The Little Bear Who Couldn’t Sleep

The little brown bear just couldn’t get to sleep because all the other bears in his cave snored so terribly.

Sister Bear, although she would never have admitted to it, had an awful snore almost like a very rusty saw sawing through a plank of wood and Mother Bear had a terrible snore too; she would gurgle just like a blocked plughole but worst of all was Father Bear whose snore sounded just like an old warthog grunting.

“It’s no good”, said the little bear, putting his brown furry paws over his ears, “I’ll never get to sleep with this racket going on”.

And so the little bear cub decided to go for a walk in the woods nearby.

“Somewhere with a bit more peace and quiet, I think”, he said to himself as he trundled out of the cave.

He hadn’t gone very far into the woods, however, before he suddenly came face to face with a very large and very ferocious monster; a creature with the head of a wolf and the wings of a bat and the tail of serpent called a Grothum.

And when the Grothum saw the little bear, he bore his teeth and let out a loud terrifying roar, hoping to scare it.

But the little bear, inspite of his size, was very brave, not to mention cunning and when he saw the roaring Grothum, he didn’t cower or quiver or try to run but merely yawned and said,

“Not bad but I’ve seen more frightening creatures than you”.

“More frightening than me?”, scoffed the Grothum, “I don’t believe it. There’s nothing in this forest more frightening than I am”.

“Oh, it’s not in this forest”, the little bear replied, “But it lives nearby, in a cave”.

The Grothum was curious.

“Hmm?”, he said, scratching his hairy chin with one of his claws, “I’d like to see this creature that is more frightening than me”.

“Oh no you wouldn’t”, said the little bear, “You’d be too frightened of it”.

“Hah!”, said the Grothum, “That’ll be the day, when I’m frightened of anything. Just you take me to this creature and we’ll see who is the fiercest around here”.

And so, the bear lead the Grothum out of the forest to the cave where he said the creature lived.

But just as they were approaching the cave, suddenly, from inside its darkened entrance, the Grothum heard a terrible loud growling, then a grunting and a gurgling sound.

“W-w-was that it?”, asked the Grothum , stuttering and starting to shake with fear.

“Yes”, said the little bear, “That’s the noise that it always makes when it’s hungry and ready to come out of its cave”.

“Oh dear”, said the Grothum, backing away from the cave towards the forest, “Well, perhaps we shouldn’t disturb it then”.

The little bear giggled when he saw how frightened the Grothum was.

“You’re not scared of it are you?”, he asked, covering up his sniggering mouth with a paw.

“Me?”, the Grothum asked, a little embarrassed, “Certainly not. It’s just that we monsters have to respect each other’s privacy”.

“Huh”, said the Bear cub, sounding disappointed, “And I thought you were braver than that”.

“Well”, replied the Grothum, annoyed, “If you’re so brave little bear then why don’t you go into the cave?”.

But then, much to the Grothum’s amazement, the little bear did just that, running right into the mouth of the darkened cave.

Inside the cave, however, was not a ferocious growling, gurgling monster like he’d told the Grothum but just his sister bear, his mother bear and his father bear snoring loudly; their snores echoing off the walls of the cave so that they sounded almost like a monster.

But now the little bear cub was feeling rather sleepy and so, curling up beside his mother, the bear cub closed his eyes and then he too began to snore.

“Well”, he yawned and muttered as he drifted off into a dreamy slumber, “If you can’t beat them you may as well join them”.