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The People of Pudding Hill
No. 5.
Peter Possum Finds Things Out.

(By Shiela Russell.) [All Rights Reserved.]

Peter Possum and Joe the Morepork were two of the animals who lived near a cottage on Pudding Hill. They both had their homes in the branches of an old gum tree which stood close to the cottage. In the daytime they curled up and went to sleep, but when night fell they came out to look for food and talk to the other animals.

One evening Peter Possum and Joe were talking together up in the old gum tree. Joe was the kind of person who thought he knew everything, and he made Peter Possum, who didn't know much about anything, feel rather silly.

The people who lived in the cottage had lit a fire and sparks were coming out of the chimney. Peter Possum liked to watch the sparks. He thought the way they floated down gently was very pretty, and he wanted to know all about them, so he said to Joe:

“What makes those things?”
And Joe, who knew everything, replied—
“The People in the cottage.”
“How?” asked Peter Possum.

“Well, fancy not knowing that,” said Joe scornfully, “really, Peter, you are ignorant.”

“What's ignorant?” asked Peter Possum.

“Ignorant is not knowing anything,” said Joe.

Peter Possum thought about this for a moment, then he asked, “How is it that you know everything?”

“I know everything,” said Joe, “because I fly about and see, everything. Every night I fly miles and miles and see all kinds of interesting things. Do you know what I saw last night?”

“What?” asked Peter Possum.

“I saw,” said Joe, “on another hill where all kinds of strange animals live in cages, an animal as big as that cottage, and it had a tail at each end!”

Peter Possum gasped.

“A tail at each end?” he said.

“A tail at each end!” Joe nodded his head decidedly.

“Whatever would it have a tail at each end for?” asked Peter Possum.

“So that it doesn't have to turn round,” said Joe. “As a matter of fact it's so big it can't turn round. When it gets to where it wants to go and it's time to go home, it just goes backwards. Only it isn't backwards, really, because both ends are in front.”

“But,” said Peter Possum sadly puzzled, “I thought it had a tail at each end, and a tail couldn't be in front you know.”

“Why not?” said Joe rather huffily. “I don't know,” Peter Possum replied

“That's just it,” snapped Joe, “you're ignorant, as I said before.” And with that the rude bird flapped his wings and sailed off into the darkness.

For some time Peter Possum sat still, feeling rather sad. He wanted to be friendly with Joe, but it isn't easy to be friendly with anyone who calls you ignorant. And he just couldn't believe all that about the animal as big as the cottage. The biggest animal he'd seen was Doll the milkman's horse, and she most certainly had a tail at one end only. Thinking about Doll gave him an idea. At about this time of the evening she used to toil up the far side of Pudding Hill with a flat cart loaded with bottles of milk. She had told him once that it was part of her round, and that her round was a very long one—miles and miles! It was quite possible, thought Peter Possum, that she would have heard of the animal with a tail at each end.

His mind made up, Peter Possum scrambled down the tree and ran through the grass, up the hill, and over the top to the other side to where the road wound away down into the town. Sure enough, there was Doll slowly coming up the hill with the cart. Peter Possum sat down to wait. When she arrived and the milkman had gone down with the milk bottles for the cottage, Peter Possum came out of his hiding place.

“Good evening!” he said politely. (Doll snorted). “My goodness, you gave me a fright,” she said.

“I'm sorry,” said Peter Possum, “but have you heard of an animal that can't turn round and has a tail at each end?”

“Indeed I have not,'.’ said Doll.

“It lives,” said Peter Possum, “on a hill like this one with some other peculiar animals who live in cages.”

Doll pricked up her ears.

“You don't mean the Zoo, do you?” she asked.

“I'm not sure,” replied Peter Possum, “but does your round take you anywhere near it?”

“Oh, yes, we deliver six quart and three pint bottles at the Zoo.”

Peter Possum's little heart began to patter with excitement.

“Could I go with you to-night?” he asked.

“Well, I suppose you could,” said Doll.

The milkman could be heard returning.

“Quick,” said Doll, “climb up into my feed bag; you'll find it hanging underneath the cart. I'll tell you when we get to the Zoo:”

Then began one of the most exciting events of Peter Possum's life. As soon as the milk cart reached the top of the hill Doll began to trot, the wheels rumbled, and the feed bag in which Peter Possum was hidden swung from side to side. Every now and then they would stop and Peter Possum would ask “Is this the Zoo?” but Doll would say—“No, not yet.”

At last they stopped and Doll called out, “Here we are.”

Peter Possum climbed out and saw in front of him a row of pine trees.

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“Where do I go?” he asked a little nervously. He felt a long way from home and would rather like to have been back in his own tree on Pudding Hill.

“Straight through the trees and over the fence at the back,” said Doll. “Good luck.”

And Peter Possum slipped across the road and disappeared among the shadows.

From the top of the fence he looked around and saw the cages of which Joe had told him. And amongst them a very big house with a round top. It must be there Peter Possum decided that the animal that had two tails and was as big as the cottage on Pudding Hill, lived.

So he hopped off the fence and ran towards it. But just outside he stopped dead, scarcely daring to breathe, for inside he could hear something moving and a voice singing softly.

The song went like this:
“There's nothing I like so much to do,
As go for a walk at five-to-two,
Saddle and straps and bend your knees,
And Keeper Tom says, ‘If you please.
Twopence a ride.’ When skies are blue
I go for a walk at five-to-two.”

Peter Possum plucked up courage because it was a nice voice, and squeezing through a drainpipe in the wall of the house, found himself in a big room. Then his big round eyes grew bigger and rounder at what he saw.

Joe the Morepork had been right. The animal was as big as the cottage on Pudding Hill, or nearly so, and it certainly had something like a tail in front.

All of a sudden it stopped singing and the tail in front stretched out towards Peter Possum. It had two holes in the end of it and it sniffed as though to find out who Peter Possum was.

“Who's this?” asked the animal.

“I'm Peter Possum from Pudding Hill.”

“Let's have a look at you,“said the animal, and to Peter Possum's horror, the tail curled itself round him. Then it lifted him off the floor high up in the air, and Peter Possum found himself looking into a pair of twinkly eyes. They looked at him for some moments and then he was lifted still further up and put down on the animal's head. And such a head! It was as big as the water tank at the cottage on Pudding Hill.

“Who did you say you were?” asked the animal again. “Excuse me putting you up there, but I can't hear you on the floor.”

“I'm Peter Possum,” he said again.

“That's very interesting,” said the big animal. “I'm Ranee the elephant.”

“Oh,” said Peter Possum. “Can you turn round?”

“Of course I can, only not here, because there isn't room. But I can do lots of other things as well. I can kneel down and stand on my hind legs and roll over on my back.”

“Why do you have two tails?” asked Peter Possum.

Ranee became annoyed at this.

“I have only one tail,” she said sharply. “Wise people know that this,“she raised her trunk, “is my nose. It's only ignorant people who go about saying I have two tails.”

“I'm very sorry,” said Peter Possum, “but I've never seen an elephant before, and Joe the Morepork told me that you had two tails and couldn't turn round.”

“I never heard such nonsense,” said Ranee, “but I'll forgive you this time.”

Peter Possum was silent for a little while, then he began to say over and over to himself,

“Ranee the elephant has only one tail and she can turn round, stand on her hind legs and roll over on her back—just like anyone else.”

“That's right,” said Ranee happily, “you are a clever person.”

“I think I ought to be going now,“said Peter Possum, “I'm a long way from home.”

“Very well,” said Ranee, “but come and see me again,” and she lifted him down from her head. “And tell that silly Morepork that the really ignorant people are the ones who pretend to know everything without bothering to find out the truth.”

So Peter Possum started off home. It took him a long time to get there because he wasn't sure of the way.

It was broad daylight and Joe had already gone to bed, when he arrived back at the gum tree on Pudding Hill. But Peter Possum didn't care. He woke him up and told him all about his night's adventure and how he had been quite wrong in saying Ranee the elephant had two tails and couldn't turn round. He even went so far as to tell him what Ranee had said about the people who pretended to know everything being the ignorant ones; which offended Joe so much that he went into his hole and shut the door.

But in the end it did good because ever afterwards Joe the Morepork was very careful not to say he knew everything, and most careful not to call anyone ignorant again, and the Animals of Pudding Hill were the happier for it.

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