experiments.
When he heard the sudden tremendous noise outside he opened the door to see what was happening … and in came the wind.
Now as you know, the wind from a tornado can be incredibly strong, and before he could slam the door shut again the wind had swept his hollowed-out watermelon-skin bedroom and two empty-lemonade-cans experimental laboratory high up into the sky. It also set the automatic transporter’s powdered milk-tin-lid fan spinning – faster than you could even imagine!
In fact, so amazingly fast was the fan set spinning, that Billy’s small automatic wind-powered transporter gizmo momentarily sucked both him and his hollowed-out watermelon-skin bedroom and two empty-lemonade-cans experimental laboratory into hyperspace! …and a blink of an eye later popped them out again! …on the far side of the Milky Way! …on the Planet of Urgle Wurgledoof!!!
(…as the greatest Great Forest-world in the Galaxy was called by the little green cabbage-like creatures who lived there).
This was slightly a gazillion billion jillion times farther than Dynamite Billy aged nine and a half years had actually planned on going. He’d only made the transporter gizmo thing to take him to school in the morning and then home again to their big hollowed-out rock. And his school was just across the street and around the corner in the park by the riverbank, in another big hollowed-out rock.
For a while the nine and a half year old Dynamite Billy Featherfoot Mightywing Boiglebird didn’t know what had happened. Imagine his surprise, then, when he opened the door and found his hollowed-out watermelon-skin bedroom and two empty-lemonade-cans experimental laboratory surrounded by a whole lot of Urgle Wurgledoof’s little green cabbage people, all squeaking excitedly to each other in Cabbage. And when they caught sight of him they squeaked even louder and pointed at his higgledy-piggledy crazily coloured feathers, for the little green cabbage people had never seen the likes of anything like this in all of their lives before.
Just then Billy Boiglebird noticed the place was full of cabbage moths! And they were annoying the cabbages terribly – swarming about them like flies around a rubbish tin and biting them ferociously. And Billy had just warped half way across the galaxy and was absolutely starving! …but he’d no idea if there might be a Macca’s or Hungry Jack’s about the place anywhere, so he just flew around and ate a couple of thousand of the pesky little bugs.
WELL! The little green cabbage creatures were so happy about this that they invited Billy back to their village. They wanted him to live there for a while and eat all the cabbage moths.
Billy had no idea what the cabbage people were squeaking about, of course, because he didn’t speak Cabbage. But he went along with them anyway, mainly because they’d lifted up his hollowed-out watermelon-skin and two empty-lemonade-cans experimental laboratory and bedroom and were carrying it away.
And soon, because of his eating so many cabbage moths, Dynamite Billy Mightywing Boiglebird aged nine and a half years was named the cabbages’ “ALL TIME HERO!” In fact so many cabbage moths did he eat that he cleared the forest of them for kilometres around.
This made the cabbages happier still, so they decided to build a statue of him in the middle of their village. But they’d never made a statue before and the only thing they had to make it out of was a huge pile of bubblegum wrappers left over from their bubblegum tree’s bubblegum berries. And so, after going out into the forest to find a superglue bush, they stuck all the bubblegum wrappers together in the shape of a boiglebird. And for feathers they glued on some of the funny coloured fronds from a pink bunkerdoon palm.
Their statue didn’t last, though. The next time it rained the whole thing just fell apart and turned to mush.
Of course, the main reason Billy Boiglebird was able to catch so many cabbage moths was simple: on the planet of Urgle Wurgledoof he could fly around in the daytime without crashing into things or having other birds laughing at his untidy feathers and their crazy colours. He could just zoom about the forest for as long as he liked and catch all the cabbage moths he wanted.
And it wasn’t long before Billy was able to speak Cabbage, after which he would gather all the little cabbage children around at bedtime and tell them about things like the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus, and describe to them things like chocolate ice cream, and vanilla nougat, and fairy floss, and umm… Oh yes: those funny little pie-things they fill with chopped-up dried fruit instead of meat. He also taught the cabbage people how to play soccer, except that adult cabbages have seven left feet and could never decide which foot they should use to kick the ball.
All in all Billy Boiglebird had an amazing number of adventures while he was staying with the little green cabbages in their village. One day he helped them fight-off a band of marauding cauliflowers who were trying to take over the cabbages’ bicycle repair shop. Another time the village was attacked by a bunch of wild bananas!
They kept rushing about screaming and shouting in the most blood-curdling manner, so Billy just ate them. This made everyone very happy … except for the bananas, of course.
Anyhow, after living with the cabbage people on the planet of Urgle Wurgledoof for slightly longer than a while and a bit, Dynamite Billy Featherfoot Mightywing Boiglebird (now aged nine and a half years and slightly more), was becoming homesick and starting to miss his mother and father. He was even starting to miss his brothers and sisters!
He missed being on the farm and he missed all the rabbits and he missed Mr McKackney’s strawberry patch – with its big sweet juicy red strawberries and the buckshot bullets whizzing all around as old Mr McKackney banged away with his shotgun. But one thing he did not want to miss was the full moon, because that was when his father gathered all his little boiglebird children together and gave them their pocket money.
And so Dynamite Billy Featherfoot Mightywing Boiglebird (aged nine and a half years and a teeny bit more) came to realise: if he wanted to get home to their big hollowed-out rock in the middle of the watermelon patch on the bank of the river behind the shed on old Jack McKackney’s rabbit farm near Rickety Bridge in the Rippling River country on the other side of Earth’s Misty Mountains … then he would have to do something about it himself.
Out he went into the forest on his wobbly-wheeled bike to look for a rubber band tree with some nice ripe rubber bands on it. He could easily have flown there, of course, but the cabbages had given him a special bicycle that a boiglebird could ride and he didn’t want to hurt their feelings by not using it.
Before long he came on a rubber band tree, so he parked the wobbly-wheeled bike and flew up into its branches to find the biggest, strongest, red rubber band he could. It had to be a special rubber band, too, because he needed it for an extra special job: Billy Boiglebird wanted it to power the milk tin lid fan on his wind-powered galactic space-shrink gizmo.
At the top of the tree he found one that was just perfect, so he took it back to the village and busied himself putting it into his galactic transporter thing. This turned the transporter’s wind powered milk-tin-lid fan into a rubber band powered fan.
Next he took the rubber band powered galactic transporter thing and flew with it up onto his hollowed-out watermelon and two-lemonade-cans experimental laboratory spaceship bedroom. And there, using sticky tape and nails and glue, he taped and nailed and glued the transporter gizmo firmly to the top of the watermelon skin, exactly in the middle.
Billy knew a rubber band would never spin the fan fast enough for the galactic transporter gizmo to go into hyperspace and get him home again. But the rubber band could certainly spin the fan fast enough to lift up his house like a helicopter, and that meant he’d be able to fly it away to somewhere high, where a really strong wind might come.
Then, just as he ran out of nails and sticky tape and glue, Billy Boiglebird suddenly remembered his manners. Before doing another thing he flew down to his wobbly-wheeled bicycle and started riding from house to house – so that he could say goodbye to all the cabbages and thank them for having him
as their guest.
Eventually, after wishing every last one of his little green friends the very best, he rode back to his hollowed-out watermelon-skin and two-lemonade-cans experimental laboratory spaceship and helicopter-house, then tidied up his bedroom and packed away his things. And finally, when everything was stowed away and all was ready and set, he flew back up to the fan and started turning it backwards, so as to wind up the rubber band. And when the rubber band was wound as tight … tight … tightly as he could get it … he let go of the fan then quickly flew down and went inside to the go-up-and-down steering wheel he’d put at the front window.
ooooooOO-AROWWW!!! went the fan as it spun faster and faster and faster. And, when the rubber band powered milk tin lid fan was spinning fast enough, Billy took off from the middle of the cabbages’ village and flew away towards the mountains – the Mighty Mountains of Urgle Wurgledoof; the greatest mountains on the greatest Great Forest World in the whole of the Galaxy … where the forests were so ancient and the trees so thick that even the rocks were made of wood!
High above the highest of the Mighty Mountains Billy Boiglebird flew. Then, as he rose up through the clouds, he saw through his front window the mightiest forest