Humpty Dump

My name is Billy Break. I am one of the King's men who were on duty there at the wall
the day Humpty-Dumpty had his great fall.
As soon as it happened, Captain Crumble gave us our orders, and we gathered up the
remains of Humpty. Carl Crunch rode around picking up big round pieces. Sam Split and
his horse went here and there to collect flat pieces. Fred Fracture rode off to the hardware
store to buy glue. And Sheldon Shatter and I, leading our horses, walked all around the
wall, our eyes on the ground, looking for any little bits of Humpty Dumpty that Crunch and
Split had missed.
Only Danny Dent, the smallest of our troop of King's men, did nothing. He sat quietly on
his horse, his eyes half closed, thinking, thinking....
When we had piled all the pieces we could find into a single heap, and Fracture came back
from the hardware store with the glue, Captain Crumble told us to get to work gluing and
sticking.
We did our best but when we were done, Humpty didn't look so good. There were holes
where there shouldn't be and no holes where there should be, and many pieces that really
didn't look quite right stuck together.
Our horses watched us and laughed, "whinny-hee-hee-hee", at what we had done.
Humpty was a mess. He looked like he ought to be named Humpty Dump.
And then little Danny Dent shook himself atop his horse, opened his eyes, and said, "If all
the Kings horses and all the King's men can't put Humpty Dumpty together again, maybe
we need to try something different!"
"What you got in mind, Danny?" we all said.
"I'll show you," he shouted as he rode off over the hill.
And then he was back in a bit pulling a little cart with something under a blanket. "What
all of us could not do," he said, "Mother Goose did in a jiffy!" And he pulled from the cart
a big, beautiful new goose egg.
"Good show!" cried Captain Crumble. "Get your glue, men! Get those arms and legs and
lips and ears and eyes and nose and hair, and let's get to sticking!"
And with that, all the King's men and all the King's horses with a little help from Mother
Gooseput Humpty Dumpty together again.

Rub-a-Dub Scrub

Of course we jumped into a tub just as fast as we could. If you have ever smelled a rotten
potato, you know why we wanted to clean ourselves up without delay.
What happened was, there is this farmer named Peter Pumpkin Eater who grew a
humungous pumpkin so he and his wife would have a place to live. She was so proud, she
bragged about it whenever she came into town to sell her pumpkin pies.
"My Peter," she would say, "can grow vegetables big enough to live in."
"How about a big tomato?" someone asked.
"I'm sure he could," Pauline said, "but it would be awfully squishy."
"How about a big onion," someone else said.
"I'm sure he could," Pauline said, "but it would smell up the town and bring tears to
everybody's eyes.
"Well," said Hans, the butcher. "How about a big potato? Potatoes are not squishy and they
won't smell up the town and bring tears to people's eyes."
"Okay," Pauline said. "I'll ask Peter to do it."
We didn't think any more about what Pauline had said until fall, and then one day Peter and
Pauline showed up with a wagon carrying this really big potato with big greenish eyes all over
it and a crusty-looking brown skin. It was as high as a couple of people are tall and as wide as
maybe three people lying head to foot. They unloaded it in the town square, and for weeks
folks came from all around to look at Peter Pumpkin Eater's big potato.
But then came winter and snow and frost. The outside of the big potato grew darker and
darker, the eyes lost their fresh green look, the skin began to wrinkle.
And then the first warm days of spring came and people started crossing to the other side of
the street from the potato because it was beginning to smell so bad. Finally, by April, people
were staying away from town altogether because of the potato stink, and Hans, the butcher,
and Arnie, the baker, and II make candlesticks for a livinggot pretty worried. That
stinking potato was driving away all our business.
So we borrowed a team of horses and some chains and started to hitch up the potato so we
could drag it out of town where it could stink all by itself. I backed up the team, Hans
climbed on top of the potato, and Arnie looped the chain around it and tossed the ends up to
Hans to fasten together. But the weight of the chain was just a little too much. The old
weathered skin on the top of the potato gave way, and slurp! poor Hans sank out of sight into
the gooey innards of the rotten potato.
"Quick," said Arnie, "we've got to save Hans!" And he climbed atop the potato and slurp! he

sank into the goo alongside Hans. I had to do something to save them and, you guessed it,
slurp! there I was over my head in the gooey insides of the rotten potato.
Well, with three of us in there and the potato being only two guys high, it didn't take us long
to heave Hans up and out, and he quickly took his butcher knife and cut a hole in the side for
the other two of us to escape through. And there we were, standing in the sunshine in the
middle of town up to our ankles in a spreading puddle of rotten potato goo, surrounded by
people holding their noses and going "Oof!" "Ugh!" "Phew!" "You guys really stink!"
And that's why the three of us were in the tub with soap and scrub brushes going rub-a-dubscrub just as fast as we could.

Just Right

When little Charlie Spickenspan heard the poem about the Sprats, he suddenly got an idea
that he was sure would make him really, really rich.
What he did was start up a dirty dishes laundry, so that for a quarter or maybe fifty cents
people who didn't want to do their dishes after dinner could just bring them by his place
where some people like Jack Sprat and his wife would lick everything clean.
Some of the people Charlie hired for his dirty dishes laundry were:
Mary Stead who loved good red and her husband who drank only white. They left the
glassware bright.
And Andy Bower who loved things sour while his wife would eat anything sweet. They left
the tableware neat.
And Alice Swat who ate straight from the pot but whose husband loved things really
steaming. They left the pots a-gleaming.
And Peter Bligh who munched everything high while his wife gnawed anything low. They
made the platters glow.
Well, any evening of the week, you could see the cars pulling up in front of Charlie's place
and people getting out with baskets and boxes of dirty dishes and slimey silver and crummy
cookware and gooey glasses. They would bring them into his place, and there all the dirty
stuff got sorted, with sweet stuff going here and peppery stuff going there and sticky, hot,
low, cold, high, white, greasy, or sour stuff going yet that many other places.
And then Charlie's crew would get to licking, and just a few minutes later, the people would
go back to their cars with baskets of shining silver and pretty platters and purified pots and
glistening glasses.

But then one day along came the City Sanitary Inspector, who is a kind of mom-like person
who inspects things for clean. And like most moms, the Sanitary Inspector almost never finds
things quite clean enough.
"These platters may be licked clean, they may look clean, they may be kinda clean, but
they're not really, truly clean clean!" said the Sanitary Inspector. "To be really, truly, clean
clean there has to be some soap!"
So Charlie ran off to the store, bought some soap, and spread it around among the next batch
of dirty tableware to be licked clean by his crew.
"Aargh! Ughh! Yech!" they all said. "This tastes awful. We can't lick platters clean when
they taste like this!"
So Charlie ran back to the store again and asked the clerk, "Do you have any good-tasting
soap?"
"I don't know," said the clerk. "I never tasted any soap. But we got all kinds of soap. We got
bottled soap and bar soap and soap in flakes and soap in cakes..."
"That's it!" Charlie interrupted excitedly. "I love cake! Everybody loves cake! Cakes of soap
ought to taste pretty good! I'll take some."
"Chocolate, Vanilla, or raspberry?" asked the clerk.
"A lot of each," Charlie said.
This time the famous Spickenspan Dirty Dish Laundry platter lickers said, "Oh! Yum! Is
that cake soap ever good." And they started licking like crazy while the Sanitary Inspector
stood to the side nodding his head up and down in approval.
But then something began to happen. First it was a little foam where the Swats were cleaning
pots. Then it was a little more foam and some suds where the Steads were licking head by
head. And then it was great mountains of suds and bubbles and foam where the Blighs were
licking up pie scraps and the Bowers slurped the flowers on the china free of food.
And with a rumble and roar the gathering soapsuds billowed up like a dark storm cloud and
boiled out of Charlie's house in a vast, crashing wave loaded with broken dishes and bent
pots and silverware and shattered glasses, but all nicely clean, and into the street. Charlie
and the Sanitary Inspector and the Steads and the Bowers and the Blighs and the Swats had
to run as hard as they could just to stay in front of the mess.
After a while, the suds and bubbles and foam melted away and the people all came and
picked up their busted up clean dishes, and the Steads and Blighs, the Swats and the Bowers,
went off to lick somewhere else, and Charlie sat on his front step with his head in his hands.
"Where did I go wrong?" he said.
"Ah," said the Sanitary Inspector. "Some things are too big, some things are too little; some
are too hot, some are too cold; some too soon, some too late. It is hard to know when things
are just right."

"I thought I had it just right with the soap cakes," Charlie said. "Had everything really clean
clean."
"Good try," the Sanitary Inspector said, "but your crew went too far. They got all the way to
super clean clean, and that's just too darn clean for anyone, even a mom.

Mother Goose Mice

Inspired by several favorite rhymes you will read below!

I am a Mother Goose Mouse. My dad, Chicory Mouse, got us into the Mother Goose
business.
Being a Mother Goose mouse is not easy. Sometimes we have to wait under the Queen's
chair for pussycats to come and frighten one of us:
Pussycat, Pussycat, where have you been?
I've been to London to visit the queen.
Pussycat, pussycat, what did you there?
I frightened a little mouse under her chair.
Other times we have to play Little Tommy Tittlemouse and eat fish:
Little Tommy Tittlemouse
Lived in a little house.
He caught fishes
In other men's ditches.
or be the Six little Mice sitting down to spin:
Six little mice sat down to spin;
Pussy passed by and she peeped in;
"What are you doing, my little men?"
"Weaving coats for gentlemen."
Why, from time to time one of us even wraps herself up in a pair of fake wings to fill in for
the bat in
Bat, bat, come under my hat,
And I'll give you a slice of bacon;
And when I bake, I'll give you a cake
If I'm not mistaken.
'cause, Dad says, good bats are hard to find these days.
Whew!
Thank goodness there are three of us mouselets in the family. Since Dad is named Chicory
and Mom is named Flickery, they named my older sister Hickory and my older brother

Dickory. When I came along, they couldn't think of another name to rhyme with Chicory
and Flickery. None of us ever could. Can You?
So Mom didn't really have a name in mind, and when they asked her what my name
should be, she said the first thing that came into her mind there in the animal hospital.
And I became Doc.
Anyway, just think of the schedule we have to keep, the five of us. Dad mostly works the
chair for the Queen. We'll get a call that some important pussycat is due to visit the
Queen on, say, Tuesday at three in the afternoon, and he'll zip over there and lounge
around under her chair, so that when the cat shows up, he can go Squeak! Squeak! and
flick his whiskers like he's scared to death and scoot out of sight. Of course he isn't scared
at all. Not my Dad!
Hickory is good with the bat wings. She likes hiding under the hat and going Squeak!
Squeak!
And Dickory and Mom usually take turns doing the Tommy Tittlemouse fish-eating.
But what is hardest of all for our schedule is that darn old clock. Twice a day, every single
day, just before the clock strikes one, one of usand it seems like it's usually mehas to
run up the clock and then back down again. That's not too bad at one in the afternoon,
but boy, at one in the morning, when mouselets ought to be in bed and sound asleep, it can
be a drag.
A major challenge for us is doing the Three Blind Mice:
Three blind mice! See how they run!
They all ran after the farmer's wife,
Who cut off their tails with a carving knife.
Did you ever see such a thing in your life
As three blind mice?
We don't mind putting on the little dark glasses and running around after the farmer's
wife with white canes in our hands, but it's tough to fake the part where she cuts off our
tails. It's safe enough, though. We curl our real tails up out of sight and hang out fake tails
made out of old shoestrings.
Which reminds me of our best performance, when we do the Six Little Mice sat down to
spin. Since there are only the five of us, Mom stuffs an old brown sock full of cotton, and
with Dickery modeling for her, she glues two buttons on it for eyes and sews on one of
those cut-off shoestring tails to make mouse number six.
And so there we are. You'll need both hands to count us; we are Mom and Dad and
Hickory and Dickory and Doc and...
The sock.

Little Fiddle Ballet

Believe me, training a cat and a cow to perform classic ballet is no walk in the park.
Cats are smart little beasts, good at a lot of things you and I can't do. They can catch mice
and chase birds and lie around on silken pillows like some movie star. They're really good
at the lying around part, which is the only cat-like thing you and I can do at all.
But cats are not musical, and teaching our cat Cleo to play the fiddle took weeks and
weeks of effort. She wouldn't even try until I promised her a long, silk scarf to wear as she
played. But Tango and ITango's my little dogkept her practicing, and when she could
play "Turkey in the Straw" without too many errors, we went out to the barn where she
could play while my cow, Natasha, learned to dance.
Like cats, cows are not very musical. And like cats, cows can do a lot of things really well
that you and I can't do. Cows can eat grass and provide milk and butter and cheese and
spend all day out in a pasture without complaint and moo loudly. Which is about the only
thing you and I can do that is a little cow-like.
Still, after weeks and weeks of practice, with Cleo fiddling away, her scarf waving in the
wind, and me keeping time with a spoon beating against a a tin dish and Tango yipping at
her heels, Natasha learned to wear her tutu properly, to step this way and that way, to
arch her back, to stand on her hind legs, and to leap the way ballet dancers have to leap.
They call it a jet, which sounds like some kind of airplane.
Ah! then came the hardest part of all. It took all my tin dish beating and all of Tango's
heel nipping and yip-yipping to get the cow and the cat to perform together. But it finally
happened, and I began to whack the dish harder and harder, Cleo began to fiddle faster
and faster, and Natasha got more and more light-footed. At first, she could leap only as
high as a fence, and then she could leap as high as a barn, and then, well, we figured she
was ready to take a shot at the moon.
So when the next full moon came, people gathered from all around to watch the first cat
and cow classical ballet performance. Tango barked to quiet the audience. I began to bang
the dish with the spoon. Tango yipped, Cleo began to fiddle, and Bossy began to dance. I
banged harder and harder. Cleo fiddled faster and faster, Natasha jumped higher and
higher. And then, over the moon she flew.
Everyone applauded wildly. Such a show! The first ever cat and cow ballet had been a
wonderful success! Natasha and Cleo and Tango and I took a bow. But Cleo had had
enough, and with a sigh of relief she dropped her fiddle, pulled off her scarf, and
meowed,"That's enough fiddling around for me. I'm gonna go chase mice!"
I dropped the tin dish and the spoon and got some fresh hay for Natasha, whose tutu was
drooping. My little dog Tango started to laugh. "Hark, hark, hark!" he went. "Yippy,
yip,yip," which is dog talk for, "Didja ever see such sport?"And the spoon and dish? They
were not happy. They said, "Everybody got applause but us, and we're the ones who took
the beating. To heck with the Little Fiddle Ballet, we're outta here!"
And away they ran.