The Ups and Downs of Petunia

By Daddy

Wesley, Hallie, and Travis fell asleep on the moon on Christmas Eve. They'd flown there in canoes pulled by ostriches all the way from the piano room, up the stairs, and into their moon beds, still humming songs about Frosty and Rudolph and Santa Claus. Wesley had wanted to know where flying reindeer stopped to use the bathroom, and before Hallie could think of a reasonable answer, whatever that would have been, Travis had explained that reindeer often took breaks on the moon. So, off to the moon the children went in ostrich-pulled canoes (don't ask).

No grown up read Wesley his stories that night, as cousins Hallie and Travis had volunteered, since they were older, and Hallie could read well enough to be a college athlete, and Travis could invent three new words for every one he saw on the page. Wesley's cousins found several books they thought he'd like, but he didn't want to hear any of them. Instead, he wanted to order in a story, like he did at home, as if he were choosing toppings for a pizza.

"Tell me a story," Wesley said, "with a penguin, a whale, a mouse, two tigers, and an orangutan."

When they had stopped laughing at their little cousin, Hallie and Travis told this tale:

Petunia worked the night shift because the sun never went down at night. She and all the other penguins she knew had taken over much of the manufacturing of parts to be shipped from the South

Pole to the North Pole. As the North Pole had melted and the elves had unionized, Santa had begun outsourcing in the days of Petunia's parents.

The penguins brought in wood in the form of giant tree trunks on the back of the largest animal in the whole world, Jeremiah Bartholomew Cranberry Jingleton III, who was a blue whale, but Petunia always said he was more green than blue. Jeremiah Bartholomew Cranberry Jingleton III was fond of drinking swimming pools full of ginger ale and spraying it out of his spout, but the penguins had forbidden him to do it near the wood because nobody wants their new toys to be sticky.

Petunia spent hour after sunlit hour shaping beautifully flipper-crafted toy parts, which would be assembled into completed toys at the North Pole by elves. The penguins' factory made use of high-pressure water jets in giant aquariums. The penguins mostly had to keep the water flowing properly and the wood on its proper course through the water works, but they liked to tell Santa that they did everything by flipper, if only to find out whether he could really see them when they were sleeping and whether he really knew when they were awake.

Petunia packed up crates of sees and saws that would be assembled into lovely wooden see-saws by the elves up north. The penguins loaded the crates onto the slippery back of Jeremiah for the journey northward.

Petunia told no one before acting on an unusual idea. She was always wishing she could see her toy parts assembled into toys and her toys delivered to children and the children playing happily. Instead, all she ever got to see was the spray of water from a whale's flip-flopping tale as Jeremiah splashed away.

Petunia knew that she could not travel with the toys, but she'd known that Formagino could make the trip from the moment she'd seen him scurry out of a hole in a giant redwood log. After months of keeping the mouse secretly as a pet and training him to speak several of the major languages
of the globe's toy-enjoying species,
Petunia packed Formagino and a
mouse-sized picnic lunch into a
package of sees and saws beautifully
sculpted by penguin artisans. And off
he sailed to the North Pole to meet Santa Claus.

Of course, Formagino was not supposed to actually meet Santa Claus. He was supposed to stay hidden in corners from which he could observe the assembly of the see-saws well enough to report back to Petunia on everything he saw. And that's exactly what the little mouse did. He watched two elves attach a see to a saw, and he snuck up close to find out what kind of screwdrivers they were using. Formagino almost got too close, as he had to leap out of the way of running elf feet. The clever little mouse took the opportunity to grab to the bottom of a see-saw just before it was piled into the toy bag on the back of Santa's sleigh.

When night came, the reindeer were harnessed to the sleigh and lifted it skyward. When the sleigh rose above the clouds, the little mouse peaked out of the toy bag and saw the world begin to zoom by at an amazing speed, faster than what Wesley would describe as an elephant driving a racecar. Within seconds, Formagino knew he'd visited tens of thousands of houses and been left at one of them on the bottom of a lovely wooden see-saw placed beneath a Christmas tree. Formagino was tired from his travels, and he quickly fell asleep.

Formagino dreamed he was in a violent sea storm with waves crashing and smashing him up and down, and up and down. It took some minutes for the little mouse to awaken and understand that the see-saw above him was being used. Formagino needed to get away from the see-saw to keep himself from getting sea sick, and this would give him a chance to see the children playing on the toy as well. That's all he needed to see now before traveling back to Petunia.

Charles and Snarls were twins and twelve months old. They were also tigers. And they were as surprised to see a mouse run out from under their new see-saw as the mouse was to see them. Charles pounced. Snarls growled. Formagino squeezed into a

crack in the wall and hid
there. It was Petunia's
training that saved him,
because the frightened
little mouse soon realized
that he could understand
the tigers' talking.

"Don't eat me!" squeaked the little mouse in tiger talk. "I came here with Santa Claus and I can tell you where your new toy came from." Charles purred. Snarls said "What can you tell us?"

Formagino told everything he could, and the two tigers promised not to eat him if he would take them to the South Pole. Formagino said he would be glad to take them if he knew how to get there, but that he didn't even know where he was.

"That's not a problem," said Snarls. "Orville can help us," said Charles. The two tiger cubs yelped and howled until an enormous orangutan swung out of a tree and nearly landed on their heads. Orville the orangutan was more than happy to carry the two tigers and the mouse to the edge of the ocean where they hitched a ride on a certain whale friend.

That night, as the sun shone bright, Petunia heard two happy tigers say something she'd never imagined hearing with her own ears: "Thank you for the Christmas present!"

"Do penguins have ears?" asked Wesley.

"They have to hear, don't they?" said Hallie.

"They sit on elephants' noses and borrow their ears," Travis explained.