A Perfect Time for Pandas: A Merlin Mission

it. Some pandas at the center eat eighty pounds a day.”
    “Oh, okay,” said Annie, her shoulders sagging. “And I guess it’s not baked with love, either. Is it?”
    Master Lee stared at Annie. He looked confused. “No … of course not,” he said.
    “Darn,” said Annie.
    Jack was embarrassed.
Like the waiter in the restaurant, Master Lee must think we’re really weird
, he thought.
    “Well!” said Master Lee. “Shall we get to work now?”
    “Sure,” said Annie.
    “Sweep up the stalks, as well as the panda waste,” said Master Lee. “Then discard everything there.” He pointed to a trash bin in the cage.
    “Panda waste?” said Jack.
    “Yes,” said Master Lee. Seeing Jack’s expression, he added, “It’s not bad, I promise you. Their droppings look like little dry straw baskets.”
    Jack looked around. He saw what he thought Master Lee was talking about. It didn’t look that bad.
    “I will be back,” said Master Lee. “I am going to get fresh bamboo from the farmer’s truck.” Master Lee then left through the door at the back of the cage.
    “Darn,” said Jack, “we struck out.”
    “No special food here,” said Annie. She looked out in the yard. “And no panda here, either. I really want to see Bing-Bing!”
    “How did this happen?” said Jack. “We should be working on our mission. Not stuck in a cage picking up panda poop.”
    Annie giggled. “Don’t worry, we’ll leave soon,” she said. “Let’s just do our job first. It’s nice to help out here.”
    “Yeah, sure,” said Jack. “Sweep fast.”
    Jack and Annie began sweeping up old bamboo stalks and panda droppings. Jack filled a dustpan. As he dumped everything into the trash bin, Annie gasped.
    “I see her!” she whispered. “She’s up in a tree!”

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CHAPTER SIX
The Dragon Wakes
    J ack put on his brakes and jumped off his bike. Annie did the same. A huge boulder crashed down the mountain slope beside them. The boulder slammed onto the road right in front of them. They looked around wildly. Rocks were sliding and tumbling. Trees were whipping back and forth and then breaking apart. Branches, rocks, and dirt cascaded down the slope.
    As Jack tried to figure out what to do, another boulder tumbled down—and then another! Jack pulled Annie off the road. They scrambled into arocky crevice and huddled down. Clods of dirt hit their bike helmets.
    The ground finally stopped shaking and rumbling. For a moment, neither Jack nor Annie said anything. Then Jack uttered one word:
“Earthquake.”
    “I know,” Annie said hoarsely. “Like—like that earthquake we lived through in San Francisco.”
    “Except there,
buildings
crumbled around us,” said Jack. “Here, it’s mountains.”
    “I think it’s stopped,” said Annie. “Let’s look.”
    Annie started to stand up, but Jack pulled her back down. “Wait!” The ground had started shaking again. “Aftershock!” he said. “Watch out—more stuff might fall.”
    No sooner had Jack said that than another enormous boulder crashed to the ground. Then another one tumbled down. The earth stopped trembling again, but the air was so thick with dust and grit that it made Jack’s eyes burn.
    “I wonder if the pandas are all right,” said Annie.
    “Oh, man!” said Jack. “Bing-Bing!” He pictured the giant panda in her yard, trapped under a rock or a tree!
    “We’ve got to go back!” said Annie.
    “I know!” said Jack. They both scrambled out to the road. “Where are our bikes?”
    Jack and Annie looked around. As the dust settled, they saw massive damage up and down the highway. Fallen rocks, mud, and trees blocked both the way to Wolong Town and the way back to the panda center. A boulder the size of a car had crushed both their bikes.
    Jack and Annie took off their helmets and dropped them to the ground. “We can’t go back to the panda center now,” said Annie. “We can’t go to town. We can’t go anywhere.”
    “No kidding,” said Jack. “You’d have to be King Kong to get over this stuff.”
    “King Kong,” Annie repeated. Then she looked at Jack and grinned.
    “What?” he said.
    “King Kong. No problem,” she said. “We can do it.”
    “Do what?” said Jack.
    “Turn into King Kongs!” said Annie. “Well, not quite as big as King Kong, maybe, but we could be five times bigger than we are now.”
    “Ohhhh,” said Jack. He’d forgotten all about their magic potion!
    “It’s perfect,” said