Meeku, the mouse came back Champakvan after spending his summer vacations in the city. He rushed to the ground to play with his friends in the evening.
“Look what I got from the city!” he said to his friends pointing at his football.
“Oh wow! Let’s play now,” Jumbo, the elephant said. “Let’s make two teams first. Without two teams, we can’t play,” Meeku said and they immediately formed two teams.
“Tarry, pass me the ball,” Meeku said to Tarry, the frog.
Tarry passed the ball to Meeku who quickly converted the pass into a goal.
“Hurray! I scored!” Meeku shouted excitedly.
“Good job, Meeku!” Tarry congratulated his friend.
The match continued heatedly. Jumbo ran to score but Meeku stopped him. In the process, both of them fell on the ground. Jumbo thought Meeku would get squashed by his weight, he tried to fall on the other side. The football came under Jumbo and burst and seeing this, Meeku was in tears.
“I didn’t have a choice, Meeku. If I had not diverted my fall, you would have been squashed. But don’t worry. I will go to the city and fix your football in a day or two,” Jumbo consoled Meeku.
“I am sad because today is the first time I scored a goal. I would have definitely become the player of the week. Now, we will not be able to play anymore,” a dejected Meeku said.
“Don’t worry about it Meeku. If you play well the next time, you will be the player of the match,” Tarry said.
“But the match was fun. Now, what do we do?” Cheeku, the rabbit asked.
“Should we play with a coconut?” Baddy, the fox suggested.
“Baddy, that sounds like an idea to send us to the hospital. How can we play football with a coconut? If it falls on our head, we will surely get injured.” Tarry told Baddy.
“Let’s use a pumpkin instead?” Jumpy, the monkey then suggested.
“Jumpy, first of all, the shape of a pumpkin is not proper for playing football and even if we do play football with it, it will soon be a squish squash football.” Jumbo laughed.
“We need something made out of cotton,” Damru, the donkey then suggested.
More from Champak: No Place to Play
“Fine, Damru, but where do we find a football made out of cotton?” Baddy said and everyone started laughing at Damru.
When everyone started making fun of him, Damru started crying.
Just then, a weaver bird was sitting on the tree and overhearing this conversation between friends. She came to Damru and said, “Hey, why are you making so much noise here? My children are sleeping. You will wake them up.”
“Sorry, dear. Damru here is crying. He gave us an idea, which sounded quite funny. So everybody laughed at him,” Jumbo said.
“What idea?” the weaver bird asked.
“Our football burst. We were thinking of what to do. Damru said that we could make a football out of cotton,” Jumbo explained the sequence of events.
“Why not? That may be possible,” the weaver bird said looking at them.
“But how?” everyone asked.
“Go get some cotton. I will make a football for you,” said the weaver bird.
Meeku got some cotton and the weaver bird started filling the busted football with cotton. Then, she stitched the end that had burst and gave the football back to them.
“Here, your football is ready. It will not bounce so much but you can still play with it and entertain yourselves,” the weaver bird said.
“Oh wow!” Jumbo exclaimed.
Everyone was very excited and impressed with the weaver bird. All of them thanked her.
“Don’t make fun of others without thinking about it. Doing so hurts their feelings,” said the weaver bird.
“You’re right. We promise we will not do so in future,” said Tarry and all of them hugged Damru.
“Okay, I’ll take your leave now. But don’t make any more noise. My children will wake up,” the weaver bird said and flew back to her nest.
“Let’s re-start our match. I was playing well today,” Meeku told the rest of the team. They all went back to their game.