still perched on the curtain rod, went off to sleep. And the moment he fell asleep, he began to SNORE! And what a snore it was Kngrrwheeze!!! It began as a soft grumbly sort of rumble, much like that which the stomach of a mildly hungry dinosaur might have made.
Then it grew louder, and louder, and LOUDER until it sounded as if a herd of elephants with cold was trumpeting angrily in the room. KNGRRDRRWHEEZE!!! Zigzag’s snore pounded their eardrums till their heads ached. In vain did they try to wake the snoring bird.
‘Twenty-one languages, he’s supposed to know!’ snorted Mrs.Krishnan. ‘Yet this bird chooses to communicate only in snorish, snorese, snorian, snorihili, snoralu…’ ‘I thought it was scientific fact that birds couldn’t snore,’ said Maya, trying to squirt water from a small water pistol at Zigzag to wake him and wetting most of the curtains, the walls and a sofa instead. ‘African witch doctor’s birds don’t obey scientific rules.’ Arvind was annoyed that his best imitations of a raging lion, a hungry hyena and a ferocious dog had failed to draw Zigzag out of his deep slumber. Now he tried his loudest, most frightening coyote call.
But Zigzag slept on undisturbed. And snored on. In total despair at their failure to wake Zigzag, or at least stop him snoring, they shut themselves in the bedroom that was furthest away from Mrs.Krishnan’s studio where Zigzag was creating the terrible din. Mrs.Krishnan was just unraveling a roll of cotton wool to stuff in her ears, when they heard their maid, 10th - - Lakshmi, shrieking as if she had been electrocuted.
Hearts hammering, they rushed to the studio to find Lakshmi dancing and clapping her hands excitedly as she yelled, ‘We’ ve been blessed! We’ve been truly blessed! It’s raining papayas and bananas in this room!’ They froze in horror. Lakshmi had apparently switched on the fan on which Zigzag had left some fruit and nuts.
Half-pecked fruit streamed off the fan, dampening even Lakshmi’s enthusiasm as a guava landed on her cheek with a soft