best desert anyone has ever eaten!
Joe couldn’t believe how great the day was!
And then he started choking on the stem of his cherry.
Ollie quickly wrapped his strong wings around the little greenish-blue lizard and pulled on his stomach to dislodge the cherry stem. Joe coughed and wheezed and gasped for air as the stem flew through the air.
“Well,” Lucky said. “I guess you can’t change your luck all in one day.”
“No way!” Joe said with a smile. “I had friends who helped me! I’ve never had that before! Best day ever!”
And with that the three forest creatures ate and laughed and talked much more. It was indeed the best day ever.
Bouncer and the Pie
Eugene was an extraordinarily lucky lizard. He had a great family, wonderful friends, and things just turned out super well for him on a regular basis. He was so fortunate so much of the time that he had been given the nickname Lucky. It was a pretty obvious nickname, to be sure, but it suited him and so it stuck.
Not everyone was a big fan of Lucky, though. Some people really disliked him because they were very jealous that his life was better than theirs. They thought it was unfair that he had so many good things happen to him all the time, and they resented the small greenish-blue lizard for this.
Jealously is one of the worst, most dangerous things an animal, or a person, can feel. It eats you from the inside out and turns you into a hateful, mean-spirited creature.
And no one was meaner, or more hateful than a local dog named Bouncer!
Bouncer was weirdly round for a dog, and very fluffy. He looked more like a furry basketball with teeth than a puppy. And he could not stand Lucky the Lizard.
And because jealousy is so horrible, it caused Bouncer to make some very scary decisions.
One day he decided he was going to eat Lucky! Bouncer thought that if he gobbled up the lizard he could gobble up his good fortune! And then he would be the luckiest dog in the world!
So Bouncer chewed through his leash and took off through the woods of Forestopia in search of his dinner.
Bouncer had an excellent sense of smell and was a great tracker. He found Lucky in no time and said, “I’m going to eat you, lizard! Say your goodbyes!”
Lucky cocked his small greenish-blue head to one side and said, “Hello to you, too, Bouncer. Now why do you want to eat me? I’m not very delicious. Wouldn’t you rather have some pie? I just made an apple pie and it is excellent!”
Bouncer did want pie, to tell the truth, but he was on a mission to get the lizard’s luck. So without another word he sprinted toward Lucky, his sharp teeth leading the way!
Lucky screamed “EEEK!” and took off up a tree, where Bouncer could not follow.
“You can’t stay up there forever! And when you come down I’m going to swallow you, so I’ll have all your luck!”
Lucky was confused. “I’m pretty sure that’s not how luck works!” he shouted down to the fluffy basketball of a dog. “But don’t you see? It doesn’t matter, because you’re already super lucky! You have a nice warm house to live in, a family that cares for you and all the kibble you can eat. You have excellent tracking skills. You get to go on walks through these beautiful woods, you get to smell the honey suckle in the air! You’re alive, Bouncer! And what could be better than that?”
Bouncer thought about that for a few minutes. Lucky was right, of course, and the dog knew it. He was very lucky, and so are we all.
“Of course you’re right,” Bouncer said. “I don’t know what came over me. This was a terrible plan!”
“We all make mistakes,” Lucky said. “But, luckily, we can all be forgiven.”
“You mean you can forgive me for trying to chew you up and swallow you?” Bouncer asked, tears of joy welling up in his little doggy eyes.
“Of course I can!” Lucky said. “Just try not to do it again, please.”
“I promise I won’t,” Bouncer said. And then he followed with, “Can I still have some pie?”
“Absolutely,” said Lucky as he crawled down from the tree. “The only thing better than pie is sharing it with a new friend.”
And so the lizard and the dog sat and ate steaming hot, melt-in-your-mouth apple pie for the rest of the afternoon. And they both knew how lucky they were to be alive on such a wonderful day.
Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes!
On a sunny day in the magical land of Forestopia a very fortunate lizard named Lucky was wandering through the woods. He was going nowhere in particular, which was exactly where he was hoping to arrive. Mostly he was just thrilled to be alive and breathing clean air in his favorite place on earth.
But an hour or so into his journey to wherever it was he would end up, he came across a tiny caterpillar named Carl. Carl was wrapped around a lovely little tree sapling, with its green leaves just starting to sprout. A tree is always a gorgeous thing to behold, but a baby sapling just starting to grow into the massive, proud sapling it will become is truly a thing of wonder. It’s a reminder that no matter how small or fragile we are, we can grow and change and be mighty!
But Carl the Caterpillar did not seem happy to be surrounded by this serene splendor at all. In fact, Carl looked TERRIFIED! He squeezed his body around the young tree as hard as he could and flitted his eyes back and forth across the forest landscape as though something terrible were after him.
“What’s wrong, Carl?” Lucky asked. “What could possibly be the matter on such a fine day?”
“I’m so scared!” Carl confessed. “It’s coming for me and there’s nothing I can do. There’s nowhere I can run. I’m doomed! Doomed I tell ya!”
“Well this does sound serious,” Lucky said. “What is after you? And how can I help?”
“There’s no help for me! The change is after me! It’s coming for me from the inside out! You can’t run from your insides! I should know, I’ve tried.”
“The change?” Lucky asked, not sure what he meant. And then he figured it out. “Oh! You’re a caterpillar! Of course the change is coming. But it’s a great thing.”
“Then you do it!” Carl said. “I’m fine the way I am!”
Lucky smiled. “Change is scary,” he admitted. “But it can also be wonderful! It gives us new adventures and new friends and new possibilities! Change is what makes the world so exciting!”
Carl shook his head. “Nope. It’s not for me.”
But Lucky persisted. “You’re a caterpillar, Carl. And that’s a great thing. But we all have to grow up and become new wonderful things. You’re going to become a butterfly! You’ll have wings that can carry you to the ends of the earth and back! You’ll soar over the forest and be even more beautiful than you already are! The change is a great thing! You’re going to love it!”
Carl was still so very afraid. “Will you stay with me, then? While it happens?”
Lucky’s eyes went wide. “It takes about two weeks, buddy,” he said. “You won’t notice because you’ll be asleep, but that’s a pretty long time to sit here.”
“How long have we been friends?” Carl asked.
“I don’t know,” Lucky said. “You’re about ten days old so I guess, like, ten days?”
“Right, my whole life we’ve been friends! I’m so scared. Please.”
Lucky could see Carl needed help, and he felt very fortunate he could be of service to his friend. “Of course I can,” he said.
So Carl began to build his chrysalis, the little pod inside of which he would transform. And Lucky sat on the forest floor a few feet away. He used his phone to order books and food online. A body can survive almost anything if he has books and food!
And for eleven days Lucky sat by his friend, reading and eating and standing guard. Often other animals would come by for a chat or a picnic. And then, on the eleventh day, the chrysalis broke open and a gorgeous, red and black butterfly emerged.
“You’re still here,” said Carl the Butterfly. “I knew you’d stay with me!”
“Of c
ourse I stayed,” Lucky said. “What are friends for?”
Carl said, “I think I need to fly around for a while, now. Test out my wings. See life from a whole new angle. It’s very exciting and fun!”
Lucky nodded and Carl took to the air.
The butterfly turned back and said, “You were right, of course. Change is good. And I am the lucky one, because you are my friend.”
And with that Carl flew off to experience the world from above!
And Lucky went to find a stream or a brook, because he hadn’t taken a bath in nearly two weeks!
Clever vs. Wise
In the magical land of Forestopia there lived a young lizard named Lucky. His given name was Eugene, but Lucky was a much better fit. Virtually everything in Lucky’s life just seemed to work out really well. Much of that luck could be attributed to his positive attitude and the way he is always kind to his friends, but whatever the reason, he was a very fortunate reptile.
Even the luckiest creatures need a little advice from their elders sometimes, though, to help steer them through life and to help them live the best they can.
And in Forestopia, no one was more elderly than Tiberius the Tortoise!
Tortoises have the longest lifespan of any animal in the world. Many of them can live for one hundred and fifty years or more!
So at one hundred and twenty years old, Tiberius was still a fairly young man by tortoise standards. He was wise and brilliant and always willing to lend an ear to listen or a bit of knowledge to help.
Being a tortoise, Tiberius was never very fast on his feet, but these days he walked with