Honey was tired of living
in the same old cave, in the same old forest. She wanted to go somewhere
new and different, so she packed some honeycomb, nuts, and berries in a
handkerchief and tied it onto a stick. She headed towards the tall pine
tree on top of the other mountain.
She hadn't gone far when it began to rain. Thunder boomed and
lightning flashed across the sky, drenching her and turning her fur into
a soggy, limp, mess. But she kept on walking.
The rain stopped after a while, but with every step Honey took,
she sank into the mud deeper. Soon it was so thickly caked on her feet
that she couldn't walk. She sat down and tried to pull the mud off, but
ended up falling backwards and rolling down a steep hill. She landed in
a stream with a splash!
Honey stood, shook the water off and continued. "This is
horrible. Why did I leave home?" She came to the edge of a cliff
and looked over the edge. "Whoa! I'm high up. I wonder what's down
there." Because it had rained so much, the ground gave away and she fell
over the edge, rolling down like a tumbleweed. She landed with a thud in
a sticker bush. "Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!" It took her an hour to pull them all
out.
She hobbled along the valley, glancing now and then at the top
of the cliff. "That was not fun! I could have been killed." Boulders lay
scattered about, blocking her way. She had to climb over them. A
particularly huge boulder lay across the whole valley. "How will I ever
get over that?" She took a deep breath and climbed up to the top. "Now,
how do I get down the other side?" Just then a gust of wind blew,
knocking her off. She rolled and bounced off the boulder and landed at
the bottom, on top of a patch of dandelions. She lay there for a few
moments. "Well, at least I didn't land on stickers."
From under her tummy she heard a buzzing noise. Dozens of big
black bumblebees had been gathering nectar from the dandelions and
started stinging her. "Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!" Honey jumped up and ran,
swatting the attacking bees, and threw herself into a pond. She had to
hold her breath and wait until they left.
"Enough! Enough!" she cried. She grabbed her backpack and looked
inside. Everything was smashed to mush. The honeycomb had oozed honey
all over everything else, making a sticky mess. She tossed it into the
bushes. "I'm going home!" she said loudly, and walked back up the hill,
through the woods and across the meadow until she came to her cave.
"Home, sweet home," she said. She
curled up into a ball and fell asleep.