1. Pongo Trouserpeck

TALES OF DINGDONG FOREST. Part One

Sally Slowcoach paused on her way along the path to her burrow and eyed Pongo Trouserpeck suspiciously

“Why aren’t you in your field?” she asked, “after all, you’re a scarecrow and really ought to be scaring crows in your field.”

Pongo Trouserpeck (he was called that because he smelled rather nasty and when crows came along for him to scare they were so fascinated by his trousers that they spent most of their time pecking them.

Sally Slowcoach thought the birds were rather silly and was really quite pleased that none of them wanted to peck her. She didn’t wear trousers, of course, though she knew that some storybook rabbits did, but she chose not to.

“Some rather nasty boys came along and picked me up and slung me,” complained Pongo Trouserpeck, “and they know I can’t walk even though I do wear trousers.”

Sally Slowcoach felt sorry for the scarecrow because, besides having a nasty smell to his person he was really quite nice, and in the past she had spent quite a lot of time discussing all sorts of things with him.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he replied, almost in tears, which is most unusual for scarecrows who hardly ever cry. “If you try to pick me up you might hurt your back, and then I’ll be so upset I might lose all my stuffing.”

“We can’t have that,” grinned Sally Slowcoach, noticing that Pongo already had a few strands of straw sticking out of his shirt.

She frowned, and she thought, and then she thought, and she frowned. It was doing things like frowning and thinking that gave her ideas.

“I know,” she said, “what about some crows?”

“I thought of crows because I’m friends with most of them,” he replied, “but when Farmer Bigpants made me he made me so heavy that no crow would have a chance of moving me.”

“But what if two crows tried to lift you?” asked Sally thoughtfully, “or maybe even three or four?”

Pongo shook his head. “Not even five or six,” he moaned, and even though he was made of straw and was dry as a bone, a great big watery tear started running out of his left eye.

This upset Sally so much she decided she really must do something, so she hopped over the fence that separated the path she was on from the field she wasn’t on and landed in that field, which meant she was suddenly standing on it.

There were crows just about everywhere seeing as there wasn’t a scarecrow around to warn them off. They were big and black and might have been hungry had they not gobbled up a great deal of Farmer Bigpants best corn.

“Hey you fellows!” called Sally Slowcoach, and a whole host of crows fluttered down to see what she wanted.

“Pongo’s in trouble,” she told them, “and you all like Pongo, don’t you?”

“He’s a very kindly scarecrow,” agreed one of the big black birds.

“He lets us get away with quite a lot of Farmer Bigpants’ corn,” agreed a second crow, winking secretively.

“Can you think of any way of getting him back into this field?” asked Sally, and the crows ducked their heads down and started thinking.

“I know,” said the biggest of the big black crows, “Mrs Bigpants, the farmer’s wife and she does wear really big pants, has put her washing on the clothes’ line to dry. We could use some of that.” He paused, then turned to the other crows, “come on fellows, I’ll show the way.”

The crows flew off and Sally hopped back over the fence to poor old Pongo who was still trying to look as if he wasn’t crying.

“The crows said they’d help,” she told him.

It didn’t take long for the crows to return, a great black cloud of them, or so it seemed, and they were carrying a nice white sheet that Mrs Bigpants had hung on the clothes’ line to dry.

Then they all started pecking it.

Mrs Bigpants would be most annoyed if she saw them pecking her nice white sheet, but she couldn’t because she was making jam in her kitchen, and singing a silly love song whilst she did it.

Stir the jam, bim bom bam, give it to your boyfriend and kiss him, she sang. It didn’t make much sense to anyone but her but it did make her think of Farmer Bigpants when he was in a cheery mood.

The crows pecked and pecked and tore for ages until the nice white sheet was a mass of shreds. Then they placed the middle bit that they hadn’t pecked at all on the ground and grinned at Sally Slowcoach.

“Now it’s your turn,” they said in their lovely crow voices, “roll him onto it!”

“Clever birds,” thought Sally, and using all of her strength and pushing with all of her might she managed to roll Pongo onto the middle of the sheet.

Then fifty crows each took a strand of the sheet that they’d made with all that pecking in their dark grey beaks and when they were ready they all flapped their wings at the same time.

“One, two, three, flap!” urged the largest of the crows.

And flap they did. All of them.

Slowly they rose with the sheet and the scarecrow into the air and even more slowly they drifted with the sheet and the scarecrow over the fence and into the field.

“You are so kind,” thanked Pongo when they had set him down, gently as if he was light as a feather “what are you going to do with Mrs Bigpants sheet now that you’ve torn it into shreds?”

“We’ll take it back,” they promised him, “and make it look as if the wind has blown it into shreds!”

“You are clever birds,” said Pongo.

And, “you are very clever birds,” said Sally, and she hopped on her way to her burrow in time for tea.

© Peter Rogerson, 15.11.20

Reviews

[Wild Rose]

Nice childrens story

Naugty crows destroying Mrs Bingpants's sheet
But it was in as good cause

[Peter Rogerson]

I've tried to create echoes of stories I enjoyed 70 years ago.

[Wild Rose]

Aye well that's what we come to now
Don't travel > don't mix
We can't go camping - mind its too cold & wet here And don't fancy going to a foreign place as things are > If we were to live in confinement when we were away we would still be in the camper & able to sit in the Porugese winter sun > with two weeks self confinement at each border on the way home