Page 76 - English Reader - 5

loop-the-loop and dive-bomb chickens. He made the chickens

envious as they couldn’t fly, and they ran at full pelt towards

him in an attempt to get off the ground and chase him away.

But to no avail.

The reason that Bird could no longer fly was because he loved

eating – too much. This would not have mattered, but he had

eaten too much many times and had become even larger. He

loved the tasty leftover morsels in the fast food cartoons that

were littered on the sidewalks by untidy people. So Bird grew

and grew and grew and got heavier and heavier. But his wings

stayed the same size. So no matter how fast he flapped, he

could not take off from the ground any more. He could not

just fly. His furious attempts to fly just scattered the empty

food cartoons all over the road. And his bottom only rose an

inch above the ground before bouncing three times back on

the sidewalk. Bird was flying nowhere and decided to walk

down the street and flap at a bus to stop for him with one of

his wings.

A sign on the bus said: “NO BIRDS – DEFINITELY NO LARGE

BIRDS.” Bird could not read signs other than reading the word

‘BIRD’, so thought that it must be a bus especially for birds and

hopped on anyway. Bird did not have any money but the driver

liked birds. He kept homing pigeons as pets and thought that

76 Dolphin English Reader book 5