Queen of the Fluffy Pens by Lori Olding

Author:Lori Olding [Brooke, Anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Children's Fiction
Publisher: Untreed Reads
Published: 2014-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Four

Four floor tiles later, they heard a frightening buzzing sound. “What’s that?” Gerald squeaked from the comfort of Queenie’s feather. “It’s not a wasp, is it? I really don’t like wasps.”

Queenie and her two fellow chickens spun round slowly on their yellow feet. They couldn’t see anything, but the buzzing grew louder and louder. Gerald squeaked again and tried to burrow more deeply into Queenie’s plumage, which only made her very ticklish indeed.

“Stop it, Gerald!” she said with a giggle. “I can’t concentrate if you’re moving around in there. My feathers are very sensitive, you know. I’m a very important chicken.”

“I can’t help it—I’m partly a fly and flies are very frightened of wasps. They eat us!”

Queenie harrumphed. “I’m sure they don’t. They’ve got other things on their minds and far sweeter things to eat than you. Humans say just the same and they’re always wrong too. Let me find it and I’ll show you how scary a wasp is.”

She swung round again, together with her two friends. She was prepared to do battle to the end if she had to, in order to keep her new friend safe. More than anything, she knew the importance of loyalty to those in her charge. Chickens always felt like that.

Suddenly she spotted the reason for the buzzing. It wasn’t a wasp at all, but a big bumble bee. It was almost as fluffy as she herself was, if that was even possible. It must have been flying round and round in circles above their heads, which is why none of them had managed to spot it yet. Funny thing about bumble bees. They never looked light enough to be able to fly but they did it anyway. Queenie liked this fact about them. It was always a good thing to prove how other people’s opinions could be wrong.

“Don’t worry,” she reassured Gerald who was still hiding under her wing. “It’s not a wasp, silly. It’s a bee. A bumble bee. They’re good for the flowers and really friendly, so why don’t you come out from there and say hello?”

A small pause and then Gerald peered out from under the pinkest of Queenie’s very pink feathers. “Are you sure? It’s not going to eat me?”

Queenie stifled a giggle. She’d never known bees to eat anything other than nectar, though she was no expert. But she was absolutely sure they wouldn’t eat toast. “Go on, you’re safe enough,” she said. “Trust me. Have I ever let you down?”

“No, you haven’t,” admitted Gerald. “Then again, I’ve not known you long.”

“Ah,” said Queenie with more wisdom than she could ever realise. “It’s the friendship’s quality, not its length which counts.”

Gerald and the bumble bee got on famously. The bumble bee—Queenie nicknamed him Buzz, as she didn’t like not knowing what things were called, though in fact bumble bees didn’t have names—gently took Gerald up onto his wing and gave the fly-toastie a quick spin round the kitchen. Gerald was thrilled as being partly a squashed fly, he hadn’t actually been able to fly for quite a while, so it was an even greater thrill.

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