Mr. Croc got up very early one wet Tuesday morning, it was 11:15 am. He pulled the covers over his eyes because crocodiles don’t like very bright lights one bit. He had a little think to himself about how he should spend his day…
At roughly twelve noon Mr. Croc had gotten out of bed, and was waddling over into the bathroom to get himself ready. Mr. Croc isn’t a very vain creature at all, but it does take him a very long time to get ready in a morning. You see Mr. Croc has a grand total of one thousand teeth, and his wisdoms haven’t even come through just yet! Let me tell you, that takes some brushing.
Eventually he was finished in the bathroom, however the clock now read 12:50 and his day was slipping away fast.
Usually Mr. Croc spent his days sitting on a rock totally motionless with the sun on his back waiting for his dinner to come swimming past in the river. However, as I said earlier on, today was a very wet day indeed. It had rained all night in fact and had still not stopped! When Mr. Croc made it into the kitchen and looked out of his window he could see that it would be very cold on his rock today and he decided to do something much more productive instead. He rang his best friend, Hedgy.
Luckily for Mr. Croc, Hedgy didn’t have many friends and so he was more than happy to come round and play with his reptilian friend. Little did Hedgy realize though that he was in for a spot of work when he got to Mr. Croc’s house. You see Mr. Croc is not only fearsome and strong. He is also very cunning, and quite manipulative. He had conned Hedgy into coming round in order to get him to help decorate his kitchen wall. Mr. Croc, unlike most crocodiles, found it very difficult to walk on all fours, and much preferred to walk on his hind legs instead. This made it very difficult for bending down and reaching low places. Hedgy was perfect for reaching low places though, he just had to step on his tip toes…
Soon Mr. Croc had explained what his plan was to hedgy who luckily wasn’t very intelligent either. He figured decorating Mr. Croc’s wall with him would be great fun, and asked what he should do first. Mr. Croc has already begun scraping the wallpaper off from the top of the wall and he gave his other scraper to Hedgy so he could make a start on the bottom.
What Hedgy didn’t know was that he had been followed to Mr. Croc’s house by two of his so-called friends, Louisa and Clive Raccoon! They had been hiding quietly behind the window listening to Mr. Croc boss poor Hedgy around. The Raccoon’s didn’t like to see Hedgy treated this way by a big no good bully like Mr. Croc. They’d MUCH more prefer to be doing the bullying themselves, and were planning mischief to rain havoc on their decorating adventure.
Mr. Croc had been working hard for almost fifteen minutes when he decided it was time for a break. Hedgy, who is used to working very hard with no breaks, kept on scraping. The trouble was hedgy was scraping up but the wallpaper was falling down onto his head and sticking to his spikes. He was drowning in wallpaper. Mr. Croc came back into the kitchen after his well-earned break, he couldn’t see hedgy and started shouting him to come out and finish his job. Calling him a "slacker" and "stupid"! It was then that he heard a faint muffled sound from under a pile of wallpaper and realized his pal was stuck!
Mr. Croc cleaned Hedgy up in his kitchen sink, it was the closest Mr. Croc had come to doing the washing up for months! He then told him he could paint the skirting board. He told Hedgy to go upstairs and get the small paintbrush out of the spare bedroom and begin painting his skirting boards. Mr. Croc got a tin of very expensive white paint out for Hedgy and left it on the kitchen floor. Then went into the living room for another sit-down.
Hedgy being a very simple creature couldn’t even tell the difference between a bedroom and a bathroom, let alone a paintbrush from a toothbrush! He followed Mr. Croc’s instructions however and began painting the skirting board with his brush…
The Raccoons, who were now peeping through the window, found all Hedgy’s dodgy decorating skills very amusing and figured since Mr. Croc had gone away for another break anyway they’d pop into the house and help out a bit themselves. Teach Hedgy decorating "Raccoon Style"! This involved abandoning traditional tools such as paint and scrapers for their own DIY favorite - Superglue!!! They squirted superglue onto the walls and the windows and Hedgy! Almost everything except each other! They then picked up all the wallpaper the pair had worked so very hard to remove and stuck it back onto the walls, and the windows, oh and of course Hedgy! Louisa ran upstairs to get a paintbrush from the spare room, then using the very expensive paint, she wrote "Raccoonville Rules" in big letters.
When Mr. Croc awoke, and returned to his kitchen he expected to find a job almost done, instead he found someone had done a job on him! As Hedgy was stuck upside down on the walls he figured he couldn’t be involved. Not even Hedgy, he thought to himself, could be this dumb. It was on this thought though that Mr. Croc noticed the brush covered in paint stuck to the wall beside Hedgy. "Is that MY toothbrush?" He growled. Hedgy just looked back blankly, a familiar expression for Hedgy.
The biggest clue as to who was responsible for all this damage was the laughter coming from outside the window. The raccoons were laughing at the trouble they’d caused. Anyone else and Mr. Croc would’ve gone out into the garden and chased them away, but, if truth were told, Mr. Croc is in fact just a big old softie. The raccoons know this and Mr. Croc knows they’re not scared of him one little bit. Mr. Croc got himself a little bit worked up. He ran upstairs and took comfort in the only friend he had left, his teddy. That’ll teach him for bullying poor hedgehogs…
As for the raccoons it was a job well done. They had succeeded in causing terror on poor Hedgy and upset Mr. Croc’s decorating plans. Even the sun had come up now. They congratulated each other and gave a High-Five! Unfortunately there were still traces of glue on their furry paws and the their hands stuck together when they clapped! They had to walk home hand in hand… Very Silly!
