Shenanigans at the Big Blue

Shenanigans

at the Big Blue

Ivar Roth

Illustrations by Jutta Votteler

AuthorHouse™ UK

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©

2016 Ivar Roth. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 02/17/2016

ISBN: 978-1-5049-9315-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5049-9314-2 (e)

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CONTENTS

HOW THEY MET

THE TOAD PRINCE

‘IMAGINE ALL THE TIGERS’

A RAINY DAY

THE LITTLE BEAR DISCOVERS THAT 1 + 1 + 1 = 1 + 2.

CHANGES

FOUR SLIPPERS

AN UNUSUAL CONVERSATION

TWO SMILES AND A CONFESSION

TITANIC

CELEBRITIES

THE RED SCARF

THE TIGER WANTS TO BE A ROSELLA

DISCOVERING THE SUNRISE

THE COUNTRY OF CELEBRITIES

A CIRCUS ACT

KING FALLS IN LOVE

AN OPEN MARKET IN THE MEADOW

PRETTY TIGRESS

THE RUNAWAY TIGRESS

THE GANG OF FIVE

THE FIVE-DANCE IS A HIT!

A LOST STORY

THE LITTLE BEAR AND THE MOON

THE MOON ALSO NEEDS TO TALK

CHILDREN’S STORIES

DRIVING BETWEEN TWO CITIES

THE RISE AND FALL OF KWANS

BIRTHDAYS AND ALGEBRA

SNOWBALLS

DOO

THE FIFTH COLUMN IN THE JUNGLE AND THE WOODS

THE PROMISED LAND

A STORY WITH ELEPHANTS

‘A DANCE IS JUST AN INTENSE MOMENT, NOTHING MORE’

FORTH AND BACK

THE PERFUME, OR HOW TO MAKE A TIGER CRAZY AND TEACH A RABBIT NEW TRICKS

THE PERFUME IS BACK

‘SAME PLACE, NEXT YEAR?’

ABOUT CAMELS, SEA LIONS AND MEMORIES WITHOUT CHRONOLOGY

THE LEGENDARY DONALD

SAME PLACE, ONE YEAR LATER

THE LITTLE BEAR AND THE TIGER MEET ADAM AND EVE

SHOES, SHOES, EVERYWHERE SHOES

THE LITTLE BEAR AND THE TIGER WANT TO BE JEWS

WILD STRAWBERRIES

BASIC INSTINCTS

CARNIVAL OF THE ANIMALS

GRAVITY

LOVE AND HEDGES

THE MOUSE BECOMES A PHILOSOPHER

SOLAR ECLIPSE

S IS FOR SNAKE

TWINKLE, TWINKLE, LITTLE WORM…

GOD LAUGHED!

SNOWFLAKES

DO TREES HAVE A SOUL?

CLOWNS

COME AND GO

INDIFFERENCE. A STORY ABOUT A STRANGE MARMOT.

A LESSON ON PERFORMING ARTS

To Vivian

Elisa, Lion and Max

HOW THEY MET

As you probably know, I have two friends: a vegetarian tiger and a little bear. They are in my mind’s eyes and I see them often. They talk to me, and since they might talk to you, I’d like to introduce them.

There was a baby tiger who, unlike his brothers, never touched the meat their parents brought and instead started to gobble leaves hanging from a nearby tree. I think that he had a problem with his sense of smell and that was the reason why meat didn’t appeal to him. Why he liked leaves, I just don’t know. I noticed that he ate all kinds of leaves, small ones and big ones, watery or dry ones which meant that he wasn’t able to distinguish between yummy and yucky leaves. Even today, he is not a gourmet (it’s hopeless).

Back to my story. Because they didn’t look around while eating their chunks of meat, his parents and brothers didn’t notice that my tiger-friend was a vegetarian. My friend started to have a problem, however, for a very different reason. As you know, it is hard to get leaves from a tree unless you are tall and it is not always possible to find low-lying branches. So, my friend started to spend more and more time up on his hind legs and ended up walking exclusively on two feet. To be tall doesn’t necessarily mean to be beautiful; rather, this tall creature seemed strange and the other tigers started to make fun of him. By this time, the tiger spent so little time with the others that he didn’t seem to notice it. One day he left the other tigers for good.

The story of the little bear is sadder. First, the little bear is a ‘she’ and therefore being different is a more serious problem. To make a long story short, my friend, the little bear, is not a baby bear but a perfectly normal bear who is just small. You can’t imagine to what pains her parents went to make her grow bigger and how they stretched her, pulling her poor legs and head. To no avail. The little bear couldn’t play properly with her siblings (bears grow so fast and are so strong!), playing was fighting and biting in a friendly way. Her siblings tried in the beginning to get her involved in their games - they honestly believed that by doing this she would grow - but after a while they got bored and started to ignore her. So did her parents who were busy with their daily chores. One day she disappeared too. It happened when she lost her way in some berry bushes.

My friends met in an amusing way. The tiger found himself by mistake in a berry bush and was unable to pick up berries with his huge paws and jaws.

The little bear noticed how clumsy he was and started to laugh. It was the first time she laughed at somebody else. This laugh was so irresistible that the poor tiger, his mouth all red with squashed berries, started to laugh too.

A few days later, my friends discovered the big blue together.

THE TOAD PRINCE

Evenings near the big blue are special. The little bear was inside her own thoughts or somewhere else because like many other ‘she-s’, she can just ‘be’ without having any need to talk.

The tiger, the head of the small bear on his tummy, was looking left and right, admiring the sun and sometimes counting the number of shells around him. Like many ‘he-s’ he always needed to ‘do’ something. He couldn’t keep quiet anymore and started talking: ‘let me tell you a story.’ The little bear loves to hear stories but often the tiger wanted to tell them at the wrong moment. Reluctantly she said ‘yes’ but when the tiger started his story, she got completely caught up by it. It was always like that.

‘I am going to tell you the story of the toad prince.’ I’m sure that you know the story. A princess sees a toad, the toad gets a kiss and gets transformed into a handsome prince and the two live happily ever after.

After the tiger finished his story, the little bear fell asleep and had a dream. She saw a toad near a berry bush, kissed the toad and the toad started to change. Now the problems began, and the little bear began to panic. She wanted a prince-bear of her size and not one as big as a grizzly. And on top of that, one with blue eyes. Everybody has strange tastes: why should a prince bear have blue eyes? Anyway, the prince-bear kept growing and the little bear started to push down his head with her paws. This made him get wider and wider. Trying to make him slimmer had the result that he started to look like a huge match; his eyes were a disgusting black. For her this was indeed a nightmare.

She woke up. There she was with her head on the tiger’s tummy, and the stars were shining. She heard the tiger snoring quietly and fell asleep again. This time she had a beautiful dream in which all kinds of colors passed before her eyes and in which, all of a sudden, she saw one big berry with the shape of a heart.

‘IMAGINE ALL THE TIGERS’

Probably everything started because of bad weather which makes the animals restless. One evening the tiger came back later than usual from the woods and remained standing, letting the little bear wonder what was wrong. The little bear always finds ways to calm him down, either by giving him a special leaf or a smile. This time nothing worked. After a while the tiger started to talk.

‘I am going to be away for a few days. I have to go back to the jungle and convince my fellow tigers to stop eating meat. Eating meat makes the tigers mentally ill. I heard about a tigress who ate her baby.’

‘I hope that you are not trying to convince them to eat berries.’

The little bear got scared. The idea of not seeing the tiger for a few days was painful enough but the faraway look of the tiger made her feel uneasy. The tiger went on talking.

‘My plans are very simple. First I will cover part of my body with leaves. I heard that Polynesian girls do this. I have also prepared leaflets that I am going to distribute. Look at this one!’

The little bear took the strange-looking piece of paper in her paws (tigers are not born calligraphers) in which she could see the following title: EATING MEAT DAMAGES YOUR MENTAL HEALTH.

The leaflet was long and contained some twenty ways to make the tigers vegetarians. Many of these ways were hard for the little bear to understand and she made just one observation:

‘Dear tiger, you will be left without food, there are not enough leaves on the trees for all the tigers to eat.’

‘Don’t worry, the trees are going to grow more leaves to help, the whole world will change,’ answered an angry tiger who was already preparing his Polynesian look.

The little bear just said, ‘You are going to miss the sunsets’ and the tiger was gone.

My friend was walking fast and doing two things at the same time. He was daydreaming. In his dream he saw all the tigers eating leaves like himself and standing on their hind legs, dominating the jungle. What a sight! The tiger was also humming a song ‘Imagine all the tigers’ that he composed while daydreaming.

It was late evening when he reached the first group of tigers. He felt uneasy not only because he had never seen them before but he also noticed that they ate meat faster and looked stronger than when he lived in the jungle. Needless to say, no tiger bothered to look at his leaflets.

Bravely, my friend continued his journey and reached a different group of tigers. Again he didn’t recognize any of them. All of a sudden he heard the voice of an old tiger who told the others (it was terrible what our friend heard): ‘I know this fellow. He was already nuts as a child, but then he disappeared. His parents looked for him and then gave up. They told me that they were not worried since it was easier to find lousy leaves than juicy meat.’

Our friend turned around and left. He didn’t know why he felt smaller. Maybe because somebody mentioned his childhood or because sometimes all the others look so terrifyingly tall and he felt so minutely small. It could also be that he had