- Bud pays attention to the sound of his breath, which sounds loud in the quiet shed because he is so scared.
- Bud's eyes adjust to the darkness, and he can see a little now.
- Thinking that the door might not really be locked, Bud tries the knob and is terrified by three fish heads nailed to the door. He throws a rag over them to hide the ugly faces.
- Bud searches for a place to sleep and decides not to sleep on the floor since there are probably bugs there. He thinks about his friend Bugs from the Home. His name was Bugs because he once got a cockroach stuck inside his ear.
- Bud spreads his bedding down on the woodpile and makes shadow puppets with his hands on the papered windows.
- With his knife, Bud scrapes strips of paper off the window. Some light shines in, which makes the shed a little less scary, so Bud is able to nap.
- When he wakes up, Bud sees a vampire bat sleeping upside down above him.
- He decides he is not going to let this bat bite him, so he gets a rake and is about to take swing at it.
- While he's getting ready to hit the bat, Bud remembers the three hundred and twenty eighth rule of Bud Caldwell's Rules and Things for Having a Funner Life and Making a Better Liar Out of Yourself: when you make up your mind to do something, hurry up and do it…
- Bud swings and slices the bat in half but notices it sounds funny, like "paper rubbing together" (3.44). Oh, Bud, that wasn't a bat; that was a hornets' nest.
- A buzzing sound erupts, and Bud feels a sting on his cheek. He reaches up and pulls off a hornet. The hornet stings his palm when he tries to squish it.
- Bud gets stung all over his body and thinks this is probably why the last boy they locked in the shed was so swollen up. He tries the door but his finger gets bitten by a fish head.
- To save himself, Bud breaks through the window and kills the last few hornets that are on him.
- After he calms down, Bud gets mad. Really mad. He gets so mad that he wants revenge.