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From
the moment she was born, Rose’s mother had taught her little daughter to
be different from all the other skunks that lived in the woods. She bathed
her in fragrant rose water, put her to bed on soft rose petals and fed her
mashed rose hips sprinkled with fresh rosemary. She didn’t want her to be
stinky like all the other skunks, which ate things like skunk cabbage,
stinkweed and stinkbugs. She wanted her little Rose to be sweet.
When
Rose grew up she was still very different from all the other skunks. She
still bathed in rosewater, slept on a bed of pink rose petals and ate only
the finest rosehips. She drank sparkling rose water from rose-colored
glasses. Her furniture was made of rosewood and she had a beautiful rose
garden just outside her back door. Everything she did, smelled, and tasted
was like roses, even her toothpaste, shampoo and deodorant.
Never
would she spray, unless the spray was from a bottle labeled ‘Rose
Perfume’. The other skunks were always spraying their foul odor for any
old reason, so it seemed to Rose.
One day,
Rose went out into her garden to pick some fresh rose hips. She was just
about to reach for one when she heard a loud roar. She stopped for a
moment to listen, but when she didn’t hear anything else she continued
picking. Another loud roar came from somewhere behind her in the distance.
What was that? What was making that noise? Rose wondered what it was. Not
hearing another roar for a while, she soon stopped thinking about it and
picked a few more rose hips, putting them into the basket she’d taken out
with her.
Then she
heard a noise coming from behind her and slowly turned around. There,
before her, stood a big striped hyena. It let out a loud roar that blew
Rose’s tail back and forth. She reached into the pocket of her
rose-patterned apron and pulled out a bottle of rose-scented perfume. She
aimed it at the hyena and sprayed. The hyena sniffed the air and began to
laugh at Rose. He laughed and laughed. Rose got very angry and sprayed him
again. He only laughed harder.
After a
while, the hyena stopped. He hit the bottle of perfume out of Rose’s hand
and knocked the basket of rose hips over. Rose began to get scared. The
hyena wasn’t laughing anymore. It was angry and growled at her. She didn’t
know what to do. The hyena moved closer and closer to her. Rose grabbed
her tail and sprayed the hyena. This time he didn’t laugh. He let out a
loud scream and ran off into the woods.
Rose could smell the foul odor all around her. She didn’t
like it. She grabbed the perfume bottle and sprayed, and sprayed, and
sprayed, until the whole bottle of rose perfume was gone. She gathered her
basket of rose hips and went home. That night, as she lay in the bathtub,
soaking in bubbly rose water, she thought about how much she still loved
roses, but maybe from then on she’d eat a stinkbug or two once in a while,
just in case! |
