HOW HAMMV RESCUED THE STARS
Goph found a child's
bucket. He didn't say where. A bucket is a plaything for
a child, but for Goph it was a treasure. A nice big
bucket. To drink out of. Or store food in. Turn it upside
down and it's table. Bang on the bottom and it's a drum.
And you could catch all sort of things under it.
Grasshoppers, butterflies. Hamsters too. Why not?
One day Hammy trotted over to Goph's hole and shouted:
"You at home?"
"Come in, don't be scared," Goph called out of
his hole.
Hammy was too scared to go in after that.
"Don't be scared of what?" he asked. Just in
case.
"Well..." Goph said thoughtfully in his hole.
"Say I suddenly caught you! That'd be fun!"
"Who for?" Hammy enquired.
"You," said Goph, reassuringly. "You'd
have a good laugh."
Hammy believed him and went inside. But Goph had tricked
him. It was Goph who had the fun, when he slammed down
the bucket on Hammy. He had such a good laugh, that
Hammy's ears were ringing.
Oh, alright. Hammy took off the bucket.
"Now let's play hide-and-seek," he said with a
frown.
"Where can I hide?" asked Goph, brightly.
"My hole's very small."
"Hide under the bucket."
As soon as Goph had hidden himself, Hammy sat on the
bottom of the bucket. He didn't let Goph out for ages.
And he had a good laugh. He'd caught someone now!
Goph kept shouting:
"It's not fair. Use your own bucket for
catching!"
Hammy let him out at last.
"You did have a good laugh, didn't you?"
"See for yourself," Goph told him, huffily.
"Now it's your turn to hide."
"Alright," Hammy agreed. "Only close your
eyes tight. Don't look while I hide under the
bucket."
Goph closed his eyes tightly, and Hammy slipped out of
the hole in a flash. And went about his business.
It was evening before he popped round to Goph's. Goph was
sitting on the upturned bucket happily, head on one side,
listening.
"Why have you gone quiet? Is it fun in there? Serve
you right."
Then he caught sight of Hammy and shouted:
"I haven't had a bite to eat all day because of you.
So that's how you play hide-and-seek!"
He's a funny old thing, Goph. Always good for a laugh. He
never had a moment's peace with that wretched bucket.
"Hey, Hammy, let's store our food in it, yours and
mine," he suggested. "It'll keep better in my
bucket!"
"No, thanks," Hammy refused. "Yours might,
but mine wouldn't.
"Well, whose bucket is it?" Goph got all huffy
again. "And you must bring me five pea pods a day
just for storing your food. Big pea pods," he added.
"And I'm offering it to you for nothing! Don't
agree, if you don't want to. I'll find enough to fill my
bucket!" And he stomped out of his hole,
just as it was getting dark...
Goph strode along, swinging his bucket and looking for
something to put in it.
"Surely I'll find something," he muttered.
Hammy trotted along behind him waiting to see what would
happen. Goph might be lucky with a bucket like that!
They went up to a stream.
Goph looked into the water and froze with excitement.
"There they are," he whispered. "Look how
many!"
"Fish?" Hammy craned his neck to see.
"No, stars..."
Shoals of stars were shining in the water, twinkling and
flashing like rainbows.
"I'll grab a whole bucketful of them. They'll make
my hole as bright as a bonfire."
Hammy felt sorry for the stars. There was no sign of them
in the stream in the daytime. They were careful then and
hid away. But at night, when all self-respecting gophers
were asleep, they swam around fearlessly. There were
different sorts of stars: sky ones and water ones.
Everybody knew that.
Hammy trod on a dry branch deliberately to make it snap
and frighten them. But the trusting things just stayed by
the bank and didn't budge.
"Shush!" hissed Goph. And he scooped out some
water with at least a hundred stars into his bucket.
"Let them go!"Hammy cried, charging down on his
best friend.
He knocked over the bucket and rescued the stars. They
slipped away into the stream with the water. And then
some clouds covered the sky and it got really dark. The
stars in the stream disappeared altogether. They had
probably swum away into the rushes.
Don't imagine for a moment that this brought Goph to his
senses. The following night he set off again, secretly,
to catch some stars.
But Hammy was keeping watch. As soon as Goph scooped a
bucketful out of the stream, Hammy yelled:
"Stop!
Goph rushed off home with his bucket, panting with the
weight. Hammy just managed to catch him up.
"Oh, it's you?" Goph exclaimed.
"I shouted 'stop' to you."
"When people shout 'stop' to me, I always run away
for some reason," Goph confessed.
Hammy took the bucket from him, carried it back and
poured the water with the stars back into the stream. And
it was so nice to look at the swimming stars and know
that some of them had been rescued by him.
"I caught them by mistake. I just wanted to fetch
some water home." Goph fibbed.
"Go and fetch water when it's light. The stars are
more careful then and don't get caught. You're too clever
by half!"
And no matter how often stubborn old Goph went
star-fishing secretly at night, he could never boast the
next morning of having caught any.
Hammy stayed at home in his hole, chuckling to himself.
He knew the reason why. Whenever Goph was about to set
out, Hammy threw some bigf stones into the stream to
frighten the stars away. How could Goph catch them after
that? And Goph couldn't snatch them down from the sky. It
was too high. He'd have to climb up a tree. And he
could'nt to that with a bucket in his paw.
HOW HAMMY AND GOPH LOOKED INTO THE WATER
