I found this while going through some old papers — it’s a silly story I wrote when I was seven years old. I present it exactly as written, errors and all. I hope you enjoy it! -cc
Happy Animal Land
Once upon a time there was a mouse who was very nice and good and helpful. There were two turtles, friends of the mouse who were slow, but they were also nice and good and helpful. There were two rabbits who were the fastest ones, but they were the laziest ones too.
One day they wanted to see who was best at Cleaning Up The Forest so they made a mess. Because you can’t clean up a Clean Place! There were three dogs who told them when to start the contest by waving flags and barking all at the same time like girls on a drill team. They got one minute to clean up. (The forest was very small.)
The mouse got so much work done, he even had time to help the turtles. He got as much work done as the two turtles together because he didn’t make mistakes and he worked very fast. The turtles cooperated, but since they were so slow they did less work than one mouse. The rabbits, however, lost because they thought they were going to win and they played and giggled instead of working. They only worked 15 seconds and played 45.
Moral: You can’t do as much in 15 seconds as you can in a minute.
C. C. Naughton 