Donnell and the Toad
�1998 C.J.Brown
Donnell MacTegue was smallest leprechaun that had ever been born.
When he was a baby he mother had to warp him in red rose petals so that she wouldn't lose him when she laid him down in the green grass for his nap--he was THAT small.
Donnell had some problems because of his small size, but luckily he was also smart, so he could usually think his way out of trouble.
Once when he was just a child of 50 or so, he was watching his mother make gooseberry pies. Donnell tried to take a taste of the gooseberries when his mother wasn't looking. He reached out his hand to take a berry and fell head first into the pie pan. He was so little that his mother didn't see him and she put the crust on top of him.
The gooseberries were sour. They made his mouth pucker up so badly that he couldn't yell to let his mother know that he was inside the pie crust. Donnell might have been baked in the pie if he hadn't known how to whistle. He puckered up even more and started whistling as loud as he could.
"That's strange," said his mother, "I never heard gooseberries whistle before." She took a big knife and cut open the pie and there was Donnell, all covered with gooseberry juice, whistling for all he was worth. You can bet he never tried to steal berries from a pie again!
One day when he was about 75 he was playing hide-and-go-seek with his friends. He decided to hide inside his father's crock of gold. Getting into the crock was easy, he just grabbed hold of the rainbow and slid right in, but when the other kids called, "Ally- ally outs in free," he couldn't get out of the crock.
He spent all night inside that crock and you can believe that his parents were very worried about him. Finally in the morning he had a wonderful idea. He took some of the gold pieces inside the crock and started piling them up on top of each other. It took him all morning, but finally he got enough gold pieces stacked up to let him climb out of the crock, just like climbing up a staircase.
Probably the scariest thing that happened to Donnell was the day he decided to play by the mill pond. There was a nearsighted bullfrog living in the pond.
Donnell was jumping from one lily pad to another when suddenly the bullfrog appeared in front of him. Donell landed right in the big frog's mouth and the bullfrog tried to swallow him down.
Donnell was scared, but he didn't panic. He knew that when people have a frog in their throat they cough, so he thought that perhaps if a frog had a fairy in the throat the same thing would happen. Donnell tickled the old frog's tonsils and, sure enough, the bullfrog opened his mouth to cough and out popped Donnell!
From then on Donnell made sure that the old bullfrog was nowhere around when he was playing by the pond.
When Donnell was old enough to get a job his small size came in handy. He became the postman for the fairies. He could climb on the back of a butterfly and go all over the world to deliver letters. If you look closely at the butterflies in your garden you might see a small green person holding tight to back of one of them. That's Donnell MacTegue, the smallest leprechaun ever born.
THE END
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