Read an Excerpt
The bird was large and gray and had a purplish-greenish shine across its feathers. It was definitely a pigeon.
It was also very definitely sitting on Danny’s head.
“Technically it’s a rock dove,” said Wendell the iguana helpfully. “Columba livia, to be exact. They nest on cliffs, and when people started building skyscrapers, the pigeons starting nesting on those too.”
“Wendell,” said Danny.
“Yes?”
“Why is there a pigeon on my head?”
Wendell rubbed his chin. “Good question. Maybe it thought your head looked like the Empire State Building?”
Danny Dragonbreath had enough problems. He was the only dragon in a school full of frogs and lizards, he couldn’t breathe fire very well, and he was pretty sure that he had just flunked a pop quiz. Having a pigeon on his head was one problem too many.
He tried to pull it off. It latched on to his scales with its feet and made happy pigeon noises.
“I think it likes you,” said Wendell.
“Get it off!” yelled Danny. “Lunch will be over any minute now! I can’t go back to class with a pigeon on my head!”
“Errr . . . tell everyone it’s a hat?” Wendell flapped his hands at the pigeon. “Go on, shoo!”
The two-minute bell rang in the distance.
The pigeon finally got the hint and took off, flapping. “Coo!” it said reproachfully.
“That was weird,” said Wendell. “Even by your standards.”
Danny rubbed his head and grumbled.
They were nearly back to class when a familiar shape loomed in front of them.
“Hey, Dorkbreath,” said Big Eddy.
“Big Eddy,” said Danny.
He poked Danny in the chest with one finger. Since Big Eddy was a Komodo dragon, his fingers were the size of bratwurst. “You a dancer now, Dorkbreath? You gonna invent a new dance and put a video on the Internet so we can all laugh at you?”
He poked Danny again.
“We’re gonna be late . . .” mumbled Wendell, trying to slide sideways around Big Eddy.
Danny rolled his eyes. “Obviously there was a pigeon on my head. You need to pay closer attention.”
Big Eddy blinked.
The school bully was very large but not very bright. It was sometimes possible to stun him by uttering something so unexpected that he took a few minutes to process it.
“Pigeon?” he said.
“It’s a new thing. Head-pigeoning. I thought you would have heard of it by now.”
“Head-pigeoning?”
The bell rang again.
“Gotta go!” said Danny, and ran off to find out how badly he’d flunked the quiz.
Danny and Wendell got off at the bus stop near Danny’s house. The dragon got about five steps before something warm and feathery settled on his head.
“It’s the pigeon again, isn’t it?” said Danny grimly.
“Yep,” said Wendell. “Or a pigeon, anyway. I suppose there could be more than one.”
This was not reassuring.
Danny hunched his shoulders and stalked down the sidewalk. There was probably no point in trying to get it off until he was close enough to the house to duck inside.
A passing car slowed down to stare at him.
Danny was no stranger to having cars slow down to stare at him, but usually it was because he was doing something awesome like standing on a rooftop wearing a cape or building a giant snow platypus. Merely having a pigeon on his head didn’t qualify.
“Wendell! Hey, Wendell!”
Wendell slowed down. Danny sighed and turned around.
Christiana Vanderpool, the only person in school nerdier than Wendell, ran down the sidewalk after them. “Hey, Wendell, can I borrow that book on the Burgess Shale?”
“Sure!” said Wendell.
“The what?” said Danny.
“Very old rock. Had lots of squirmy things fossilized in it. Stuff nobody’s ever seen on earth before. Or since, for that matter.” She paused. “Did you know there’s a pigeon on your head?”
“Columba livia—”
“Yeah yeah, so Wendell said.”
“Quite a nice specimen,” said Christiana. She stood on her tiptoes and scratched the pigeon’s head. “Who’s a good widdle pigeon, den?”
“You want the pigeon? It’s yours. You can teach it to fly mazes or something.” Danny tried to pry the pigeon off his head again. It flapped hard a few times, then snuggled down against his scales.
“I think it likes you,” said Christiana.
“Yeah, it sat on my head at recess too.”
“Is this why Big Eddy was wandering around with bread crumbs on his head? I was wondering about that, but I didn’t want to ask him.”
“Did it work?” asked Wendell.
“Well . . . sort of. . . .” She scratched her head. “He didn’t get pigeons, he got starlings. A bunch of them. And you know what they do when they get excited . . .”
“Squawk?” guessed Danny.
She gave him a look. “No. They poop.”
“The pigeon followed Danny home from school,” said Wendell proudly. “And it hasn’t pooped on him once.”
“Maybe it’s a homing pigeon,” said Christiana. “Although they usually go to places, not to people. There are reports of homing pigeons flying thousands of miles with important messages. They navigate by magnetic fields.”
“Hey, that’s a good thought,” said Wendell. “We should check it for messages.”
“Why would someone send a homing pigeon after me?” asked Danny. “I don’t know any pigeons.” He paused. “Unless . . . there’s an evil genius about to take over the world using pigeons, and this one’s just the first, and pretty soon everybody will have a pigeon on their head and then we’ll be helpless when he deploys his orbital moon laser!”
“Or her orbital moon laser,” said Christiana. “I hear more women are breaking into mad science all the time.”
“There’s a note tied to its leg,” said Christiana. “C’mon, little guy, let me just untie this . . . there’s a good pigeon . . .”
The note was tiny and rolled up like a scroll. She smoothed it out and handed it to Danny. “It’s addressed to you.”
Danny scratched his head, moving the pigeon slightly. “Okay . . .”
