Maurice the mole

Maurice the mole lived in a hole in the lawn of Number 12 Meadow Avenue and, because he was a very nice and well behaved mole, the two little girls named Angela and Tracy, who lived at the address didn’t mind him living there, in fact they really liked him and would often visit him and play with him.

One summer day, when it was very warm and sunny, Maurice the mole popped up out of his hole and saw that Angela and Tracy were lying on the lawn; large, brightly coloured blankets underneath them and sunglasses on their faces, just staring at the sky.

“What are you doing?”, Maurice asked them, scratching his head with one of his paws.

“Nothing. Just sunbathing”, replied Angela, smiling.

“Sunbathing?”, asked Maurice, “But where is your scrubbing brush and your bathing caps? Where is your soap and your squeaky, yellow rubber duck?”.

Angela and Sharon giggled.

“You don’t need those things for sunbathing”, explained Tracy, “You just lie in the sun”.

Maurice shook his head and looked bewildered,

“Funny way to get clean if you ask me”, he said.

But then he thought that he might give it a try himself and so, crawling out of his hole, he lay on his back and looked up at the sky.

“Yes, it’s not bad”, he said, enjoying the feeling of the warm sun upon his round furry face and yawning, “Quite relaxing really”.

But then, as he was sunbathing, Maurice started to feel very sleepy and it wasn’t long before he had drifted off into a deep, dream filled sleep.

He dreamt that he was sunbathing in a big golden bath tub full of bubbling sunlight and scrubbing the golden sun all over his furry mole body.  His plastic, yellow duck was quacking and bobbing about upon rippling sunbeams and he was singing a cheery song the way that he always did when he was in the bath.

“The sun is in my bathtub, hip-hip-hip- hooray”, he sang, “The sun is in my bathtub ‘cause I’m sunbathing today”.

However, as he was scrubbing, Maurice noticed that one of the golden bubbles in his bathtub was growing bigger.

“Oh”, he remarked, “How very peculiar”.

And the bubble grew so big that, before long, it was as big as Maurice’s bathtub and had surrounded Maurice completely.

“Oh, help! Help!”, said Maurice, pounding with his fists upon the inside of the bubble, “Let me out!”.

But sunbubbles, it seemed, were much harder to burst than bubbles made out of soap and water for, no matter how hard Maurice banged upon the sunbubble, he just couldn’t get out.

And then, not only that but the giant bubble started to rise up high into the air.

“Oh my goodness”, said Maurice, looking down through the floor of the bubble and seeing the lawn of the garden getting further and further away, “I’m floating away! Help!”.

And he WAS floating away, floating so high up into the sky that his bubble bounced and bumped like a big beach ball against the underside of the clouds.

But then, to Maurice’s further distress, the bubble popped up through a gap in one of the clouds and he came face to face with the enormous, golden, smiling sun but the sun was so close that he started to become very, very hot; sweat dripping down his round furry, mole face.

“Oh no”, he said, starting to panic, “If I float any closer to the sun then I shall be burned to a cinder”.

Just then, however, one of the sun’s rays that was as narrow as a needle and as sharp as a pinhead, pricked the sunbubble and, with a ginormous popping sound, the bubble burst.

“Oh no”, said Maurice as, now, instead of floating upwards, he started to fall, very fast, downwards, “Someone catch me please”.

For miles and miles he seemed to fall, the earth getting bigger and bigger as it loomed upwards towards him.

“Oh I daren’t look”, said Maurice, putting his paws over his eyes, sure that he was doomed.

Just then however, he heard a voice shouting to him; two voices in fact; the voices of Angela and Tracy.

“Wake up! Wake up, Maurice”, they were saying, “You’re having a nightmare”.

Maurice opened his eyes and saw the faces of the two little girls who were his friends smiling down at him.

“Oh thank heavens”, said the mole, realising that he wasn’t falling down out of the sky but safe and sound, lying on the lawn.

“Silly mole. You must have dozed off into a dream”, said Tracy, “While you were sunbathing”.

“Oh yes, yes”, said Maurice, feeling slightly embarrassed, “That’s what it was. Very dangerous, this sunbathing of yours, if you ask me. I almost plummeted to my doom”.

The two little girls just looked confused.

Just then, however, Angela and Tracy’s mum came out of the house carrying three stripy bowls filled up with ice cream.

“Ice cream, anyone”, she asked, “I’ve brought one for Maurice too”.

“Oh yes”, said Maurice, taking hold of one of the bowls of ice cream in one paw and a spoon in the other before eagerly eating up all the ice cream, “This is much better. Just the thing after all that floating about and falling out of the sky”.

Sharon and Angela giggled and they all had a wonderful summer day.