Treehouse Under Attack
Pepper landed in the undergrowth and quickly scrambled to her feet.
She had to come up with a way of getting rid of this unwelcome
visitor! Pepper furrowed her brow and spun around a couple of times.
Her gaze rested on some coconuts and loose branches. A plan began to
form in Pepper’s mind. After a few minutes pondering and a few failed
attempts, she successfully built a small catapult out of branches and
vines. She fired the first coconut toward the treehouse. She would
scare off the invader and then climb back up through the trapdoor!
After a few trial launches that went too high, soon there were
coconuts flying into the air and landing with loud “clonks” all over
the treehouse. One particularly well-aimed coconut hit the invader
in the middle of his forehead. This time the “clonk” sounded pretty
bad and the victim fell down immediately. Pepper felt terrible right
away. After all, she only wanted to scare him off, not hit him with a
coconut!
Pepper climbed up through the open trapdoor. She crept over to a
young boy lying on his back. As she was staring at the large
swollen bump forming on his forehead, the boy said: “I suppose you
must be Pepper Mint? I’m Niki. I have a message from your Aunt
Linda. She had a flat tire, and she’s running late. But evidently she
doesn’t need to worry about you at all!”
“Oh, I’m terribly sorry I hit you with that coconut. I promise
I wasn’t trying to,” said Pepper.
“Quite alright. I’ve fallen out of
enough trees to have developed a
pretty hard head by now!” Niki said.
23
Trapdoor