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

foolish animal, now do you see what I mean?”

    “Now I see what you mean, you old beast,” shouted Gerbil, and she slammed the oven door shut and locked it.

    And that was the end of Granny Porky. Except for her quills.

    Unfortunately, the key to the hamster wheel had burned up and melted down inside the oven, and Gerbil didn’t know how to open the cage. But after three days of chewing, she managed at least to break the wheel free from the wall. Then she opened the door and gave the wheel a push.

    Hamster raced the cage proudly out the door and down the path. With a glorious crunch, he ran over the slug, who in three whole days of traveling had only made it to the bottom of the garden.

    Gerbil took up Granny Porky’s pincushion—very gently, very carefully. She also helped herself to several of the better cookbooks, the reading of which she had grown fond.

    With Hamster rolling in his wheel beside her, they set off through the woods. After many mishaps and wrong turns, they finally made it back to the riverbank where they had last seen their father.

    And there he was! He hadn’t died of the stink attack! However, Skunk had fed him on nothing but bits of predigested skunk cabbage, and he’d lost a lot of weight. So he wasn’t looking his best.

    But he was so delighted to see his children again that he felt better at once. With his strong beaver teeth he gnawed through the lock of the hamster cage.

    Then Hamster and Gerbil told him how Skunk had tried to lose them in the forest, hoping they would starve to death. “She’s an evil thing,” said Papa Beaver. “The world would be better rid of her.”

    So they devised a plan. They found some choice bits of skunk cabbage and marinated it in a paste made of mold, mildew, and mayonnaise. They worked on it in secret, and when it was ready, they rolled it like a ball, like a special cocktail snack, and put it in the hamster wheel.
    Then they rolled the hamster wheel onto the top of the bluff overlooking the river.

    When it was all ready, Hamster and Gerbil hid behind a clump of dandelions. “Oh darling,” Papa Beaver called, “I’ve made you a special treat.”

    “It better be good, you worthless lump of beaver!” screamed Skunk, coming out of the cave. “I don’t know why I ever bothered to marry you anyway! You’ve been nothing but trouble since the moment we met! Marry in haste, repent in leisure! At least those annoying little kids of yours are dead! That’s the only fun I ever got out of this marriage!”

    “I put your food in that private little dining room,” said Papa Beaver. “That way no one else will steal it.”

    “Now you’re thinking,” said Skunk. “This meal stinks to high heaven. You’re finally learning to cook the way I like it.”

    “I hope you like this ,” said Papa Beaver.

    Skunk climbed into the hamster wheel. It was a tight fit, but she settled down to nibble at her meal. When her back was turned, Papa Beaver slammed the door of the hamster wheel behind her.

    “What did you do that for, you buck-toothed bozo?” yelled Skunk.

    “A little more privacy,” said Papa Beaver.

    She ate a little more. Suddenly she began to scream. Her mouth was filled with porcupine quills, because the smelly food was wrapped around the pincushion bristly with Granny Porky’s spikes.

    “Doctor! Dentist! Yowza-dowza!” she wailed. “Will no one help me?” Just then Hamster and Gerbil scampered up and gave the hamster wheel a little push.

    “You are still alive! You twerps!” cried Skunk. She tried to hose them with her worst chemical-weapon spray, but her aim was poor. Her tail was curled around herself, and she ended up spritzing herself.

    The hamster wheel picked up speed and pitched over the bluff into the river. Skunk was never seen again, but a cloud of skunk-smog hung over the riverbank for a month.

    Papa Beaver and his beloved children began immediately to build themselves a new beaver dam. Even though they still