The Little Pitcher Man

Once upon a time, there lived a funny-looking Pitcher Man on a shelf in the pantry. His cap was brown, which was the top of the pitcher. His coat was yellow, and his vest was green. He was round and chubby, and his legs were short. He wore brown pants, white socks, and black shoes. But his face was the most striking! His face was always smiling! Oh, I forgot to mention that he held his sides as if he was afraid he would burst from laughing too hard.

One day, a dish came into the pantry and saw the Pitcher Man. It asked another dish why the Pitcher Man was always laughing. “I don’t know,” the other dish replied. “But he never does anything else but laugh. I never thought to ask why.”

So the new dish waited until it was completely silent in the pantry at night, and then asked the Pitcher Man why he was laughing all the time. “Oh, yes! I have to laugh every time I think about it,” replied the Pitcher Man. “No one has ever asked me why I laugh, and I don’t know if I can stop laughing long enough to tell you why.”

But all the other dishes gathered around him and begged him to tell his story, and he finally managed to stop laughing and began to speak.

“It happened a long time ago,” he said, “on a moonlit night when the house was very quiet. Cat came in through the door and looked around. Then she sniffed because there was a delicious bowl of fish on the shelf for the next day’s dinner. Cat walked to the window, and just before she jumped onto the shelf where the fish was, she saw a mouse run along the shelf. The mouse jumped into a pie that had been sliced. He ran under the crust and began nibbling and, of course, did not see Cat. But when Cat got to the fish, she pulled on it, and the fish tail hit the pie.”

“Oh dear! I just have to laugh again when I think about it,” and the Pitcher Man held his sides again, almost bursting with laughter.

“Oh, tell us what happened next?” the dishes asked, curious. They could hardly wait to hear the end of the story.

The Pitcher Man wiped his tears of laughter and continued, “As I said, the fish tail hit the pie where the mouse was eating. That of course scared the mouse, and he jumped out. The mouse landed right on top of Cat’s head, and that scared Cat so much that she tumbled off the shelf, and the fish fell on top of her. Cat never knew what really happened. She thought the fish was alive and ran for her life, and the mouse ran around trying to find the hole in the wall because he was just out of his mind.”

“Oh yes! It was so funny! The next day when the cook gave Cat the fish head, Cat ran out of the door very fast. The cook thought she had some kind of disease attack. There had never been a cat before that had ever refused fish.”

“But I knew what was happening, and every time I think about it, I just have to laugh very hard. Ha! ha! ha!”

And that is why the Little Pitcher Man always laughs! He can’t stop because he’s always thinking about what he saw many years ago on a moonlit night in the pantry.


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