Every afternoon, our family has a special little tradition. It involves a big, colorful jar filled with the most delicious cookies you’ve ever tasted. But guess what? Today, that jar was ALL EMPTY! And you know what that means? It’s time for a mystery!
I grabbed my detective hat, not to mention my magnifying glass—it was no time to be shy. I needed to find out who took the cookies from the jar, and I needed to find out FAST!
“Excuse me, Detective Daisy,” Mom said, handing me a note. “Do you think this could help? Your little sister drew this this morning.”
I squinted at the note. It had pictures resembling cats, flowers, and—oh, wait! I wasn’t going to fall for that. I put the note in my pocket for safekeeping. My sister usually scribbles on paper, but she had to be hiding something super important under all those scribbles!
Then I jumped into my first clue: a trail of cookie crumbs leading straight into the next room. “Aha!” I exclaimed, with my magnifying glass in one hand and an imaginary surprised look on my face. “I’m on the right track!” I didn’t notice Mom’s quiet smile, and I stumbled right over my little sister’s toy giraffe lying on the floor. Whop! Down I went!
“Sssh, Sssh!” went my sister, pushing a finger across her mouth. “You’ll wake up the spiders!”
“Ooh! The spiders?” I asked. Apparently, my sister makes houses for all the bugs and spiders in the neighborhood with her toy building blocks. “That must be why the OFFICIAL SPIDER-SNIFFING DOG fell asleep!”
I waved my magnifying glass at my dog, who kept right on snoring.
“One of the neighbors said there were bugs and spiders everywhere,” Mom explained. “I think your sister must be up to something.”
That was a clue worth thinking about. But the only clue that looked really interesting was my little sister, and she was just busy putting a red building block on top of a blue one.
Meanwhile, Dad was in the bathroom buzzing away with the electric toothbrush! He looked almost like a robot, with frothy toothpaste around his mouth and a light from his electric razor flashing on and off!
“Aren’t you finished yet?” called Mom, all impatient like. “You’ve been in there for almost FOREVER!”
“A gentle reminder is always welcome, honey,” said Dad finally. And he said something into the toothbrush. Maybe it really was a robot!
“More like a Parrot!” said Mom. “Dad bought it last week. Now I must say, it’s pretty quiet after making all that noise yesterday!”
“AHA!” I exclaimed. “I probably know now how the cookies disappeared!”
“Really?!” my sister clapped excitedly. We were having a real live mystery party today!
“Yes! All thanks to our special topic of the week in Nature Club: How parrots and monkeys sometimes like to imitate us people. Everything they do sounds as funny as can be and isn’t that just what was happening at breakfast this morning? So, if Dad wasn’t eating his cornflakes…”
“I had to LIBERATE the bathroom first,” Dad muttered around the toothbrush.
“Right!” I said. “So who was it, really? Who ate all the cookies?”
“Must have been a monkey!” said my sister.
“Maybe a Parrot?” I corrected her.
“It sure wasn’t,” declared Dad, spitting foam too loud, “and parrots never bother other animals in their bathrooms.”
“So somebody else ate the cookies?” I said, tapping my paws thoughtfully together.
“With a little help from your sister,” Dad said, washing the toothbrush. “But we’ll keep the specific details secret.”
Just in time, I knew it all! “It couldn’t have been anybody else in that case than… you, Dad, and my little sister!”
A guilty smile spread across Dad’s face, spilling half of it all over the floor. “You’re wrong, Daisy, wrong! It was YOU!”
And guess what? My dog sneezed. Quack! Quack! went his tail, just like a duck’s bill.
So now, dear reader, you know the whole story. And how about you come to our place tomorrow afternoon? We’ve opened up a neat treat store in our cozy little bedroom, and we’ll be waiting just for you!