Yuggles

By Erica (Age 10, Chinese International School)

Editor's Note: This is a story based on Paul Jennings' Funniest Stories. 


See, no one had ever seen a yuggle before. And no one's ever seen one since. Where they came from and how they exploded has never been explained. Anyway, I'm getting a bit ahead of myself. I'd better start from the beginning. This boy called Pockets was visiting his little sister Midge in hospital...

Midge had a really bad sickness that even the doctors in the hospital could not cure. The doctors said it was called Obis, and they were trying to find a cure for it but so far, nothing. Midge was a red-cheeked, blue-eyed, happy person, but as she lay on the snow-white sheets of the hospital bed, she had pale cheeks and faint blue eyes that were almost white. Pockets was crouching beside Midge. He was repeating over and over again, "You'll be all right Midge, fine, fine, fine!" He sounded like he was trying to convince himself instead.

Because I saw he was so sad, I invited him to go pick mushrooms. That was his favorite activity: picking mushrooms. We went to Yuggle Forest. No one knows why it was named that. We picked thousands of different mushrooms: death cap mushrooms and honey mushrooms. Then we saw a mushroom that we had never seen before. It was big, purple, and the stem was red and fat. They were growing on the roots of a honey oak tree and was covered with soft moss. We picked four of the eight and washed it in the stream.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

When we got back to the hospital, we started playing with the new and strange mushrooms. A passing doctor stopped and stared at the mushrooms in our hands. "This... this is the cure... how... you can..." Pockets yelled with joy. I, for one, didn't know half of what the doctor had said. Then Pockets turned to me and said, "This is the cure for Midge!" Then he turned and followed the doctor.

The doctor squeezed the purple juice out of the mushroom into a glass. Then he went to Midge's bed and made her drink the juice. Then he fed the stem and the cap to her. Within a week, Midge was sitting up on her bed, talking and even laughing. And me? Pockets and I were heroes. We had found a type of mushroom that could cure a sickness that was spreading around the world! Even now, there were thousands of orders for the mushrooms. Scientists named it Yuggles, after the forest where it came from. It is now a cure for any type of sickness. I still come to the forest to tend to the Yuggles, and yet, I still have one of the mushrooms that Pockets and I first picked. I will pass it on to my children.