Zee-Zee the squirrel pushed open the door marked ‘BOYS’ (in big, colourful letters) and strode proudly into the bathroom. Generally, when he needed to do poopies at the Little Cubs Daycare, he told a grown-up and had them take him to the bathroom, just in case he needed a little help with those things grown-ups are useful for, like tricky tail-tabs on shorts and pull-ups, wiping bottoms and telling little squirrels how clever they are for using the potty like a big boy. But this time, he’d decided to do what the really, really big, clever squirrels do, and go all by himself.
Of course, first he’d had to go around and make sure everybody knew he was going to go potty all by himself, so that they could tell him how clever he is, so he was hurrying as he toddled over to the cub-sized toilet and tugged down his shorts and pull-up, hardly even noticing the unusual buzzing noise until just as he was sitting down, something buzzed right next to his ear, and then something yellow, black and buzzy flew right in front of his face!
“AAAAAAH! BEE!” Zee-Zee squealed, running for the door, bumping into it, remembering that you have to pull it to open it from inside, escaping from the bathroom and coming to a stop, panting, back in the playroom. Having calmed down a little, he noticed that his shorts and pull-up were still around his ankles, pulled them back up around his waist and looked around, hoping nobody had seen him panicking.
“Whatcha doing?” asked a little tanuki cub, standing right next to Zee-Zee with his head tilted to one side. “Playing a game?”
Zee-Zee blushed and shook his head. “Uh-uh, this is real, Max! There’s a bee in the bathroom! A great big one!”
“Eep!” Max squealed. “Don’ open da door! Don’ wet it in da pwaywoom!” He spun around on the spot, worried that there might be a bee hiding behind him.
“But I gotta go potty!” Zee-Zee whined, bobbing up and down and swishing his tail.
“Aw, you gotta pull-up on,” Max said with a cheerful smile. “Jus go in dat.” Max had tried using the potty a couple of times before, but couldn’t see why people thought it was so great. He patted his diaper happily. Potties just make everything so complicated, he thought to himself.
“Uh-uh, nope, no way!” Zee-Zee squeaked, crossing his arms firmly. “I said I was gonna go to the potty all by myself, and I’m gonna! We just gotta get the bee outta the boys’ room, and not into the playroom either, so I can go! I’m gonna think of a clever plan, will you help me?”
“Otay!” Max chirped, grinning. “What’s da plan, Zee-Zee?”
“Lemme think for a minute…” Zee-Zee scratched his head, deep in thought, bouncing from foot to foot in silence, while Max watched with anticipation.
Jerry the chipmunk toddled past the two of them, barely noticing, and reached out to push open the door to the boys’ room. The next thing he knew, he was lying flat on his back on the floor, pinned underneath the squirrel and tanuki who’d dived on him, screaming “Don’t open the door! Don’t open the door!”
“There’s a bee in the potty! Don’t let it out!” Zee-Zee squeaked, letting Jerry stand up again.
“We’re gonna get it out wif a plan!” Max chirped.
“Did you tell a grown-up?” Jerry asked, worriedly, but Zee-Zee shook his head.
“Uh-uh, I can’t tell a grown-up, cause I said I was gonna go by myself and if I get Warren or Raikan to chase the bee away that’d be helping me and I wouldn’t be a big squirrel!” he said. “It’s okay, I got a plan now!”
“Is it okay if I tell a grown-up?” Jerry squeaked, squeezing his legs together and clutching the front of his shorts.
“Nope!” said Zee-Zee, who sometimes had trouble considering other people’s feelings when he was excited about a clever scheme. “Come on, we gotta go find Drakey!”
He grabbed Max and Jerry by the paws and ran over to a corner of the playroom where a little dragon was building a wall of building blocks. The three toddlers charged headlong into it, knocking it down and sending blocks flying everywhere. Drake Silverscales protected his head with his wings, then peeped out and giggled. “Wha yoush doin, gwuysh?” he asked in his reptilian lisp.
“You can breathe fire, right?” Zee-Zee asked, peering closely at Drake’s nostrils as if to check that they were in working order.
“Uh-huhs, bwut Rai said mesh not sposed ta…” Drake said.
“It’s okay, we don’t need fire, just smoke!” Zee-Zee said with an intelligent nod. He pushed his glasses back up his nose and explained. “My daddy says beekeepers blow smoke on bees to make em sleepy when they wanna get the honey. He read me a book, with pictures. That’s why dragons make the best beekeepers, he said!”
“Wow, you know evewyfing, Zee-Zee!” Max said, admiringly.
“Yep, I’m really, really clever,” Zee-Zee said modestly. “Come on, Drakey, quick!”
He grabbed Drake’s paw and tugged him across the room to the bathroom door. “Okay, poke your nose around the potty room door and blow smoke at the bee till it goes to sleep!”
Drake backed away. “Bwee? It’sh gwonna stings mesh nwose!”
“Uh-uh, we’ll pull you out fiwst!” Max said, patting Drake’s back.
“Yep, if you see it flying towards you, just yell, and we’ll all pull you super-quick!” Zee-Zee nodded. “Hey, where did Jerry go?”
“Um, nowhere,” Jerry said, coming out of the girls’ bathroom door with a bright red blush but a relieved expression on his face. “I was here all the time.”
“Uh, gwuys, mesh can’t bwow smokesh,” Drake protested. “Raikan said mesh not sposedta bwow fwires or smokesh in da dwaycare.”
“But it’s an emergency!” Zee-Zee insisted. “I bet he says it’s okay in an emergency!”
“Uh-uh,” Drake said, shaking his head. “Hesh saids never ever, even ifs other cubsh says it’s otays. Never ever bwow fwires in da dwaycare.”
“Ah, but did he say anything about in the potty room?” Zee-Zee asked, shrewdly. Drake wasn’t potty-trained and didn’t normally have any reason to go into the bathrooms. “Cause there’s water and stuff in there, so it’s not dangerous.”
“Uh-huhs,” Drake nodded. “Hesh saids even in da potty, even ifs Zee-Zee says mesh gotta cause it’sh an emergwencies.”
“He said that?” Zee-Zee said, torn between annoyance and admiration. Raikan’s talent for not leaving any loopholes in his instructions had thwarted many a clever squirrel plan before. One day, Zee-Zee resolved, he was going to grow up to be as smart as Rai. “Okay, we gotta make another plan!” he said, stamping his foot. “And quick, cause I really, really gotta go!”
“You’s still holding it in?” Max asked, surprised. He knew that Zee-Zee’s little squirrel bladder didn’t normally give him much advance warning, despite how much Zee-Zee wanted to be a big, grown-up, non-pants-wetting squirrel.
“Poopies are kinda easier to hold in,” Zee-Zee said, knowledgeably. “But I really gotta go soon!”
“Me too,” Max said, with a thoughtful expression. He toddled a few paces away into a quiet corner and squatted down.
“That’s not helping!” Zee-Zee shouted, squirming uncomfortably.
“Um, what’s the new plan?” Jerry asked, shyly.
“Oh yeah,” Zee-Zee said. “Max, go tell Warren you made a stinky and get a new diapie, Jerry, while Warren’s not looking, go get a jar of honey from the kitchen cupboard, Drake, go get the little fishing nets from that fishing game in the toybox, I’ll go and make a fake lady bee! Hurry!”
The other three cubs nodded cheerfully and toddled off in different directions. Zee-Zee dashed over to the pile of plushies by the window, where a little tabby kitten was acting out a grocery-shopping scenario with the help of a play cash register and a supermarket’s worth of plushie customers. “Kaffre!” Zee-Zee squeaked. “Quick, it’s an emergency! Can I take… um… this black panther and… the yellow scarf from this bear! I gotta make a fake lady bee before I poop my pants!”
“Okay,” Kaffre nodded, not batting an eyelid. “But why don’t you just use the bee plushie?” He held up a little fuzzy plushie bee in blue overalls.
“Uh-uh, that’s a boy bee,” Zee-Zee explained with a shake of his head, wrapping the yellow scarf around the panther to make something that while it looked entirely unlike a bee, was at least more or less yellow-and-black striped. “Panther’s a girl, and I need to make a girl bee to lure a boy bee out of the bathroom, see?”
“Um, I think so,” Kaffre said. “But how do you know it’s a boy bee in the bathroom?”
“Cause it’s in the boys’ room, of course!” Zee-Zee said. “If it was a girl, it woulda gone in the girls’ room!”
“That makes sense,” Kaffre said with a nod. “Can I help?”
“Sure!” Zee-Zee said. “Let’s go!” He ran back to the bathroom door with Kaffre skipping happily along behind him. Jerry and Drake were already waiting, armed with a pot of honey and an armful of little plastic fishing nets on sticks. They looked expectantly at Zee-Zee.
“Okay, here’s the plan,” the little squirrel explained, bouncing up and down on the spot. “Bees like honey. We put the honey and the fake lady bee just outside the door, I’ll do a fake lady bee voice and ask the real bee to come and share my honey with me, the real bee will fall in love with the fake lady bee and come and sit down next to the honey, and we’ll all catch it in our nets! And then I’ll go and do poopies on the potty! Okay?”
“Okay!” chorused Jerry, Drake and Kaffre, each taking a little net and standing ready. Zee-Zee took his net too and pushed the bathroom door open, jumping back instantly.
“Buzz, buzz!” he called, doing a very good impression of a lady bee. “I’m a lady bee, and I’ve got a jar of honey! Do you want to come and eat it with me, man bee?”
There was a tense silence. Jerry looked down at the honey and said “Um, I couldn’t get the lid off the jar, does it matter?”
“Um, I don’t think so,” Zee-Zee said. “The bee can probably read, and the jar says ‘honey’ on it. I think. Ooh! Ssh! I hear buzzing! Get ready, everyone!”
The four toddlers tensed, standing ready with their little nets. Another moment of silence. Then there came a quiet buzz, and slowly the bee flew out through the open door.
“AAAAAAAH! BEE!” screamed the bee-catchers in unison, dropping their nets and running away. The bee ignored them, ignored the pot of honey and the fake lady bee, which had fallen over and half lost its scarf, and flew straight out of an open window in the playroom.
“Hey, you did it!” Max cheered, toddling back over to them in a clean diaper. “You got da bee out of da bafroom!”
“Oh yeah!” Zee-Zee said, looking up from his hiding place under a plastic chair just in time to see the bee disappearing into the flowerbed. “That was the plan! Sort of. It was the other plan, I didn’t tell you about that one. But the important thing,” he said, gathering pace and standing up proudly, “the important thing is, I got the bee out of the potty room all by myself! No grown-up help! I bet even really really big squirrels can’t get rid of bees like that sometimes!”
He scratched his head. “I was gonna do something else, what was it? And something smells funny… Oh! Um… I’ll be back in a minute, I just gotta, um, go and make sure the bee’s gone. So it won’t come back and scare anyone. Cause I’m an expert on getting rid of bees, you know…”
And with that, the little squirrel waddled away to discreetly look for a grown-up, his tail strategically positioned to hide the bulge in the back of his shorts, leaving his friends to shake their heads in awe. “He’s really clever, isn’t he?” said Kaffre as they watched him go.
Home 
Thu Jun 26, 2008 5:19 pm
