|
"Beans? I think you’d better come
and see this," Poke called.
Beans yawned and stretched his
wings. "What is it? I’m still sleepy," he whispered.
"I can’t tell you. You have to come
and look at this," Poke replied. "The ground is alive."
"What?" Beans asked, standing up and
walking to the door of the barn. He stuck his head outside. "The ground is
alive," he gasped and then looking closer, "but it isn’t the ground. It’s
grasshoppers or crickets. There are millions of them."
"Grasshoppers? Where did they all
come from?" Poke wondered.
"I don’t know but it’s breakfast
time for me," Beans said. He flew out of the barn into the swarms of
grasshoppers and started gobbling them down.
"I don’t eat bugs," Poke shouted.
Beans didn’t even pay attention to
him. He was too busy gorging himself. Poke shrugged his pig shoulders and
went back into the barn. He shut the door tightly so no grasshoppers would
come in. He started nibbling on some hay. After a while he heard knocking
at the door. "Help!"
The cow, the horse and the sheep
looked at Poke. They weren’t about to go and open it. He ignored the
banging, or so he tried, but it didn’t stop. "Help! Help! Help!" shouted
Beans.
Poke finally opened the door. Beans
fell inside. He was covered with grasshoppers. They were on his head, in
his beak, on his comb, feet and even under his wings. "Get them off me,"
he cried. Poke slammed the door shut and started shooing the bugs off his
friend. Beans lay there, fat and round. He’d eaten so many of them that he
could hardly move, but there were just too many.
"We’ve got to get rid of these
grasshoppers, but how?" Poke wondered. "I know," he said after a few
moments of thought. He whispered something to Beans.
"Great idea," he answered. Beans
slowly made his way up to the loft of the barn. It was hard for him since
he’d gotten so fat, but he soon was standing at the door to the loft. He
looked down on the farm. You could hardly see a thing from all the
grasshoppers. "CAW! CAW! CAW!" he shouted.
Moments later a few crows replied,
"CAW! CAW! CAW!" They spotted all the bugs crawling around and swooped
down for a feast. Soon word spread to the other crows and within a few
minutes there were at least two dozen crows outside the barn, eating all
the grasshoppers. An hour later, there wasn’t one grasshopper left. The
only thing Poke and Beans could see were a lot of fat, black crows,
sitting against the trees, rubbing their tummies.
"Well, at least they got rid of the
bugs," Poke said. "Now I can go outside and find some fresh corn to eat
and you can hunt for some worms."
"Oh no, not me. I am so full! I
don’t want to eat for the rest of the day. In fact, I’m going to join the
crows and have a little siesta," Beans sighed.
Poke wandered into the cornfield. As
he munched the corn cobs, he looked at the crows and the rooster, all fat
and round and sound asleep. He chewed very quietly so he wouldn’t wake
them up. |
