The Monkeys Escape
That evening, Muggle-Wump and his family went up to the big wood on top of the hill, and in the tallest tree of all they built a marvellous tree-house. All the birds, especially the big ones, the crows and rooks and magpies, made their nests around the tree-house so that nobody could see it from the ground.
‘You can’t stay up here for ever, you know,’ the Roly-Poly Bird said.
‘Why not?’ asked Muggle-Wump. ‘It’s a lovely place.’
‘Just you wait till the winter comes,’ the Roly-Poly Bird said. ‘Monkeys don’t like cold weather, do they?’
‘They most certainly don’t!’ cried Muggle-Wump. ‘Are the winters so very cold over here?’
‘It’s all snow and ice,’ said the Roly-Poly Bird. ‘Sometimes it’s so cold a bird will wake up in the morning with his feet frozen to the bough that he’s been roosting on.’
‘Then what shall we do?’ cried Muggle-Wump. ‘My family will all be deep-freezed!’
‘No, they won’t,’ said the Roly-Poly Bird. ‘Because when the first leaves start falling from the trees in the autumn, you can all fly home to Africa with me.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Muggle-Wump said. ‘Monkeys can’t fly.’
‘You can sit on my back,’ said the Roly-Poly Bird. ‘I shall take you one at a time. You will travel by the Roly-Poly Super Jet and it won’t cost you a penny!’
The Twits Get the Shrinks
And down here in the horrid house, Mr and Mrs Twit are still stuck upside down to the floor of the living-room.
‘It’s all your fault!’ yelled Mr Twit, thrashing his legs in the air. ‘You’re the one, you ugly old cow, who went hopping around shouting “We’re upside down! We’re upside down!”‘
‘And you’re the one who said to stand on our heads so we’d be the right way up, you whiskery old warthog!’ screamed Mrs Twit. ‘Now we’ll never get free! We’re stuck here for ever!’
‘You may be stuck here for ever,’ said Mr Twit. ‘But not me! I’m going to get away!’
Mr Twit wriggled and squirmed, and he squiggled and wormed, and he twisted and turned, and he choggled and churned, but the sticky glue held him to the floor just as tightly as it had once held the poor birds in The Big Dead Tree. He was still as upside down as ever, standing on his head.
But heads are not made to be stood upon. If you stand on your head for a very long time, a horrid thing happens, and this was where Mr Twit got his biggest shock of all. With so much weight on it from up above, his head began to get squashed into his body.
Quite soon, it had disappeared completely, sunk out of sight in the fatty folds of his flabby neck.
‘I’m shrinking!’ burbled Mr Twit.
‘So am I!’ cried Mrs Twit.
‘Help me! Save me! Call a doctor!’ yelled Mr Twit. ‘I’m getting the dreaded shrinks!’
And so he was. Mrs Twit was getting the dreaded shrinks, too! And this time it wasn’t a fake. It was the real thing!
Their heads shrank into their necks . . .
Then their necks began shrinking into their bodies . . .
And their bodies began shrinking into their legs . . .
And their legs began shrinking into their feet . . .
And one week later, on a nice sunny afternoon, a man called Fred came round to read the gas meter. When nobody answered the door, Fred peeped into the house and there he saw, on the floor of the living-room, two bundles of old clothes, two pairs of shoes and a walking-stick. There was nothing more left in this world of Mr and Mrs Twit.
And everyone, including Fred, shouted . . . ‘hooray!’