Tag: threebears

Little Lost Goldibot

Once, or maybe someday, there was a little factory sitting nearly abandoned at the edge of the woods. It was nearly abandoned by people, because the Gold Standard Cleaning Supplies factory was nearly fully automated. The robots did most of the work themselves, and only really needed people to pick up their neatly boxed supplies to deliver them elsewhere.

Unfortunately for the Gold Standard Cleaning Supplies company, one day one of the delivery people was in a hurry. He stacked the boxes higher than normal so that he could take fewer trips. This meant that he propped the door open so that he didn’t need to try to open and close it while his arms were over-full.

He did not notice the cleaning robot making its way around the perimeter of the factory. He did not see it follow the trail of his muddy footprints out the door. And when he locked up and left, he did not count to see if any robots were missing.

The little lost gold standard cleaning supplies industrial janitorial robot, goldibot, would not be missed for months and months and months. That’s how long it would take for the deliveryman to notice that the factory floor was unusually dusty. It would take many more months for him to remember to report it to his supervisor. By that time, goldibot was long gone, and they never knew what happened to it.

They never knew that goldibot followed the dirty footprints out to a dirty parking lot, where the footprints became lost in the general grime. Following the perimeter of the lot, the little robot began sweeping up dirt and fallen leaves and pine needles and leaving them in tiny compact cubes. Normally, goldibot would pick these up in its next pass around the perimeter and drop them in the incinerator.

However, the perimeter wasn’t clearly defined, and goldibot didn’t come around again. Instead, the robot soon wandered into the woods, clearing a path as it went. Occasionally there was a tree in its path, and goldibot paused to clean off all the moss and scrub the bark. Boulders received similar treatment. The robot cleaned with pressurized air and sonic waves, so it was in no danger of running out of cleaning supplies.

The next morning, goldibot wandered into a dark, messy cave. This was not just any cave. This was the home of three bears, who were out for a walk to patrol the edge of their territory.

Goldibot quickly swept up the nuts, seeds, and berries left in the hollows of the rock and left them behind, squished into tiny cubes. It rolled further into the cave, clearing boulders of moss and stacking them neatly out of the way.

The next room was full of mounds of pine needles and soft grass that kept goldibot very busy sweeping and compacting. In fact, goldibot was still cleaning up when the bears returned home. Goldibot didn’t know that the bears were there, of course.

But the bears knew that goldibot was there. When they stepped into the cave, ready to sit down to breakfast, they noticed right away that something was different. “Something has happened to my breakfast,” Papa Bear roared.

“Something happened to my breakfast, too,” Mama Bear replied.

Baby bear inspected the tiny cubes and tasted one. “I think this is breakfast,” he said.

After some grumbling, the bears quickly gobbled up the tiny cubes and went to sit in their living room. But their comfy moss-covered boulders were gone. “Someone has stolen my chair,” Papa Bear roared.

“Someone stole my chair, too,” Mama Bear replied.

Baby bear sniffed at the tiny green cubes and followed them to the neat stack of clean boulders along the far wall. “Here they are,” he said.

“We can’t use them like that,” Papa Bear said. “They don’t look at all comfortable. Someone has broken our living room.”

“This is all so distressing,” Mama Bear said. “I need a nap.”

“Me too,” Papa Bear said.

Baby Bear followed them to the bedroom. The bedroom looked strange, too. Something was missing.

“Somebody stole my bed,” Papa Bear roared.

“Someone stole mine too,” Mama Bear said.

“Someone is still stealing my bed,” Baby Bear said. “And there he is.” They all looked at the silver something as it scooped up the last bit of Baby Bear’s bed. It spat out a tiny cube, made a scary hissing noise, and zoomed away.

The bears cleaned up the mess and remade their furniture. They never saw the scary silver thing again. But they heard from the foxes and wolves that it was still out there, causing trouble. The animals still tell their children about it on dark nights when the moon is full and no one can sleep.

And the little lost goldibot continued to clean everything in its path for years and years and years.

Substitute Thieves

“…And there she is!” Baby bear threw the covers back triumphantly. He jumped back as flames shot past his left ear, singeing the ends of his fur. There was a dragon in the bed.

The dragon stopped breathing fire and sat up. “Sorry about that,” he said, looking embarrassed. “You surprised me.”

“But who are you?” Baby bear narrowed his eyes. “And where is Goldilocks? Did you eat her?”

The dragon looked offended. “Of course not. She isn’t at all royal. I only eat princesses. Unless they get rescued, of course. Unfortunately, they always do. Mostly I just eat peanut butter sandwiches.” The dragon looked at the taller bears. “Who made the porridge? It was excellent. The serving in the little bowl was just right. Do you make granola? I would buy it by the barrel!”

“I hadn’t thought of granola,” Papa bear said. “Goldilocks likes porridge so much that I never make anything else.”

“I like granola too,” Mama bear said. “Maybe we could make some after the dragon leaves.”

“I’ll give you my number. Call me if you need a taste tester,” the dragon said, pulling a business card from his pocket and handing it to Papa bear.

“Guys, stop talking about granola. We need to find out what happened to Goldilocks!” Baby bear stomped his feet.

“Oh. Right.” The dragon got up and stretched. “Goldilocks ate some really old pease porridge and got sick. So, she called in some substitutes. She’ll be gone all week.”

Mama bear started making the bed. “Oh, the poor child. She never could resist good porridge. How old was it?”

“Nine days old. Can you believe it? I’m not sure how it lasted that long without being eaten.” The dragon smiled a wide, toothy smile. “Well, it was nice to meet you all, but I have an appointment with a princess.”

“Bye!” Mama and Papa bears waved happily at the departing dragon as he leaped from the window and flew away.

“Wasn’t he nice?” Mama bear said. “I wonder who will come tomorrow?”

“Let’s make some granola. Do you think we should add coconut?” Papa bear rubbed his paws together as he followed Mama bear down the stairs. “This will be fun.”

Baby bear rolled his eyes and followed them downstairs. “Let’s fix my chair first, or it will be broken tomorrow when the substitute comes, and then what will they do?”

The next morning, after the usual walk and subsequent discovery of missing granola and broken furniture, Baby bear threw the covers on his bed back a little more cautiously than usual. “…And there…is a goat?”

The goat stood up on the bed and tossed back his horns. “That’s right, it is I, the littlest billy goat Gruff!”

“Nice to meet you,” Mama bear said. “But please don’t stand on the furniture.”

“Sorry about that,” the goat said, hopping off the bed. “I guess I was more nervous than I thought. Do you have any trolls you need me to toss around?”

“Nope,” Papa bear said. “But we have a barrel of granola in the kitchen.”

“I wouldn’t mind more. The granola in the littlest bowl was just right. It would only be better if I had an apple to eat with it.”

Baby bear pointed out the window. “That’s an apple tree right there. Have as many apples as you’d like.”

“Really? I’ll take a few with me, then. I’m meeting my brothers at a bridge on the other side of the valley. The grass is greener there, you know.” The goat jumped from the window into the tree and stuffed his pockets full of apples before jumping down and trit-trotting away.

The rest of the week was just as strange. There was a princess who pricked her finger on a fork and fell asleep at the table. She didn’t wake up until they put a pea under the chair cushion. She left complaining about bruises.

Then there were the seven grumpy little men who were crowded on the little bed when the bears got home. They were still hungry after splitting the three bowls of granola. “We were promised breakfast, and we won’t leave until we get some so bring it right here,” one of them said. When they finally left, Baby bear’s bed was full of crumbs.

On Friday, there was no one in the bed, but there was a mermaid in the bathtub. “I ran out of magic potion,” she told them. “Do you have any?” The bears did not have any magic potion, but the witch next door had some so the mermaid was able to leave. “I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to break the chair or sleep in your bed,” she told Baby bear.

“That’s okay,” Baby bear said. “Some days are like that.”

On Monday, Baby bear threw the covers back. “…And there she is! Hey, it really is her.” Goldilocks was back.

“It’s me,” she said. “But where was the porridge? I don’t really like granola, you know.”

“Sorry,” Papa bear said. “We made more than expected. But, I know someone who might like it. We’ll be back to porridge tomorrow.”

“Good. Well, time to go,” Goldilocks said. She jumped out the window and ran away.

“It was fun meeting new people, but it’s nice to have her back,” Mama bear said fondly as she made the bed.

“I’ll go call the dragon about the barrel of granola,” Papa bear said, heading towards the stairs.

Baby bear hurried after him. “Wait, you need to fix my chair first!”

And they lived happily every day after.

Dragon in Little Bear's bed.

The Gingerbread Tower

Once upon a time, the three bears sat down to eat breakfast.  Unfortunately, their porridge was too hot.  So, they went for a walk in the woods while they waited for it to cool.  While they were walking, they wandered into an area of the woods that they’d never visited before.

They paused as they heard voices up ahead.  Peering through some conveniently placed bushes, they saw a strange sight.  A woman dressed all in black was standing at the foot of a gingerbread tower.

“Rapunzel, I said to let down your hair.  I forgot something, and I’m going to be late.”  The woman stomped her foot.

A window opened at the top of the tower and a younger woman looked out.  “What did you forget? I’ll toss it down to you.”

The woman in black stomped her foot again.  “Just let down your hair.  I don’t have time to describe it to you.”

The woman at the window tossed out a very, very long, blond braid.  The woman in black used it to climb the tower.  She climbed back down a few minutes later and pointed a stick at a pumpkin in the garden next to the tower.

The pumpkin turned into a carriage.  With a few more flicks of her wand, some mice nibbling at the tower became horses.  The bears, hidden in the bushes, shuddered.  They were glad they’d decided to remain hidden.  It could have been them turned into horses!

The witch, for what else could she be, hitched the horses to the carriage and rode away.  The bears looked at each other.

“If she’s not home, it might be safe to look a little closer,” Mama bear said.

“The gingerbread smells heavenly,” Papa bear said.

“Did you forget what happened to the mice?” Baby bear said.  “They were turned into horses.  We might be turned into pigs.  Then we’ll be eaten!”

“Nonsense,” Mama bear said.  “With all this gingerbread, who would want bacon?”

Papa bear shook his head.

And so, with Baby bear trailing behind them and looking around suspiciously, they approached the tower.  Because they hadn’t eaten breakfast yet, they were all quite hungry.  Soon there was a large hole eaten from the side of the tower.

“Oops,” Mama bear said. “I just meant to taste it to see if I could bake something like it at home.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Papa bear said.  “They needed a door anyway.  Now they won’t have to climb out the window.”

“I could go in and bake them a door to put in the hole,” Mama bear said. “I have a nice brownie recipe.”

“That’s a terrible idea,” Baby bear whispered loudly.  “We should run away now!”

But they went inside anyway, and Baby bear followed them in.  Inside, seven very short men were busily working in a kitchen that filled the base of the tower.  One of the men looked up and scowled.

“It looks like we need a five by six patch.”

“Five by six?” The man in glasses next to him put down his mixing bowl and took out a notepad and pencil. He wrote on the pad and then tore the page out and handed it to the bears.

Papa bear took the page.  “Is this a bill?”

The man in glasses nodded. “We charge by the square foot.”

“I thought I could bake you a door,” Mama bear said.  “I make great brownies.”

“Brownies are terrible construction material.  Too soft,” the scowling man said.  “And we don’t need a door.”

“But the witch…” Mama bear began.

“She’s just overly efficient,” said a voice behind them.

The bears whirled around.  The blond woman was behind them.  Baby bear squeezed himself between his parents and tried to wish himself invisible.

“Weren’t you trapped in the tower?” Papa bear asked nervously.

“No, I just spin in there.  My hair grows unnaturally fast, so I spin it and braid it into ropes.  The witch is my product tester.  She insists on using my hair ropes to enter and leave so that product testing is built into her day.  If she was really in a hurry, she’d ride her broom.”

“So if you wanted to leave…” Mama bear began.

“There is a door on the other side of the tower.”  Rapunzel yawned.  “Wow.  Spinning sure makes me sleepy.  One of these days, I’m going to fall asleep at the wheel and prick my finger on the spindle.”

Papa bear pulled out his wallet and paid, and the bears went home.  Inside their house, they found that the porridge was eaten, a chair was broken, and a little girl was asleep in Baby bear’s bed.  Baby bear woke up the girl.

She looked at her watch and leaped out of bed.  “You’re late!” she threw on a red cloak and picked up a basket that was waiting by the bed.  “I’m going to be late getting these goodies to grandma’s house.”

“Just don’t stop to talk to strangers this time,” Baby bear said.

The little girl made a face at him, then jumped out the window and ran away.  The bears looked at each other.

“That was different,” Papa bear said.  “But it’s fun to try new things.”

“It was fun,” Mama bear said.  “We should go back to the tower again.  I want to taste a window.  Just to see if I could make one at home, of course.”

Baby bear sighed.  “That was stressful and exhausting.  I need a nap.” And hew went upstairs and went to bed.

“Should we have told him about the magic beans?” Mama bear asked.  “Maybe he needs a bit of warning.”

“I’m sure he’ll be fine,” Papa bear said.  “Just toss them out the window.  Let’s see if they grow.”

Snakeylocks

Once upon a time, there was a little girl who had snakes instead of hair, just like her mother and father and grandparents and great-grandparents did. You wouldn’t be able to pronounce her real name, and my computer doesn’t have the right symbols to spell it out anyway, so for the purposes of this story we’ll call her Snakeylocks.

The lovely, grass-green snakes of her hair had an extra special talent. If anything met their eyes, it was turned to stone. This meant that as she went skipping through the forest, birds dropped out of the sky, butterflies stopped fluttering, and squirrels fell out of trees.

Snakeylocks was used to this, of course, and ignored all the little woodland creature statues as she picked flowers. Flowers have no eyes, and so they remained nice and soft and colorful. She gathered an extra large bouquet and was just looking for somewhere to put it, when she saw a house in a clearing further along the path. “Perfect,” she said.

Without even knocking once, she opened the door and stepped inside. You might think that she should know better than to enter someone’s home uninvited, but you’d be wrong. Any house she’d ever entered had been inhabited by the usual boring statues that she always saw everywhere, so she just assumed that houses were part of the usual natural terrain of the world. Do you knock on the trees when you enter a forest? Neither did she.

Once inside the house, she saw a table set for breakfast. How convenient. She was feeling hungry. She left the bouquet of flowers in the orange juice jug, because orange juice tastes terrible and needs to make itself useful somehow. And then she washed her hands, said a blessing on the food, and took a bite.

As you may have guessed, the first bowl was too hot, the second too cold, and the third just right. So, she mixed them all together in a big bowl she found in the cupboard and shared the meal with her snakey hair. It was lovely.

Full and empty-handed, she decided to explore the rest of the house. Houses were always so different from the cave she lived in with her family. They were so fragile and temporary, like the flowers she liked to pick. In fact, if they were a bit smaller, she’d pick a few to take home and leave around the cave to play in when she was bored.

Speaking of playing, Snakeylocks was pleased to find rocking chairs in the living room. Perfect! She jumped onto the first one feet first. It rocked back and forth, but wasn’t really springy. It was too hard. She leaped over the arms onto the next rocking chair. She sank right away into the cushions as it rocked back and forth. Too soft. She leaped onto the last and bounced up a little into the air. It was just right.

She jumped and jumped on the rocking chair as it rocked wildly back and forth. Eventually the whole thing collapsed into a satisfying heap on the floor. Her snakey hair hissed in complaint about feeling seasick and Snakeylocks sighed. She was feeling a little tired. Maybe they’d all feel better after a nap.

She climbed the stairs and found the usual bedrooms. There were no sensible nests in houses, but you have to make do with what you have sometimes. She entered the first room and made a nest of the blankets and pillows on the bed.

It was terrible. Some of them were too rough and some were too slippery. She and her snakes hissed in displeasure. She went to the next bedroom. The bed was smaller, but the blankets and pillow felt just right. She pushed them around until the nest was perfect and settled in to sleep as her snakey hair hissed lovely lullabies about caves and the ocean and lots and lots of statues.

She woke when her snakes hissed a warning. There were sounds downstairs. That meant that it was time to find the statues. Statues were boring. She sat up and stretched. Outside the window there was a tree with a convenient branch. It looked like she could jump to the branch from the window. That sounded fun.

Within moments, Snakeylocks was out the window, leaping from branch to branch and shrieking in delight as her snakey hair hissed complaints, and squirrels, birds and butterflies fell from the treetops to the forest floor.

Behind her, a confused family of bears opened the door to the bedroom she’d left behind and examined the nest of blankets. “I think it went out the window,” the baby bear said. “It was closed when we left. If we make more oatmeal, can we stay here while it cools?”

And they did, cleaning up the mess while they waited and ordering a new little rocking chair online. It wasn’t until they sat down for their very late breakfast that they noticed the odd bouquet of flowers in the orange juice. It was the strangest morning they ever had, and they still talk about it today.

Snakeylocks is still out there, picking flowers and visiting houses. So, if you hear something go bump in the night, maybe it’s not a good idea to check it out. You never know who might be jumping in your rocking chairs and eating your oatmeal, after all.