Poppy's Christmas Cracker
Poppy
sat up and sniffed. There was a very funny smell in the
air - as if the woods she walked in every day had come
into the house.
"Scully!" she barked, calling to her best-friend-in-all-the-world,
"Scully! Come here quick!"
Scully
got up and stretched, then sat down again - she wasn't
going ANYWHERE quickly unless there was food involved.
Poppy
came running to see where Scully was, and gave her ear
a friendly chew.
"What's that smell?" she asked excitedly, "It
smells like the WOODS!"
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![](poppy-scully.jpg) |
Scully grinned (dogs
CAN grin, you know) and said, "Our People must have
got a tree again. They do things like that - every year,
they bring a tree into the house and cover it with pretty
things. Then in a week or two, they take all the things
off it and throw the tree away."
Poppy was very puzzled by this answer, so she went off
to ask Beamer, who was a lot older and wiser than Scully.
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"Our
People have brought a tree into the house. Why?" she
asked. "I thought only BOY dogs needed trees, and WE'RE
all GIRLS!!"
Beamer
laughed out loud. "You funny puppy!" she said."They
have brought a tree in because it's nearly Christmas, and
this is a Christmas Tree. It's a special tree, just for
looking at."
Poppy
still wasn't sure about it, so she went back to ask Scully
some more. "Why do we have to look at it?" she
asked Scully.
"Just you try TOUCHING it and you'll find out!"
Scully warned her, and then ran off to chase Next-Door's-Cat. |
Bounce,
the cat who lived with them (and therefore was NOT allowed
to be chased) came wandering in. "Wassamatta?"
she meowed (cats have a VERY funny accent compared with
dogs.) "Wa'youwann'ano?"
Poppy told her about the tree. "You'secrackers, youis!"
meowed Bounce, and wandered off out again.
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"Crackers?"
thought Poppy, "what does 'crackers' mean?"
and off she went to ask Beamer.
"Crackers
are a type of biscuit," said Beamer. "You put
butter on them, and eat them with cheese."
Now
Poppy knew all about biscuits, and cheese, and she also
knew that their People didn't let her have many in case
she got fat. She didn't see how Bounce could think she
was a biscuit.
So
she decided to ask Scully what she thought 'crackers'
meant.
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"Crackers?
You mean firecrackers? Where? Where!? WHERE?!?" said
Scully, spinning around and looking everywhere and getting
more and more worried.
"No, I didn't mean FIRE crackers! Just that Bounce
said I'm crackers ..." but Scully had stopped listening
and gone off to check on her favourite hiding place, just
in case.
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'I know I can be noisy,
and sometimes I shoot around in all different directions,
but I don't think Bounce meant THAT sort of 'crackers'
either!" thought Poppy, and she went to her basket
to have a Really Good Think.
Of course, as soon as
she really started thinking hard, her eyes began to close
and she drifted off to sleep ......
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"Wake
up, Poppy! Wake up!" .... "Look, she's dreaming,
she's running in her sleep..." Poppy was indeed dreaming,
dreaming that she was running away from a firecracker,
and she was having to run very fast to get away from it.
She woke up with a start and jumped out of her bed. She
was quite sure it wasn't THAT sort of cracker Bounce was
thinking of!
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The people were very busy with their Christmas tree and
took no notice as Poppy came into the room. Beamer and
Scully had gone to their baskets to keep out of the way,
but Poppy thought it looked like FUN so she wanted to
stay and help!
She watched for a little
while to see what they were doing. They had a box of pretty
things, and they were taking them out of the box one by
one and hanging them on the tree.
"I can do that!" thought Poppy, and she picked
something up from the box and headed towards the tree.
Before she knew what was happening, her feet were all
tangled up and she was tumbling towards the tree!
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![](Poppy-tree1.jpg) |
"POPPY!" they
shouted, and picked her up, untangled the sparkly stuff
from round her feet, and put her down again. "Off
you go, you crazy puppy!" Poppy was very cross. Nobody
would tell her what "crackers" meant, and nobody
would let her help either. She was beginning to think
that this Christmas wasn't much fun after all.
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Just
then, Bounce came back into the room. Poppy ran up to her.
"You said I was crackers," she said, " but
I don't know what crackers means. Beamer says it's a kind
of biscuit and Scully says it's a kind of loud firework."
Bounce laughed. "You really IS crackers!" she
purred, and started to wash herself.
Poppy
wanted to cry.
Suddenly,
she was picked up and carried back through to the tree again.
"Come on Poppy, you can help us with the crackers."
Crackers? CRACKERS? What on earth was going on? |
They put her down by
the tree and picked up a box full of bright-coloured paper
tubes. "Look Poppy! Here's a Christmas cracker with
YOUR name on it!" and they gave her one of the tube
things. She sniffed it .... it smelt good, it smelt of
doggy chocolates and biscuits, and she was sure she could
even smell a toy bone inside it.
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Poppy carried it off
to her own special place and started to tear it open.
It was indeed full of all sorts of wonderful things, just
for her.
"So THIS is what
'crackers' means!" she thought. "Crackers is
LOVELY! Crackers is DELICIOUS! Crackers is REALLY SPECIAL!
Bounce must like me a LOT!" and she went off to find
Bounce and gave her a really big snuffle and lick.
Bounce was NOT amused.
"Waddacrazypuppy!"
she thought, "PoppyREEELYcrackers!"
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![](Poppy-cracker.jpg) |
![](tinsel-divider.jpg)
![](3dogs-framed.jpg)
Here
is a photo of Beamer, Scully (see - she DOES grin!)
and of course, little Poppy.
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