CHAPTER THREE

The frog and the butterfly

Sally awoke the next morning to the sound of music in the distance. She could hear a brass band playing somewhere and she started walking in the direction of the sound. As she walked the music became louder and louder and soon she came across a big parade.

There were hundreds of different animals all singing and dancing to the music which was being played by an enormous band consisting of trumpets and violins and drums and every other instrument that you could think of. There were seventy six trombones, a hundred and ten cornets and one hundred and one dalmatians. Each section was played by a different type of animal, the monkeys played the violins and the elephants played trumpets.

The trombones were played by grizzly bears, a group of baboons played saxophones and a hippo played the tuba while a zebra played a piano which was walking along with the parade as if it had a life of it's own. The zebra blended in nicely with the black and white keys of the piano. The rhinoceros on string bass was so excited that he kept falling over and rolling around, but he never stopped playing and Sally wondered how his bass had not been crushed beneath him.

The percussion section consisted of a couple of kettle drums, a xylophone and an assortment of other drums which also walked along behind the parade and were played by a kangaroo who hopped up and down between instruments and was assisted by an accompaniment of rattlesnakes waving their tails around. Some animals just played wash boards or anything they could find, one even played a coffee grinder. Right at the back of the parade was a skunk playing a tambourine and every time he tried to catch up one of the other animals would chase him away again.

Presently the parade came to a large clearing and Sally found herself standing next to a deer who was dancing and clapping her hooves. When she caught the deer's eye she said 'what's going on?'.

'What's going on?' she cried 'where have you been? the games are about to start and you ask what is going on?' Sally tried to think about where she came from and eventually said 'I come from the real world, I don't know how I got here but I haven't been here very long'.

'The real world, eh' the deer said 'I think this is the real world. But I know where you mean, I went there once, it is an awful place where the people fight with each other and the animals are so scared of them that they don't even talk'.

Sally thought about this and she had to agree that it wasn't perfect, but she didn't think it was a bad as all that. 'So what is going on here?' she asked again and the deer said 'this is the start of the games, which are held every time the moon is full to decide which animal is the best, the football match is about to start between the hippos and the ants'.

As she spoke an area vaguely the size of a football field with a large net at each end was cleared of animals and two teams dressed in different colours emerged. One team was of hippos and the other of ants, and Sally thought it rather ridiculous to put teams of such differing sizes against each other, but when she said as much to the deer she said 'but there are more ants so it evens out'.

The game began when the referee, a lion, blew a whistle and the hippos had scored three or four goals before the ants had even got the ball, but then one of the ants got hold of it and started a run down the wing. When he got close to the defending hippos one of them put out a foot and squashed the ant into the ground. The referee blew his whistle and went over to the offending hippo 'it is not in the spirit of the game to kill a member of the opposing team, I am going to have to send you off if you do that again'. 'Don't do that' pleaded the hippo 'I didn't mean to kill him, honestly, I just tried to trip him up'. 'All right' said the referee 'but try not to kill too many'.

Sally was amazed at this turn of events and told the deer, whose name was Raine, that she thought it was a weird game. 'All games are weird if you think about it, it's just a game, a bit of fun, it doesn't have to be sensible' said Raine. Sally thought about this for a minute or two and then agreed 'I suppose you're right, we play some strange games too. Like boxing, two people stand inside a square roped off area which, strangely, is called a ring and hit each other until one of them falls over. You'd think it would be round if it is called a ring wouldn't you?'