Chapter 19

Things moved quickly after that. Now that we'd conjured up the nerve to get near the animals, and that we'd acquired our battle morphs, Ferdie and I made our way around the park acquiring everything we thought necessary. Ferdie had much more nerve than I did to creep into the animal's enclosures – whether it was because his uncle owned the place, or just because he was fearless, I don't know. He'd got himself a good collection of morphs -including an otter, stag, scorpion, harvest mouse, ferretand armadillo -by the time we reached the sea mammals, and was excited telling me how he planned to use them. I sighedinwardly at his enthusiasm. So far, all I'd managed was the leopard, stag and otter. The stag had been an interesting choice. Neither of us had really considered the huge fields of deer as potential morphs, but Ferdie had quite niftily discovered that one of the larger males (what Ferdie called 'Bambi's dad') had been injured by hunters and was being taken care of in the medical wing. We'd seen the chance to get close to a beautiful and adaptable morph animal, and had slipped in and acquired it.

Ferdie was now chattering on about the likelihood of being able to acquire a wolf or fox, but I interrupted him, saying,

"I hope you can remember all these animals you've acquired," I said, as he stood by the side of the dolphin pool in his tee-shirt and underpants. "I don't want you panicking in the heat of the moment, not knowing which animal to morph."

"I'll be fine, Sam!" he said. "The more the merrier. Besides, why stop at the bare minimum? The Andalite didn't say there was a limit to how many animals you could acquire. You should get yourself a dolphin whilst we're here - they seem to have so much more fun than we do!" With that, he dived into the pool in one graceful arch.

"I've got an otter morph," I replied stonily when he'd surfaced. "And I'm planning to acquire a shark later anyway."

"Suit yourself," he called, splashing his way over to the dolphin, quite unafraid.

There was only one dolphin in that pool, it being one of the park's newer acquisitions. It was being held for a couple of days in its own pool away from the public to help it get used to the place before being introduced to the others.

"Afternoon, you," said Ferdie to the dolphin as it swam over to him playfully. It touched its bottle nose against Ferdie's cheek. Ferdie chuckled, then went quiet as he started acquiring the dolphin.

"Can't wait to test that one out," he said, standing dripping wet next to me, having climbed out the pool. He ran his hand through his sopping wet hair and grinned at me.

"Bet you can't," I said, amused. "Come on, we'd better go meet the others."