Practice for Monologue

Hiawatha and the Wolf

Little Hiawatha was washing his trousers in the stream. When they were clean he looked around for somewhere to hang them up to dry. The trees were too high for him to reach, but he found a bush with some nice bare branches sticking up from it.  Just the thing! Hiawatha hung his trousers on a branch.

At that moment the wolf came snarling up. Little Hiawatha hid behind the tree and, peeping around, saw his  trousers and the branch they were hung on leap up and gallop away! The branch was not a branch at all-- it was the antlers of a stag which had been dozing behind the bush.

The wolf rushed after the stag and little Hiawatha rushed after the wolf. "Bring back my trousers!" he shouted. The stag, startled   by Hiawatha's voice, jerked his head up, and the trousers sailed through the iar and landed -- plonk!-- right over the wolf's head. He couldn't see a thing.

"Hel'! Grr-wow!" howled the wolf. "Let me go!" Little Hiawatha roared with laughter, and even the stag stopped running and giggled nervously. The wolf seemed to think Hiawatha's trousers were a very big, fierce animal. Little Hiawatha crept close to the wolf and growled, "I am King Tiger. Leave my friends alone or I will squash you flat!"

"Anything you say," whined the wolf, "only let me go!" And he slunk off into the woods. Little Hiawatha pulled his trousers off the wolf as he went. "Whew!" he gasped. "Next time I'll make sure my bush is a bush!"

(taken from Disney A Story A Day -- Spring, page 86)