Winnie-the-Pooh and Eeyore's Lost Tail

The story you’re about to hear is called Winnie-the-Pooh and Eeyore’s Lost Tail by A.A. Milne. This is a LibraryCall adaptation and recording. The Old Gray Donkey, Eeyore, stood by himself in a thistly corner of the forest, his front feet apart, his head to one side, and thought about things. Sometimes he thought sadly to himself, "Why?" and sometimes he thought, "When?" and other times he thought, "Which?"—and sometimes he didn't quite know what he was thinking about. So when Winnie-the-Pooh came along, Eeyore was very glad to be able to stop thinking for a bit, in order to say to him, "How do you do?" in a gloomy manner. "And how are you?" said Winnie-the-Pooh. Eeyore shook his head from side to side. "Not very how," he said. "I don't seem to have felt at all how for a long time." "Oh, dear," said Pooh, "I'm sorry about that. Let's have a look at you." So Eeyore stood there, gazing sadly at the ground, and Winnie-the-Pooh walked around him once. "Eeyore, what's happened to your tail?" he said in surprise. "I… don’t know," said Eeyore. "It isn't there!" "Are you sure?" "Well, either a tail is there or it isn't there. You can't make a mistake about it. And yours isn't there!" "Then what is there?" "Nothing." "Let's have a look," said Eeyore, and he turned slowly round to the place where his tail had been a little while ago. And then, finding that he couldn't catch up with it, he turned around the other way until he came back to where he started, and then he put his head down and looked between his front legs. At last he said, with a long, sad sigh, "I believe you're right." "Of course I'm right," said Pooh. "That explains everything," said Eeyore gloomily. "No wonder." "You must have left it somewhere," said Winnie-the-Pooh. "Somebody must have taken it," said Eeyore. After a long silence, he added, "It figures." Pooh felt that he ought to say something helpful, but didn't quite know what. So he decided to do something helpful instead. "Eeyore," he said solemnly, "I, Winnie-the-Pooh, will find your tail for you." "Thank you, Pooh," answered Eeyore. "You're a real friend," he said. So Winnie-the-Pooh went off to find Eeyore's tail. It was a fine spring morning in the forest as he started out. Little soft clouds played happily in a blue sky, skipping from time to time in front of the sun as if they had come to turn it off. Between them the sun shone bravely. Through the new green lace of the beech trees marched Bear, down open slopes of evergreen shrubs, over rocky beds of streams, up steep banks of sandstone into the shrubs again, and at last, tired and hungry, he reached the Hundred Acre Wood. For it was in the Hundred Acre Wood that Owl lived. "And if anyone knows anything about anything," said Bear to himself, "it's Owl who knows something about something," he said, "or my name's not Winnie-the-Pooh," he said. "Which it is," he added. "So there you are." Owl lived in a charming house in a chestnut tree. It was grander than anybody else's house, or at least Winnie-the-Pooh thought so, because it had both a metal door knocker and a doorbell you could ring by pulling a rope. Underneath the knocker there was a sign that said in spelling that was not quite right: Please pull to ring Underneath doorbell rope there was a sign that said: Please knock Winnie-the-Pooh read the two signs very carefully, first from left to right, and then, in case he had missed something, from right to left. He scratched his head. Then, to make quite sure, he knocked and pulled on the knocker, then he pulled on and knocked the doorbell rope, and he called out in a very loud voice, "Owl! Are you there? It's Bear speaking." The door opened, and Owl looked out. "Hallo, Pooh," he said. "How's things?" "Terrible and Sad," said Pooh, "because Eeyore, who is a friend of mine, has lost his tail. And he's moping about it. So could you very kindly tell me how to find it for him?" "Well," said Owl, "the customary procedure in such cases is as follows." "What does Crustimoney Proseedcake mean?" said Pooh. "For I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and long words Bother me." "It means the Thing to Do." "As long as it means that, I don't mind," said Pooh humbly. "The thing to do is as follows. First, issue a reward. Then——" "Just a moment," said Pooh, holding up his paw. "What do we do to this—what you were saying? You sneezed just as you were going to tell me." "I didn't sneeze." "Yes, you did, Owl." "Excuse me, Pooh, I didn't. You can't sneeze without knowing it." "Well, you can't know it without something having been sneezed." "What I said was, 'First Issue a Reward'." "You're doing it again," said Pooh sadly. "A Reward!" said Owl very loudly. "We make a sign to say that we will give a large something to anybody who finds Eeyore's tail." "I see, I see," said Pooh, nodding his head. "Speaking of large somethings," he went on dreamily, "I generally have a small something about now—about this time in the morning," and he looked wistfully at the cupboard in the corner of Owl's parlor; "just a mouthful of condensed milk or whatnot, with perhaps a lick of honey——" "Anyhow," said Owl, "we will create this sign and put it up all over the forest." "A lick of honey," murmured Bear to himself, "or—or not, as the case may be." And he gave a deep sigh, and tried very hard to listen to what Owl was saying. But Owl went on and on, using longer and longer words, until at last he came back to where he started, and he explained that the person to write out this sign was their friend Christopher Robin, a young boy who lived nearby. "It was Christopher Robin who wrote the signs on my front door for me. Did you see them, Pooh?" For some time now, Pooh hadn’t been listening to what Owl had been saying. He’d just been saying "Yes" and "No”, one after the other, with his eyes shut. Having most recently said, "Yes, yes," he now said "No, not at all," without really knowing what Owl was talking about. "You didn’t see my signs?" said Owl, a little surprised. "Come and look at them now." So they went outside. Pooh looked at the knocker and the sign below it, and he looked at the doorbell rope and the sign below it, and the more he looked at the doorbell rope, the more he felt that he had seen something like it, somewhere else, sometime before. "Handsome bell-rope, isn't it?" said Owl. Pooh nodded. "It reminds me of something," he said, "but I can't think of what. Where did you get it?" "I just came across it in the forest. It was hanging over a bush, and at first I thought it was a doorbell and that somebody lived there, so I rang it, but nothing happened. Then I rang it again very loudly, and it came off in my hand. As nobody seemed to want it, I took it home, and——" "Owl," said Pooh solemnly, "you made a mistake. Somebody did want it." "Who?" "Eeyore. My dear friend Eeyore. He was—he was fond of it." "Fond of it?" "Attached to it," said Winnie-the-Pooh sadly. So with these words, he unhooked it and carried it back to Eeyore. Once Christopher Robin had nailed it back in place, Eeyore frisked around the forest, waving his tail happily. Watching his friend made Winnie-the-Pooh feel funny all over, so he had to hurry home for a little snack. And, wiping his mouth half an hour later, he sang to himself proudly: Who found the Tail? "I," said Pooh, "At a quarter to two (Only it was quarter to eleven really), I found the Tail!" We hope you enjoyed Winnie-the-Pooh and Eeyore’s Lost Tail by A.A. Milne. This has been a LibraryCall adaptation and recording.