Mr Bear and The Autumn Leaves

Mr Bear was feeling very grumpy indeed.

He was having an awful time trying to sweep the autumn leaves out of his cave.

Every time he had managed to get all the leaves into a nice, neat golden pile, along would come the autumn wind and blow all the leaves back inside.

“Bah!”, said Mr Bear, all tired out , “I’m fed up with all this autumn cleaning. I just want to sit down with a nice, hot mug of honey tea and put my furry feet up”.

And, so, making a cup of tea, Mr Bear went over to his favourite rock and sat down.

But just then –

“Ouch!”, shouted the bear, leaping up from his seat in pain with a bottom full of prickly porcupine quills; spilling his honey tea everywhere.

“You should be more careful about where you sit, Mr Bear!”, said the Porcupine he had sat upon, which made the Bear very, very cross.

“Why you! I ought to -! I ought to -!”, growled the angry bear, bearing all his sharp ferocious teeth.

“You ought to what?”, said the Porcupine cheekily, sniggering, “You can’t eat me, you silly bear, or you’ll end up with a mouth full of my prickly quills”.

But, just then, as he was glaring down at the porcupines back, Mr Bear had a marvellous idea.

“Hmm? Yes they are very long and sharp aren’t they”, he said, scratching his chin in thought and then, all of a sudden, Mr Bear leapt onto his back and started to roll about on the ground laughing.

“Hee! Hee! Hee!”, he laughed as he rolled about.

“What ARE you doing?”, asked the porcupine, puzzled by the bears odd behaviour.

“I’m rolling about”, said the bear, “It’s awfully fun. You should really try it”.

“How odd”, thought the porcupine to himself, and yet the bear certainly seemed to be enjoying his peculiar game and so the porcupine thought that he’d give it a try and, falling onto his back, the porcupine started to roll about.

“Hmm?”, said the porcupine, rather disappointed, after several minutes of rolling,“There is a certain amount of enjoyment in it, I grant you, but it isn’t half as much fun as you made it seem”

But then the bear got up and, beaming broadly, pointed to the porcupine , saying, “I know that but just look at your back”.

And, turning and looking, the porcupine was amazed to see that his back was now all covered in Autumn leaves.

“Your spiky bristles have picked up all the leaves off the ground, so now I don’t have to worry about sweeping them up”, said the bear happily.

And the porcupine seemed happy too, “What an attractive autumn coat”, he said, “Not to mention, these leaves will make a very nice bedding for my winter nest”.

So then, both of them now very happy, they sat down together and had a nice hot cup of honey tea,
a very happy Autumn and a snug and cosy winter too.