Hannah Joy's Commonplace

Chamomile zipped into Bumblediah Nimbly’s clearing, eyes wide with excitement. “There are newcomers down by the pond.” Bumblediah sat on top of a shack the size of a cedar tree. He lifted a bundle of thatch and hammered it in place as Chamomile alighted beside his toolbox, her head just reaching the top of its rim. Burt O. Range, the longhorn, swished his tail in the shade of an oak tree as he watched Bumblediah work. “What sort of newcomers?” he asked. Chamomile flicked her

“So, it is a suspicious, sad situation,” Squigle the squirrel said. Bumblediah Nimbly lowered his hammer. “If I have told you once, I have told you a hundred times, no one is stealing your nuts.” Squigle flicked his tail. “How else would they keep spontaneously disappearing?” Bumblediah held a miniature cradle up to his eye. “Perhaps, just perhaps , you are searching the wrong places.” Squigle hopped around on the fallen leaves. “Sir, are you saying squirrels lack sense?”

Bumblediah Nimbly loved to build. Every morning he sat up in his stump house, his mind buzzing with ideas. He stood one and a half feet tall and wore leather breeches, a green coat, and an orange pointed cap. He had a white beard that stretched to his boots. He prided himself on being able to build anything and mend anything and he always delivered on time. From miles around fairies counted on him to construct their cottages. One spring morning as the sun made the new leaves