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Child’s Play?

Miss Walker had told the children to come to school dressed in their oldest clothes. Each Parent was asked to give the children a sandwich or two as the children with their teachers were going to the woods. It would be an outdoor lesson.

The children were naturally very excited a day out in the woods. Before the children set out each was given a picture of a flower or an insect and all were asked to look for whatever was to be seen on their photo. This was a game that the children loved. Crossing the fields the photos were being looked at and compared with whatever plant or insect that they had come across. The woods came into sight and the Teachers had their work cut out to control the excited kids.

Four of the children were always together and helped eachother with all that they were asked to do. One pushed aside a bush, behind the bush was a large hole. Now there was nothing to stop them. No teacher near them and whoosh one after the other went in to the cave. Joey was the type that always had things in his pocket. It did not surprise the other children when he pulled a stump of a candle from his pocket and lit it with a match that he also had in a matchbox. Lighting the candle stump they went deeper and deeper into the cave.

The surprise was great when one of the children fell over a pair of legs. The owner of the legs grumbled at being woken up so rudely. The man stood up and was smaller than any of the children. Who he called out loudly dares to enter my home and wake me from my sleep? Suddenly he smiled and took from a shelf that he had fixed to the wall of the cave a bottle. He smiled again and asked the children if they were thirsty he would like to give them some of his home made strawberry juice. The children forgot all about what they had been told not to accept anything from strangers. One after the other the little man gave them the bottle of strawberry juice. It was not long and all of the children were asleep on the floor. The little man looked in all of their pockets and took whatever he could find from the sleeping children. The sandwiches he ate straight away. He had a very big appetite for such a small man and soon the children had nothing in their pockets and their sandwiches the little man had eaten. Later the little man left the cave and keeping well under cover he left the sleeping children. Later the other children were excitedly showing either their flowers or their insects to the teachers. Joey’s Teacher missed Joey and while Miss Walker went with the other children back to the school she went in the direction that she had seen Joey taking with his friends. She too pushed the bush away and saw the cave’s entrance. Picking up a large heavy stick she went into the cave. Her cry when she saw the missing children asleep was quite loud. Going to each of the sleeping children she felt their pulses and was quite relieved that all were only asleep. Joey was the first to awake. On seeing his Teacher and his sleepin mates he blurted out about the little man and his strawberry juice that he had given each child to drink. Joey’s Teacher went with the now fully awakened children to the Police Station. Soon Men and women were helping the Police to look for this little man that had given the children the sleeping mixture to drink. He was soon found and denied all knowledge of the children. This did not help him for the Police had found the pictures that each child had been given. Joey and his mates were the talk of the school and were often asked about the little man. Later the little man was set free and told to go and find himself somewhere else to live. The cave was closed by building a thick wall across it. Now all of the children whenever they went out into nature for a lesson all wanted to see the wall where Joey and his mates were drugged with the so called strawberry juice.

The new head mistress always takes the children for their nature lessons a long way , awy from what is now called Joeys cave.