.â
Josh thwacked the back of his twin brotherâs head with a rolled-up Wilderness Zoological Park souvenir guide, briefly flattening Dannyâs spiky blond hair. âYouâre not planning to kill any humans, are you? So itâs not really a problem!â
âI know â¦â pouted Danny. âIâd just like to know we could if we wanted to â¦â
âWhich is precisely why youâre getting this S.W.I.T.C.H. spray,â Petty said, holding out a small, white plastic bottle with a spray nozzle on the top. The letters âY Aâ for yellow anaconda were written on it in permanent marker. âI do have a green anaconda spray too, and theyâre thehuge, human-eating size. But thatâs for later. For now, I donât want you getting overexcited and deciding to crush me to death on a whim. And in any case, youâre only going to be S.W.I.T.C.H.ed for half a minute. This bottle has a very precise spray button, and Iâve calculated the dose for exactly thirty seconds and no more.â
When Josh and Danny had first been S.W.I.T.C.H.ed, it was by accidentâinto house spiders. It had been utterly terrifying to be the unwitting guinea pigs for Pettyâs Serum Which Instigates Total Cellular Hijackâand it would never have happened at all if Piddle, their dog, (named after a rather unfortunate habit he had when he got excited) hadnât run into their neighborâs back garden. It was while rescuing him that theyâd stumbled into Pettyâs secret underground laboratoryâand right into a jet spray of S.W.I.T.C.H.
Now, months later, it was hard to imagine how theyâd resisted getting involved with Pettyâs S.W.I.T.C.H. Project. Since theyâd helped her find the missing code to the Reptile S.W.I.T.C.H. formula, theyâd 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 worryâa zoological park was a bit public for a brand new S.W.I.T.C.H.. âAre you sure about this?â he asked Petty. âIt will definitely only last thirty
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