GIGGLE AND THE HALLOWEEN SURPRISE
THREE GHOST STORIES
By Lynn
Schiffhorst
(1)
GIGGLE AND THE HALLOWEEN SURPRISE
A nine-year-old ghost named Giggle was standing on the top of Spirit
Hill. Next to her was a tall ghost.
Dancing on tiptoes, Giggle looked all over the sky. She was searching for someone. “Gusty will be here any minute, Uncle Pete,”
she said to the tall ghost.
“There he is,” cried Giggle. She
pointed to a small wind that was whooshing toward them over the trees. “Please, Uncle Pete, say hello to Gusty on
your piccolo.”
The tall ghost was holding a shiny metal tube that had holes on top. He put it up to his mouth and blew through the
holes. Tweet-tweet-tweet sang the piccolo.
“Hi, Gusty,” Giggle called.
“Hi, Giggle,” shouted the excited little wind. “My mama said I could stay overnight.”
“Great! We’ll go
trick-or-treating together,” said Giggle.
“Gusty, this is my Uncle Pete.”
“Hi, Uncle Pete,” said Gusty.
“I was just telling Uncle Pete what happened in school today,” said
Giggle.
“It got me so mad! A boy rushed up to me and hollered, ‘There’s
no such thing as a ghost.’ She stamped
her little foot. “He was laughing at
me.”
Gusty’s face got red. “I’ll find
him. I’ll blow him over,” he promised.
“Oh, I know where he is,” said Giggle.
“His name is Rusty, and we’re in the same class. He lives around the corner from us.” Giggle and her family lived in the church at
the bottom of Spirit Hill.
Giggle thought for a moment. “I
don’t want you to get back at him, Gusty,” she said. “I’m going to fix him. With your help and Uncle Pete’s.” Giggle made her hands into fists. “I wish I had told him there was no such
thing as a Rusty. No such thing as a
squeaky-voiced, red-headed know-it-all.
Well, tonight I’m going to give that know-it-all a Halloween Surprise.”
She brightened up. “Let’s have
some cheese sandwiches,” she said to Gusty.
“OK,” cried Gusty, sounding thrilled.
“What’s a cheese sandwich?”
Giggle ate a sandwich out of her right hand, while she stuck her left
hand up in the air with a sandwich for Gusty.
The little wind finished his in just a few bites. “Can I have another one, Giggle?” he begged. “I really, really like cheese.”
“Sure,” she said, and she fed him three more.
After their picnic, it began to get dark. The time was just right for going back and
starting the Surprise.
“Uncle Pete,” said Giggle, “if we stand on the edge of this rock, Gusty
will whoosh us down to the church. It’s
nicer than walking or skipping down.”
Uncle Pete held tight to his piccolo.
He walked to the edge of the rock and placed himself next to
Giggle.
Gusty blew around until he was at just the right place for shooting both
of them into the air with a single whoosh.
He whooshed with all his might, and one second later, the two ghosts were
somersaulting through the air into the village.
As soon as they landed, Giggle and Uncle Pete flitted over to Rusty’s
house. And Gusty followed right above
them.
Giggle pointed to the attic. “Do
you see that window?” she asked Gusty. “That’s
where Rusty told the other kids he keeps his Halloween costume. We need you to puff us up there.”
“OK,” said Gusty. Right away, he
puffed them up and over the window sill.
As Gusty floated outside the window, Uncle Pete hid behind an old bookcase
on the far side of the attic. But Giggle
stayed at the window and leaned over the sill.
She whispered secret instructions
to Gusty.
At the end, she told him, “OK, I’m going to hide now.” She hopped behind a broken sofa, scrunching
down so she couldn’t be seen.
Just as the sun went down, Giggle heard a very soft tweet-tweet-tweet. There was
the signal Giggle and Gusty were listening for.
Uncle Pete was letting them know that Rusty was coming up the stairs to
the attic.
A door creaked open. From her hiding place, Giggle saw a circle of
light moving across the floor. Rusty had
switched on a flashlight. Then the light
stopped moving. Rusty had set the
flashlight on something next to the sofa.
Following Giggle’s instructions, Gusty blew through the window. He had to put that flashlight out of
action! He puffed at it once, and he got it! The flashlight rolled off the box where it
had been lying on its side. It landed
with a crash, and its light went out.
Just as Rusty got down on the floor and fumbled in the blackness,
searching for the flashlight, Uncle Pete played his piccolo. Tweet-tweet-tweet
came from behind the bookcase. Then a
louder TWEET-TWEET-TWEET.
Giggle heard Rusty squeak out a question. “What’s going on?”
Uncle Pete kept making sounds like a bird. A very loud TWEET-TWEET-TWEET was followed by an even louder set of tweets.
Rusty screamed out, “Are you a
monster-bird? Don’t peck me. I never did anything to you.” Desperate for a hiding place, he squeezed his
head and shoulders under the sofa.
Quick as a flash, Giggle climbed up the back of the sofa and dropped on
to the cushions, so Rusty wouldn’t see her.
Just as she sat down, she heard a mad voice underneath her shout out, “This
isn’t fair!”
Stretching out her OOOs in a spooky way, Giggle asked, “WHOOOO started
it?”
“Not me,” protested Rusty. He
sounded squeakier than ever.
“NOOOOO one,” insisted the spooky voice.
“I’m NOOOOO one. I don’t EXISSSST!” The last word hissed at Rusty like a snake.
Scrambling out from under the sofa, Rusty begged,
“Giggle, is that you?”
“YESSSSS,” hissed Giggle. She
stood up on the cushions so Gusty could see her whiteness gleaming in the
dark. With one bound, she leaped at
Rusty.
Instead of letting her land on her feet, Gusty whooshed. He blew her around the boy’s head like a
hurricane. She flapped. She flew.
She turned upside down and right ways up. She swished past Rusty’s right ear. She swished past his left ear.
When she bounced off Rusty’s shoulder, he shouted, “Stop! Stop!”
“OK,”
said Giggle in a happy voice. “You’ve
had your Halloween Surprise. You can
turn the lights on now.”
“There aren’t any lights,” grumbled Rusty. “That’s why I use a flashlight. But the dumb thing has rolled away.”
Giggle turned to Gusty. “Blow everywhere,” she ordered. “We have to find Rusty’s flashlight.”
Gusty whooshed himself around the dark floor. In a minute, he had puffed the flashlight out
of the dust under the sofa and rolled it next to Rusty’s shoe.
“Thanks,” said Rusty. He looked
at Giggle and asked, “Who’s this?”
Giggle jumped up. “Rusty, this is
Gusty. He’s my best friend.” To
the little wind, she said, “This is Rusty, my worst enemy.”
“GIGGLE,” yelled Rusty, “I’m not your enemy.” But he knew why she had said that. “All right, when I hollered at you today, I
did a stupid thing.” He hung his head.
“But kids say mean things to me too. I’m the shortest boy in the third
grade, and I’ve got a squeaky voice.”
Giggle exploded. “Rusty, how
would you like to be ME? I go to class
every day and nobody sees me. So nobody
ever says Hi to me. And the one boy
who’s special, who does see me, treats me like I’m not there. Ghosts have feelings too, you know.”
“Am I special?” asked Rusty in a small voice.
“Course, you are,” said Giggle.
She was going to say more, but a tweet-tweet-tweet
came from the other side of the attic.
“Rusty,” she said. “Meet my Uncle
Pete.”
A tall ghost wearing a big smile walked out from behind the old bookcase. He was
tweeting one of his “pleased to meet you” tweets.
Rusty mumbled, “Hello, sir.” He scuffed his shoe against the floor. “I’m sorry I thought you were a monster. I must have sounded like a big baby,
screaming, ‘Don’t hurt me.’”
Uncle Pete gave Rusty a man-to-man wink.
He played an airy little tune on his piccolo.
“That’s Uncle Pete’s way of saying, ‘No problem,’” explained Giggle. “Now, where’s your costume?”
Rusty got excited. “Over here,” he
said. With the flashlight in one hand,
he opened a big box. He took out a
folded piece of material and shook it to get the wrinkles out. It was white flannel with two holes like eyes
cut in the top.
“Rusty,” cried Giggle, “you’re going to be a ghost.”
“Yeah,” admitted Rusty. He
sounded embarrassed. “It’s silly, I
guess. Do you want me to figure out
something else to put on?”
“No, but you have to promise me one thing,”
said Giggle to Rusty.
Rusty lifted his right hand, “I
promise I won’t make fun of ghosts ever again.”
“Oh, we settled that,” said Giggle, sweeping on to a whole new
subject. “I want you to let Uncle Pete
and Gusty and me go trick-or-treating with you.
And you have to promise you’ll share your candy with us.” She spelled out what that meant. “We get half your chocolate.”
“OK, let’s go,” shouted Rusty, pulling on his ghost costume as he ran
toward the door of the attic.
Gusty blew through the window first.
As Giggle and Uncle Pete jumped down into the street, she called to
Gusty, “Want me to tell you a secret?”
“Tell me,” begged Gusty.
“You’re going to like chocolate even better than cheese,” promised
Giggle.
(2) GIGGLE AND THE WITCHING
KITCHEN
It was a sunny Saturday in the middle of November, and Giggle was
running home for lunch. Dashing through
the churchyard on her way to the bell tower where she lived, she saw
Rusty. She stopped, hopped on a
tombstone, and waited for him to catch up.
“Come home with me and have lunch,” called
Giggle.
Rusty called back, “OK.” He
turned off the sidewalk and on to the path that led to the door of the
church. That was the way he always went
to Giggle’s.
“Come over here,” said Giggle.
“This is a shortcut. We can run between the stones. Nobody minds.”
Rusty looked very unhappy.
Finally, he told the truth. “I
don’t like the churchyard, Giggle.”
“How come?” asked Giggle cheerfully.
She loved the big grassy meadow where all the stones had names.
Rusty didn’t answer. But he made
his hands into fists, shoved them into his pockets, and walked onto the
grass. “All right,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Giggle jumped down. Dancing ahead
of him in a happy-go-lucky way, she led him through the rows of stones toward
the bell tower.
As soon as they were inside the tower with the door to the outside
closed, Rusty looked better. He ran up
to Giggle’s parents with a big smile.
The older ghosts had adopted him on his first visit, and he loved
them.
“Hi,
Rusty,” they said.
“Hello, Aunt Alice
Giggle’s mama pointed to one of the chairs that were standing against
the wall. “Have a seat while I make
lunch,” she suggested.
Obediently, Rusty sat down. But
he felt a little funny. Where was her
refrigerator? Her stove? Where would the food come from? “Aunt Alice, how do you cook?” he asked.
“Oh, it’s easy, Rusty,” Giggle’s mama answered him. She faced the south wall and said in a
singing kind of way, “Chicken noodle soup with lots of carrots, please.”
ZIP! To his surprise, a stove
appeared with a pot bubbling on top of it. Giggle’s mama peered in. “It’s done,” she smiled. She put out her hand, and – ZIP! – in her
hand was a blue bowl. She poured the
soup into the bowl.
“Table, please,” sang Giggle’s papa in the same musical tone. The words had no sooner left his mouth than a
table appeared in front of Rusty. It was
set with four smaller bowls and four side plates as well as spoons.
Just as Mrs. Ghost put the blue bowl down on
the table, the stove disappeared.
Giggle asked, “Milk, Rusty?”
“Yes, please,” he answered, and – ZIP! – there
was a tall glass of milk, right next to his hand. Rusty’s mind was spinning with questions.
When he had licked the last noodle out of his spoon, he said, “That was
great, Aunt Alice.”
But Giggle’s papa told Rusty, “We haven’t had dessert yet.” He turned back to face the wall. “Baked apples,” he sang.
An oven appeared where the stove had been. A red light at the top showed that the oven
was on. Giggle’s mama popped up and
opened the door. She took out a pan with
four baked apples in it and spooned one onto each plate. ZIP!
When she put the pan back, the oven disappeared.
“Cream, please,” she sang out, and all the apples began to swim in
cream. Rusty thought it was the best
dessert he had ever eaten. He finished
first, and pushing back from the table, he began his questions.
“Aunt Alice,” he asked, “could you teach my Mom to cook like you?” Rusty’s parents owned a grocery store in the
town. They worked long days and long hours. He thought how happy his mom would be to make
dinner in a ZIP!
Mrs. Ghost looked sorry. “I don’t
think so, Rusty,” she said. “People
don’t have Witching Kitchens.”
“When we got married,” said Mr. Ghost, “we
named the wall the Wishing Kitchen, because it lets us wish for anything we
need. But when Giggle was little, she
called it the Witching Kitchen, and the name stuck.” Just as he said that, Mr. Ghost put down his
spoon. He was the last to finish
dessert.
ZIP! Without a word being spoken, the table and the dirty silverware
disappeared.
“Wow!” thought Rusty. His mom
would jump for joy if she had nothing to wash up after dinner. His face fell a little as he thought how hard
his mom worked.
“What’s wrong?” asked Giggle. “Do
you have a tummy ache?”
Her father reached over and patted Rusty on the back. “I think we have a good son here who wants to
help his parents.”
“I do,” said Rusty fiercely. But
HOW could he help? This was the Big
Question. “I can’t work in the store
yet,” he told them. “I have to be a lot
older.”
“Rusty, you’re a great help to your parents now,” said Mrs. Ghost.
“No, I’m not,” he answered miserably.
“I’m just a baby.”
Giggle jumped off her chair.
“You’re not a baby, Rusty.” She
stamped her foot. “Don’t you do all your
homework every single day without being told?”
“Yeah,” said Rusty. He didn’t
think that was any big deal.
“I’ll bet you don’t just drop your dirty clothes on the floor and make
your mother pick them up,” said Mrs. Ghost.
“I
put them in the hamper,” said Rusty. He
didn’t see that this was any big deal either.
“Do you take the garbage out after dinner without your father reminding
you to?” asked Mr. Ghost.
Rusty
nodded. Sometimes he forgot, but he was
generally good about remembering. He was
beginning to feel better.
Giggle’s parents went on. “Do you
stop by the store to say Hi to your parents after school?” “Do you kiss them good-night before you go to
bed?”
“Sure,” said Rusty.
“You’re wonderful!” chorused the two ghosts.
“I am?” asked Rusty. He couldn’t
believe it.
“See?” said Giggle. “I said you
weren’t a baby.” She hopped into her mom’s
lap.
Rusty took a deep breath. Looking
into the smiling faces of the Ghosts, he got up the courage to ask the next Big
Question that bothered him.
As he was trying to get the words right, Giggle said, “You want to find
out something.”
Rusty’s mouth dropped open. “How
did you know?” he asked.
Giggle drank the last of her milk.
“I can always tell,” she said.
Rusty gulped. He asked in a rush,
“Aunt Alice, are you and Giggle and Uncle Sid out there?” He pointed out the window to the graveyard.
“No, Rusty,” said Mrs. Ghost kindly.
“We’re right here with you.”
Rusty felt like a fool. He began
to stutter. “No, I mean, are you
b-b-buried out there?”
A light dawned on Mr. Ghost’s face.
“Rusty is asking if we were people once, like him. And if we were, did we die and come back as
ghosts.”
Rusty nodded.
Giggle flopped backwards. She was
in shock! “Rusty,” she asked, “do you
think we’re dead people walking around?”
Rusty squirmed. “Some older kids
told me that ghosts were dead people who couldn’t rest, because they had done
something wrong.”
Giggle exploded. “Now we’re bad
dead people?”
She was going to say more, but her mama stopped her. “Rusty is our guest, Giggle. He’s only being honest.”
Her papa explained. “We’ve been invisible
from the start, Rusty. We’ve never had a
body like yours.”
Rusty’s eyes shone. His friends had
never had bodies! So they weren’t in the
churchyard! He could have done
cartwheels around the room.
“Rusty,” asked Mrs. Ghost, “did your parents expect you home for
lunch?”
“Yikes, I forgot!” he said.
Jumping up, he begged, “Can Giggle come home with me? I’m going to ride my bike, and she can sit on
the handlebars.” Giggle weighed less
than a couple of library books.
“Of course,” said Mrs. Ghost.
“Come
on, Giggle,” cried Rusty, and the two of them raced out the door.
When they got downstairs, Rusty ran toward the
churchyard. “Let’s go this way, Giggle,”
he called. “It’s a shortcut.”
There was nothing to be afraid of anymore.
(3) GIGGLE SAVES THE SQUIRRELS!
One afternoon in late November, when Giggle and Rusty got out of
school, Gusty was waiting for them. He hid behind a tree to make sure they didn’t
see him. Then he blew hard on their
backs. As he pushed them toward the
church tower, Giggle called out to Rusty, “Bet I can beat you!”
The two of them tore
down the path with Giggle way in the lead.
Out of breath, Rusty had to stop.
“Hey, this isn’t fair,” he called.
“You’re so light the wind just blows you along.”
As soon as Rusty said “wind,” Giggle looked up. “Hi, Gusty,” she called. “I want you to blow just on Rusty , OK
“OK,” agreed Gusty. This time he
whooshed Rusty along as hard as he could.
But when they got to the churchyard, Giggle forgot the race. She saw squirrels playing hide and seek among
the leaves. Spotting her favorite
squirrel, Giggle shouted, “Hi, Nelly.”
When Nelly heard Giggle’s voice, she stopped, stared, and shook her tail. Rusty stared at the tail. It was the oddest one he had ever seen on a
squirrel. Instead of being wide and
fluffy, it was thin and stiff.
A
second squirrel darted out around a pine tree. His tail was thin too, but he
shook it enthusiastically. “That’s
Nutty,” said Giggle. “He’s her
brother.”
“Hi, Nelly, Hi, Nutty,” shouted Gusty.
The two squirrels chattered up at him.
It was their way of saying hello.
“Hi,”
called Rusty. He couldn’t take his eyes
off the two squirrels, and Giggle knew why.
“Everybody
in their family has a skinny tail,” she explained. “But they’re very, very smart!”
Holding a pinecone in her teeth, Nelly dashed over to Rusty. Propping herself up on her back legs, she
began to nibble at the cone. It was her
afternoon snack.
Looking down at Nelly, Rusty saw that one
of his shoelaces had come untied. As he
bent down to fix it, the little squirrel hopped right onto his shoe.
Still chewing, she watched him pull the
two ends of the lace, knot them, and make a bow. When he finished, she let her cone roll down
to the ground. She got so busy sniffing
the bow from all sides that that she didn’t see Rusty’s hand move around behind
her.
The hand sneaked closer. And
closer. It grabbed her tail and gave it
a little tug.
Faster
than lightning, Nelly streaked back into the center of the churchyard. From the top of a stone angel, she chattered
at him fiercely. Then she chattered at
Giggle and Gusty. She was mad at them
too.
“She’s
scolding you,” grinned Giggle. “You gave
her a scare!”
“Sorry, Nelly. I was just kidding,” called Rusty.
But getting to know the squirrels reminded Rusty of something. “My Dad was talking last night to the people
who own the field over there,” he told Giggle and Gusty. He meant the big meadow with tall oaks that
was across the road from the churchyard.
“Daddy said they’re going to send in workmen soon to put out bait for
the squirrels.” He added slowly, “The
kind of bait that has poison in it.”
“That’s awful,” exploded Giggle.
“Can’t your Dad stop them?”
“He didn’t like it either,” said Rusty.
“But he didn’t know what to do.”
“How
could somebody be mean enough to poison them?” Giggle pointed to Nutty and Nelly, who were
playing a game of tag around a large flat tombstone.
When Nutty caught his back leg in a loop of ivy and tumbled over, a
bigger squirrel, hanging upside down on a maple tree, spiraled down the
trunk. She watched him closely until he
got up, shook himself, and darted off again.
“She’s their mom,” said Giggle.
Giggle pointed to another squirrel, crouching under a hedge of purple
berries. This one had a bent back, and
his top fur had faded from brown to gray, but he was keeping a sharp eye on
Nutty and Nelly. “That’s their Grandpa,”
she told Rusty.
Now that he was friends with a squirrel family, Rusty felt worse than
ever about the poisoned bait. But what
could he do? What could Giggle and Gusty
do?
“Tell them,” begged Gusty. “Tell
them now!” He meant warn the squirrels
about the bait so they wouldn’t eat it.
“I don’t know what bait looks like,” said Rusty. “Besides it probably gets all over other
things.” He couldn’t think of a single
plan that would work. Then he remembered
something.
“Giggle,” he asked, “When you were little, did your Mom ever read you a
story called “The Piped Piper”?
In his imagination, he could see the picture of a man in a red, blue,
yellow and green coat. When the man played his flute, he could make
children and animals follow him anywhere he went.
Giggle nodded. She remembered the
story too.
Rusty said slowly, “If we knew a piper, a nice kind of piper, he could
play for the squirrels in the field.
They could all follow him over to the church and be safe.”
“Rusty,” said Giggle excitedly.
“We do know a piper. A nice
one! It’s Uncle Pete!”
“Come on!” she said. “We’ll go
right now and find him.” Looking at
Gusty, she pointed to an upper window in the tower and yelled, “Meet us
there.” She grabbed Rusty, and the two
of them dashed through the doorway and up the winding staircase.
As they ran in to Uncle Pete’s room, they saw him leaning against the
window, playing a cheerful little melody on his piccolo for Gusty, who was
breezing around just outside.
Giggle ran right up to him.
“Uncle Pete, you have to listen!” she begged. And she told him about the plan to kill the
squirrels.
When she finished, Uncle Pete changed the tune on his piccolo. He blew a series of shrill little
blasts. The blasts were his way of
saying, “This kind of thing makes me very, very mad!”
“Uncle Pete,” asked Rusty, “can you be the Pied Piper? Can you get all the squirrels to leave the
field and come over to the churchyard?
And stay in the
churchyard? They’ll have to stay a long
time.”
Uncle Pete smiled and waved his piccolo
toward the door. He was telling the
children, “Let’s go!”
With Giggle leading the way, and Gusty blowing above them, the four of
them hurried over to the field. When
they came to a clearing in the middle, they stopped. The sun was going down, and the air was
getting colder, but when Uncle Pete began to play a warm, friendly melody,
everything changed.
A
golden light, like noontime in summer, spread itself over the field. The light made it easy for the children to
see the oak trees in front of them.
As the air filled with music, squirrels
burst into the clearing. Dozens of
squirrels. They scrabbled down the trees. They scampered out from the bushes. They pulled their noses out of the holes they
were digging.
They rushed toward the place where Uncle Pete was playing.
Keeping
time with the melody, they jumped from side to side and back again. Their tails waved like banners in a
hurricane. They couldn’t stay still for
a second. The music was bubbling through
them.
As Uncle Pete piped on, the children saw a sight they almost couldn’t
believe. Acorns began to fall out of the oak trees. They fell as thickly as drops of rain in a
downpour.
Instantly, the squirrels made a U-turn.
They sprinted away from the clearing and began to dash under the
oaks. They skidded into piles of
acorns. They splashed in a sea of
acorns! Their teeth were clashing in
high gear, ready to chew and chew and chew.
Then the strangest thing of all happened.
They couldn’t catch a single acorn!
As Uncle Pete’s melody chuckled through the air, the acorns bounced this
way and that way. They landed behind the
squirrels. They bopped the squirrels on
the head. They zigzagged around on their
own, just out of reach.
Rusty and Giggle watched the squirrels whirl and twist as they jumped
after the acorns. One little boy
squirrel leaped so high that he lost his balance and flopped backwards. Like his brothers and sisters, he came up
with empty paws. The little brown nut he
was chasing just bounded away.
At that moment, Uncle Pete looked up at Gusty and waved to him in the
way that means, “Help me with this.” As
he began to pipe a new kind of melody-- a windy little tune – Gusty blew
down. He breezed across the acorns and
began to whoosh them over the field and across the road to the churchyard.
Wave after wave of acorns went rolling through the grass. Over rocks and tree roots, they spun, top
over bottom, bottom over top. Gusty was
rolling them away from the squirrels!
But
the squirrels wouldn’t let that happen! In
a flash, the whole pack charged off in pursuit.
The
rolling waves of acorns were in the lead with Gusty behind them. After Gusty, came the squirrels. Giggle and Rusty were racing behind them,
while Uncle Pete strolled along in the back.
As the children got close to the road, they saw Nelly and Nutty, their
mom and their grandpa staring at the tide of glossy brown nuts heading straight
toward them. They tumbled smack into Nelly’s
family with such force that they knocked them right off their paws.
Half-buried, the four squirrels were kicking and batting and spitting
the nuts off themselves, trying to get free.
They had just jumped clear, when the other squirrels arrived from the
field. All of them leaped onto the
acorns. And this time, the acorns didn’t
mind being caught.
As Rusty, Gusty and Giggle watched the party going on around them, Uncle
Pete ambled into the churchyard, shaking the moisture out of his piccolo. The golden light had faded, and evening was
closing in, but the squirrels were safe!
All the acorns had been blown into the churchyard. The field was empty now, so they had no
reason go there.
“Hurray for Gusty and Uncle Pete,” shouted Rusty and Giggle.
All of a sudden, Rusty was given something
else to think about. “Look at this,
Giggle,” he called.
Nelly
had separated herself from the acorn-munching party and run over to Rusty. Grabbing one of his shoelaces, she chewed
away at the tip. Crunch, crunch,
crunch! Tiny chips of plastic flew
through the air and littered the ground.
Then Nelly dashed off as fast as she had
come.
“Nelly!” yelled Rusty, looking at his ruined shoelace. “What did you do that for?”
As if she heard his question, Nelly turned around and chattered
something at him.
“What
does that mean?” Rusty asked Giggle, as she and Gusty burst out laughing.
“She was getting you back,” grinned Giggle. “She said, ‘I’m sorry, Rusty. I was just kidding.’”
THE END (for
now, but check back later. . . .)
