Chapter Text
Winnie-the-Pooh and Piglet were going for a walk one afternoon in late summer when Piglet gave a sudden squeak and said, “What is that over there? It looks like a huge bird flapping its wings. Do you think it’s dangerous?”
Pooh Bear looked and sure enough there was something flapping on a branch of one of the trees in the Hundred Acre Woods. Bravely he took a few small steps closer and then took several longer steps back as the bird, or whatever it was, took off again.
Piglet gave a small laugh and said, “It’s all right. It’s not a bird at all. It looks like one of Kanga’s tea towels. I wonder what it’s doing out here.”
Pooh, because he didn’t want to look as if he’d tried to run away from a tea towel, said, “I’m sure it’s not supposed to be here. And there’s no-one else around, so it’s up to us to capture it. We shall be brave explorers after the very rare flying tea towel.” And he set off at a trot after it.
Piglet was going to say that they could hardly be explorers within the Hundred Acre Woods since they lived there, but Pooh was already halfway down the path, so he didn’t bother.
Every time they drew near to the tea towel the wind blew again and it would flap gaily away with Pooh and Piglet running behind.
“You know (gasp) Pooh (gasp) I really don’t (gasp) think I can keep (gasp) going much (gasp) longer,” Piglet wheezed.
Fortunately for both Piglet and Pooh (who was also feeling breathless but didn’t have enough breath to say so) the tea towel settled in the middle of Eeyore’s thistle patch.
“You can’t leave that there,” Eeyore grumbled.
“We aren’t going to,” Pooh replied. “Could you give it back to us?”
“Is it yours?”
“No, it’s Kanga’s tea towel.”
“Then why should I give it back to you?” Eeyore looked at them suspiciously.
“We’re going to give it back to Kanga,” Pooh said.
“And you don’t want it covering your thistles,” Piglet added.
“Oh very well!” Eeyore pulled the tea towel off his thistles and gave it to Pooh. “Don’t lose it again!”
Pooh was about to explain that they couldn’t lose it again as they hadn’t lost it once, but Piglet nudged him and together they walked to Kanga’s house, holding very firmly onto the tea towel in case it should try to escape.
After Kanga had thanked them and invited them in for a little something, Pooh and Piglet walked back home together, and Pooh entertained Piglet with his new pome.
Piglet and Pooh went walking
All on a summer day
But very soon they were stalking
Kanga’s tea towel which had flown away
It came to rest on some thistles
Which wasn’t the best place to rest
‘Cos it gave Eeyore the bristles
And there they ended their quest
Chapter Text
While Pooh Bear and Piglet were chasing Kanga’s tea towel, Tigger was on his very own quest. In the morning when he had gone out for a walk with Kanga and Roo, he and Roo had bounced around as they usually did and then Roo had bounced up at Kanga. He accidentally caught the necklace Kanga was wearing, and the string broke and all the pretty gemstones had fallen into the grass.
The three of them had hunted around for the scattered gemstones and Kanga had put them all into her pocket before they had gone back home. They still bounced, but Roo bounced a bit more carefully and Tigger did the same.
After she was home, Kanga had put the gems onto a new string, but when she counted them, she had found she was missing two. She said that it didn’t matter, but Tigger knew that really it did. He decided he would go back and have another look for the missing gemstones.
When Tigger reached the place where they had been playing in the morning, he had another careful look round, but he still couldn’t see the missing gemstones.
“If I were a gemstone,” he said to himself, “where would I bounce to?”
He stood where Kanga had been standing and tried to imagine he was Kanga. He put his tail straight out behind him, rather than curled round, and then stood with one front paw on top of the other. Then he said, “Ping!” and imagined he was a bouncing gemstone.
Now gemstones are much smaller than Tiggers – he knew he was the only one, but he was sure if there were by chance more Tiggers they’d be his size and much bigger than gemstones. So he made little gemstone-sized bounces, which took him to a small patch of plants, which had large leaves.
Carefully he lifted up one of the leaves and there, nestled underneath it, was one of Kanga’s gemstones. He lifted up some of the other leaves until he found the second gemstone.
Then he bounced back home, with one gemstone held firmly in each front paw.
Kanga was very happy to have her two missing gemstones back and promised to make Tigger his favourite tea.
And Roo told him all about how Pooh and Piglet had brought back the flying tea towel and bounced around showing Tigger how the tea towel had flown lots of places before Eeyore’s thistles had caught it for them.
And then Kanga told them both to go and wash their paws and faces so they would be ready for tea.