A Mysterious Egg Read online

  For Henry

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2016 by Stacy McAnulty

  Cover art and interior illustrations copyright © 2016 by Mike Boldt

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Random House and the colophon are registered trademarks and A Stepping Stone Book and the colophon are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Visit us on the Web!

  SteppingStonesBooks.com

  randomhousekids.com

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  McAnulty, Stacy.

  A mysterious egg / Stacy McAnulty ; illustrated by Mike Boldt.

  p. cm. — (The dino files ; # 1)

  “A Stepping Stone Book.”

  Summary: During a summer at his grandparents’ dinosaur museum and dig, the Dinosaur Education Center of Wyoming, Frank, aided by his cousin Sam and cat Saurus, cares for a newly hatched dinosaur while trying to keep its existence secret, both from his grandparents and from the neighbors.

  ISBN 978-0-553-52191-7 (trade) — ISBN 978-0-553-52192-4 (lib. bdg.) — ISBN 978-0-553-52193-1 (ebook)

  [1. Dinosaurs—Fiction. 2. Animals—Infancy—Fiction. 3. Cousins—Fiction. 4. Paleontology—Fiction.] I. Boldt, Mike, illustrator. II. Title.

  PZ7.M47825255My 2016 [Fic]—dc23 2014047419

  eBook ISBN 9780553521931

  This book has been officially leveled by using the F&P Text Level Gradient™ Leveling System.

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v4.1

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Copyright

  Introduction

  About the Author

  1: Welcome to DECoW

  2: A Dinosaur Egg and a Weenie

  3: Born an Expert

  4: You Won’t Believe This (But It’s True!)

  5: Little Dino Cutie

  6: The Wicked West Dig Site Lives Up to Its Name

  7: Mushy Bananas with Worms

  8: The Dino Needs a Time-Out

  9: We’ve Been Spied On

  10: Sending Out a Search Party

  11: Zombies, Vampires, and Dinos

  12: Please Help My Terrible Lizard

  13: The Plan

  14: I Promise

  About the Author

  Glossary

  About the [Other] Author (Also Known as the Boring Part of the Book)

  About the Illustrator

  Excerpt from Too Big to Hide

  I know books usually have the About the Author in the back (and it’s usually really boring). But since this book is about me and my secret, I’m putting it in the front…plus I’m definitely not boring.

  The author of this epic book is Frank L. Mudd. He’s nine years old, handsome, and a dinosaur expert. He lives in North Carolina with his mom, his dad, and his cat. His favorite food is dessert. His favorite sport is Frisbee. His favorite subject is science. His favorite season is summer because he spends it in Wyoming. Frank’s kind of bad at math, spelling, cursive, Frisbee, dancing, bird calls, and flipping pancakes.

  This picture will probably be in a museum someday.

  My grandparents own the Dinosaur Education Center of Wyoming. We call it DECoW. And it’s the best place on the planet. Mom, Dad, and I visit on holidays, but during summer vacation I get to come by myself.

  DECoW has a museum with a lab and seven dig sites. The dig sites are the most awesome because scientists and visitors (and me) can hunt for dinosaur fossils.

  I’m really good at finding fossils. Yesterday I found a hadrosaurid tooth.

  But Gram won’t let me in the field today because I’ve got a sunburn. I just know they’re about to make a huge, HUGE discovery. I can feel it in my stomach. Also, when Gram left the house, she said, “It’s going to be a big day.”

  I need to be at that dig site!

  Instead, I’m stuck inside the museum with PopPop. The good thing is I got my own name tag. Finally.

  I was really hoping for PRESIDENT or just plain BOSS. PopPop calls me his best worker. But I’m not a real worker because I don’t even get paid. Except sometimes PopPop buys me a soda from the vending machine when I do a good job.

  “Can I please go to the dig site? Please?” I ask. Politely. Again.

  “Why don’t you do the ten a.m. sweep?” PopPop says.

  He doesn’t mean sweep with a broom. Every hour we walk through the museum and make sure everything is a-okay.

  “Fine.” I take the job and bring my cat, Saurus, with me. She’s super lazy, so I push her through the museum in her catmobile. It’s really just an old stroller, but don’t tell Saurus that.

  The museum is a giant loop that starts about 4 billion years ago in the Hadean Eon, when the earth was born. This isn’t very exciting, and most visitors walk really fast through this part. (No running is allowed in the museum.) Actually, they ignore just about everything until they get to the Mesozoic Era (about 250 million years ago). Dinosaurs!

  “Looking good, boys and girls,” I say as Saurus and I check on the fossils.

  A lady and her two kids stare at me.

  I point to my name tag. “It’s okay. I work here.”

  I straighten a PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH sign in front of the Microraptors. Then I pick up a candy wrapper.

  “Big Bob, were you eating in here?” I ask our largest, awesomest fossil. (There’s no eating allowed in the museum.) Big Bob is the most complete Supersaurus in the world. He’s a celebrity. The fossil was discovered about a mile from here when my dad was a boy.

  Saurus meows from her catmobile. She doesn’t like dinosaurs as much as I do. She likes naps and smelly canned food.

  I wave goodbye to Big Bob. Then we walk by the Triceratops and Spinosaurus. When we get to the T. rex, my eyes almost pop out of my head. There are footprints in the sand under the fossil. The footprints are human. Sneakers, to be exact. And I know who made them!

  “Samantha McCarthy, I know you’re in there!” I yell.

  “Rooooooar!” She jumps out from behind a fake tree.

  “Get down!”

  But instead of getting down, she holds a plastic microphone to her mouth. “I just scared my cousin Frank. He’s afraid of almost everything. Dark places. Fireworks. Girls.” She always pretends to talk to an invisible camera. She says she has to practice being famous.

  “You aren’t supposed to be on the displays. You could break something.” (There’s no climbing allowed in the museum.)

  “I’m not going to break anything.” Sam swings from the T. rex’s rib. “Come up here. It’s fun.” She’s three weeks older than me, but she doesn’t act like it.

  I’ve been staying with Gram and PopPop every summer since kindergarten. For some reason (that only makes sense to the grown-ups), my mom and Aunt Sophie thought it would be a good idea if Sam came to stay this summer too. Sam doesn’t even like dinosaurs. I don’t know what she likes, besides getting in trouble, her microphone, and bragging.

  “Leave me alone. I’m working.” I walk away with the catmobile. Sam follows without being invited. She doesn’t even have a name tag.

  “Don’t you want to do something fun?” She holds the microphone in my face. “We can practice soccer.”
br />   “I’m busy, Sam.” I push the microphone away.

  For some reason (that only makes sense to the grown-ups), my grandparents signed us up to play soccer this summer. Sam and I are on the same team. I don’t hate soccer. I would just rather be studying fossils than kicking a ball.

  “Do you want to look for scorpions under the rocks in the parking lot?” Sam asks.

  “No.”

  “Do you want to make a music video? I have a camera. A real one.” Sam lives near Hollywood, California. She was on TV once when she was a baby. So she thinks she’s famous.

  “I said I’m working.”

  Saurus and I finish our sweep. Sam is still behind us. I take out the feather duster.

  “It’s fine by me if you kids want to play,” PopPop says. “I can handle the register.”

  “Can we go to the dig site?” I ask.

  “No,” PopPop says.

  “Then I want to work here,” I say.

  “This place is so boring.” Sam plops down on a stool.

  Just then, the front door opens. I hope Sam remembers to smile and be friendly. She’s not good at that. But it’s not a customer. It’s Gram.

  “Frank, Sam, you have to come see this.” Gram’s face is red and shiny and happy under her cowboy hat.

  I can’t talk because my brain is too excited imagining something huge. Maybe it’s a new kind of dinosaur. Gram’s been a paleontologist for forty years, but she’s never discovered a new dinosaur.

  “What is it?” Sam asks.

  Gram slaps her knee. “It’s an egg!”

  I should probably explain that finding an egg fossil is really, really rare. I bet only one out of a gazillion people ever finds a dinosaur egg. You’re more likely to get eaten by a shark and struck by lightning than find a dinosaur egg.

  Sam and I climb into the back of Gram’s brown truck. I think it used to be white, but it hasn’t been washed in a long, long time.

  “Wahoo!” Gram shouts as we speed up the dirt road. The new dig site is not on DECoW land. It’s on the Crabtrees’ cattle ranch.

  I smile at Sam. She probably doesn’t know this is the most exciting day of her life.

  When we park, I’m the first one out of the truck. I race to the edge of the site. And there it is! The egg is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. It’s all black and kind of rough, not smooth like an egg from the fridge.

  “If you ran that fast at soccer, maybe your team wouldn’t lose all the time.” I turn to see Aaron Crabtree chewing on a piece of grass. He’s only eight, but he’s bigger than two of me.

  “We don’t lose all the time,” Sam says, putting her hands on her hips. “We were rained out once.”

  I don’t care about soccer right now. There’s a dinosaur egg sticking out of the ground right in front of me. It’s the size of a football, and half of it is still buried in the limestone.

  “It’s not broken,” I say.

  “I know,” Gram says, and her smile gets even bigger.

  I super-careful walk into the pit, making sure not to step on any of the areas marked with white paint and a number. That’s how we mark where the fossils are found.

  Sam and Aaron jump into the pit.

  “Be careful,” one of the scientists grumbles. “Don’t disturb the site.” I’m glad he says it, so I don’t have to.

  “You’re excited about a black rock?” Aaron asks.

  Sam covers her microphone. “It’s a dinosaur egg, you weenie.”

  “It’s a perfect dinosaur egg,” I add.

  “This is my show, Frank.” Sam holds up the microphone again. “Let’s start from the top. In three, two, one. Gram, what kind of egg is it? A T. rex?”

  “I don’t know, Sam.” Gram touches it with one finger. “It’s not like any I’ve ever seen.”

  “If it’s a brand-new dinosaur, what are you going to name it?” Sam asks. “You should name it after your first grandchild. Me.”

  “No way,” Aaron says. “This is my daddy’s land. I’m naming this dinosaur egg, and I’m keeping it too.”

  “You want it? You have to get through me first!” I yell in Aaron’s face. “And Sam. And my gram.” My voice may sound brave, but my legs are shaking. I wish I wasn’t wearing shorts.

  “It looks like the two boys are about to start fighting,” Sam says to her invisible camera. “Let’s watch.”

  “There will be no fighting,” Gram says. “The Crabtrees and the Mudds have an agreement. The Crabtrees can graze their cattle on our fields in the north. And all the fossils we find on Crabtree land will be displayed at the dinosaur center. You’re welcome to come see them anytime, Aaron.”

  Good thing Gram broke us up because I was getting ready to run away. That would have been embarrassing. I’m not a fast runner.

  Aaron rides off on his four-wheeler. Sam and I spend the rest of the day under the tent watching Gram and her scientists free the egg fossil. I’m an expert-level fossil digger, but I’m not allowed out in the sun.

  Around dinnertime, the egg is packed in a crate and loaded into the truck. Gram drives much slower back to the DECoW building.

  I have a hard time falling asleep that night. Kind of like the time I ate three giant Pixy Stix at Jack Boyd’s birthday party.

  My brain finally turns off, and I close my eyes. I think I sleep for one minute before Saurus jumps on my head. I knock her off me, but she does it again.

  “What, Saurus?”

  She leaps off the bed and stands in front of the bedroom door.

  I open it for her. She steps into the hallway and meows. She wants me to follow her. (Don’t ask me how I know this. I just do.) We walk down the hall and past Sam’s room. Her door is open a little bit. I peek inside.

  “Where’s Sam?” I ask.

  Saurus keeps walking. We go down the stairs. Sam’s not in the kitchen. Then I see a light outside. Someone is walking with a flashlight. It’s Sam.

  I watch her open the side door to DECoW.

  “She’s going to steal the egg,” I say to Saurus. And—I swear this is true—Saurus nods yes.

  I pull on my work boots and run out the front door. I think for a second that I should wake up Gram and PopPop. There’s no time. I have to stop a thief!

  Saurus jumps in her catmobile and we zoom across the parking lot. When we get inside the building, I tiptoe into the lab. The egg is still safe in its crate. Sam is standing in front of it. I can only see her back. Maybe she just came to look at it. Or interview it with her fake microphone.

  Then I see Sam lift her arm. She has a hammer in her hand.

  “No!” I scream.

  Sam jumps.

  “Don’t hurt the egg!” I run across the lab and pull the hammer out of her hand.

  “I just wanted to see what’s inside,” Sam says.

  Sam hardly knows anything about dinosaurs or fossils or dinosaur fossils.

  “There’s probably nothing inside of it except dirt that’s turned to rock over the last sixty-five million years. No dinosaur bones. Once, I saw a dinosaur egg in a museum, and it did have fossilized bones inside. That’s super rare, like winning a prize at the claw game.”

  She touches it. “It feels like a rock,” she says, sounding disappointed.

  “It’s still amazing,” I say. “Think about it. At one time, this egg held a baby dinosaur. No one has ever held a baby dinosaur.”

  “I bet he was a small dinosaur.” Sam rubs the egg like it’s a crystal ball.

  “Maybe not. The biggest dinosaur egg ever found was only twenty-one inches long.” I really should give Sam a class on dinosaurs.

  Sam glares at me. “You think you know everything.”

  “I know a lot about dinosaurs. I was pretty much born an expert.” This is true. My first book was an ABC dinosaur book. My first blanket had dinosaurs on it. My first stuffed animal was an Iguanodon.

  “So you probably aren’t going to let me crack this open, right?” Sam asks.

  “Right.”


  “Then I’m going to bed.” Sam rolls her eyes and leaves.

  I put the hammer away.

  “Come on, Saurus. Let’s go.” But Saurus doesn’t get back in her catmobile. Instead, she jumps up and sits on the egg.

  “Get down or Gram is going to be so mad.” I pick up my cat. I look back at the egg. No damage.

  But then suddenly it twitches.

  I rub my eyes and pinch myself to make sure that I’m not sleeping. Then I pinch Saurus, and she hisses. We are both definitely awake.

  “Go get Gram,” I whisper to Saurus. But she doesn’t.

  The egg jumps and shakes for a minute. Then it stops.

  “What should we do?” I ask Saurus.

  Saurus doesn’t answer, but somehow I know what she’s thinking. She wants me to sit on the egg.

  “If something goes wrong, this is all your fault.”

  So I sit on it. Only because I don’t have a choice. There are no living mommy dinosaurs around to do it. Plus, I don’t think I’m breaking any rules. Not really.

  “This is crazy.” Soon the egg is hopping again. It must like the feel of my butt. I stay on for a long time. Like three or four minutes.

  CRACK!

  I jump off the egg.

  The first crack appears on the tip. I move the egg onto a lab table. My forehead sweats because I’m excited. (And a teeny-tiny bit scared out of my brain.) What if it’s a dangerous raptor breaking free from its shell?

  I step back.

  More cracks grow. A piece of the shell falls off.

  This is soooo much better than a plastic Easter egg. (And once, I even found a golden egg with a dollar inside it.)

  Then a slimy head pushes through the shell. Its nose holes wiggle. It looks like an alligator but with a bump on the end of its snout. It’s so cute…for a slimy blue-green thingy.