WHERE IS OUR BEST HOME?Written by Pablo Gonzalez
English text by Yuko Saito and Lien S.Tong
oung Mrs. Sparrow was supposed to be happy living in the mango tree deep in the forest. She had a loving husband and many good friends. The forest was full of sunshine, fresh air and plenty of food.But there was something she did not like about her life: She and her husband did not have a house. Whenever it rained, they had to quickly dart under a big banana leaf to wait for the rain to stop. This sort of thing could be fun sometimes for a young, healthy couple like them. But soon they would have babies. When she thought of the trouble of keeping babies warm in winter, or saw some feeble old birds trembling under the leaves in the rain, she got quite depressed.
n the neighboring branch, her best friend, Mrs. Hornero, had a nice solid earth house made by her husband and herself.Mrs. Sparrow sighed, looking enviously at the house. "Oh, how cozy it must be," she muttered, " if we had a house like that. Then we wouldn't need to worry about the rain or the wind. It's a shame we sparrows don't have the equipment to build such a fine house."
rs. Hornero overheard her friend's grumble and came out of the house."Well, Mrs. Sparrow," she said. "How about finding some eaves? I know many other sparrows who live under the eaves."
"Eaves? What are they?" asked Mrs. Sparrow. She had lived all her life in the forest, and had never heard such a word.
Mrs. Hornero, who had some travel experience, began to explain:
"If you fly on and on towards west, you'll reach a town where humans live. The humans are strange animals who walk with two legs. They all live in huge houses, a hundred times bigger than mine.
Now, the human house has a tiled roof, and the overhanging lower edge of that roof is called the 'eaves'. So, you see, if you build a nest under the eaves, you are going to have a perfect cover for the rain and the wind."
Then Mrs. Hornero talked more about what she had seen in the town, and Mrs. Sparrow listened with amazement.
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