Pixie's Surprise
Introduce These Words:
| porch gopher tunnel chewed |
butterfly tiny joyfully |
Pixie loved to dig holes. She dug holes in the children’s sandbox. She dug holes in the garden dirt. She dug holes in the lawn. Every day Dad filled in a few holes. She dug them again. Sometimes he yelled at Pixie, but she still dug holes.
“I don’t know what to do about Pixie,” said Dad. “She keeps digging holes! There are little holes all over the yard now. I can’t fill them all in – there are too many. Besides, every time I fill them in, she digs them again. Somebody might step in a hole and fall down. We must teach Pixie not to dig holes.”
“When I see her digging holes I tell her to stop,” said Mom, “and I make her lie down on the porch. But when I am not looking, she does it again. Our yard is getting to be a mess!”
Pixie was not the only hole digger. There were lots of gophers in the yard. They dug tunnels all over the garden. They chewed the roots of tasty plants and left the rest of the plant to die. It made Dad mad.
One day Pixie was playing in the yard. She saw a white butterfly. “Is that a tiny bird?” wondered Pixie. “Can I catch it?” She ran after the butterfly. She raced back and forth in the yard. Bobby came to see why Pixie was running. “A tiny bird!” barked Pixie joyfully.
Old Bobby barked back, “That’s no bird, you silly. That’s a butterfly! You will not be able to catch a butterfly.”
“But I can try!” said Pixie, as she raced past Bobby. Suddenly Pixie howled. She stopped running. She began to limp. Pixie had fallen in one of her holes!
“Poor Pixie,” said Mom. “You hurt your leg. Maybe now you will stop digging.”
But Pixie did not stop digging. She dug in the sandbox. She dug in the garden. She dug in the lawn.
“What will we do?” asked Dad. “Pixie digs holes. The gophers dig holes. Our yard is full of holes. It is a mess!”
One day Pixie was lying in the sun. Suddenly she saw something move in the grass. Something was poking up from the ground. What could it be? She ran to the spot. She sniffed. She began to dig. Her paws dug into the lawn, down in to the dirt. She saw something move. She dug faster. She put her nose into the hole to sniff at it.
Ouch! Something bit Pixie’s nose! It was a gopher! Pixie barked and howled. She ran away from the hole.
“Poor Pixie,” said Mom. “Your nose is sore. But now maybe you will stop digging holes.”
And she did – for a while, anyway.
 |
 |