Leaping Beauty: And Other Animal Fairy Tales Read Online Free PDF Page A

Hamster,” cried Gerbil, “is this heaven?”

    “I think it’s a dream,” said Hamster. “But let’s go test it with our teeth.” With joy and hunger they fell upon the house. Hamster began to nibble up the front walk.
    Gerbil climbed on the windowsill and munched on the edge of the roof. It was almost too delicious to be true.

    A slug on the lettuce leaf above woke up and said in a bored voice, “My goodness, Granny Porky, look who’s here nibbling you out of house and home.” The door flew open. Out stepped the hugest old porcupine that Hamster and Gerbil had ever seen.

    “Nibble nibble on my house, are you just a little mouse?” she cried. She was pretty shortsighted, and she’d left her glasses on the butcher-block table inside.

    “No, I’m a hamster,” said Hamster. “Name of Hamster.”

    She had caught him by the tail. “A skinny little thing,” she said. “You want fattening up.”

    “Don’t forget the munching on the roof, Granny Porky,” droned the slug.

    Granny Porky reached up and gripped Gerbil’s tail. “Nibble nibble on my house, are you just a little mouse?” she said again.

    “I’m a gerbil, and proud of it!” cried Gerbil.

    “You’re a trespasser and I ought to charge you with assault and peppery,” said Granny Porky. “But then again, I need a maid. My eyes are going. I can’t read the cookbooks anymore. I can’t open the spice jars. You can be my sous chef and I’ll drop the charges. What’s your name?”

    “Gerbil,” said Gerbil. “Will you feed us if I work for you?”

    “They don’t call me Granny Porky for nothing,” said the porcupine. She hustled the brother and sister into her house. It smelled even more delicious inside than outside. Bread was baking in the oven, garlic was sizzling in butter on the range, and a pile of fresh basil leaves were heaped redolently on a cutting board.

    They had little time to take in the well-planned gourmet kitchen. With a strength surprising in one so old and feeble, Granny Porky lifted Hamster by the scruff of the neck. She tossed him into a cage shaped like a metal hamster wheel that she happened to have in the corner of the room. With a key that she kept on a string around her neck, she locked the door.

    “Now, dearie,” she said to Gerbil, “do what I tell you when I tell you to do it, and you and your brother will have plenty to eat.”

    “I would rather not be locked in this hamster wheel,” said Hamster.

    “Run,” said Granny Porky. “I like a hamster with a good rump on it. You have to build up those muscles if you’re going to be of use to me.” She gave the wheel a turn. “It’s the wheel of fortune! Ha-ha-ha!”

    “That’s not funny,” said Gerbil.

    “I’ll show you funny,” said Granny Porky, and she shot out a quill. It pinned Gerbil against the wall like an arrow. “Now are you going to be my slave, or do I have gerbil giblets for supper?”

    “At your beck and call, my queen,” said Gerbil in a small voice.

    “The thing is,” said Granny Porky, releasing the quill, “I want to have a big party. The do of the season. All the creepiest creatures of the woods will be coming. Owls and spiders and snakes and rats and vampire bats and the like. I need to serve a very special meal. I’ve been combing through my back issues of Gourmet magazine. I thought maybe a platter of hamster chops. What do you think?”

    “Yuck,” said Gerbil.

    “Yikes!” said Hamster, and ran faster, but he couldn’t get away because hamster wheels just turn around and around in one place. And he couldn’t knock it over because the pin around which the wheel rotated was hammered into the wall.

    “You may begin by scrubbing last night’s dishes,” said Granny Porky to Gerbil, and she pointed to a heap of high-quality copper pans and ceramic baking dishes, all encrusted with the kind of cheesy-eggy mixture that never comes off.

    Granny Porky slumped into a rocker and fell asleep by the