I have never cared for the personality and the life approach of the little red hen, so I rewrote the story. Here it is.
Once upon a time, there was a little red hen who lived in a farm yard along with a dog, and a cat and a duck.
And a lot more animals lived there besides those four but this story is about them. Well, the little red hen was always very busy, scritching and scratching with her sharp little claws, looking for food, tidying the barn and generally keeping an eye on things. One day she found something very exciting… it was a whole pile of wheat grain that must have slipped out of the farmer’s bucket when she was feeding the other animals.
The little red hen knew a thing or two and she knew that now, in springtime, was the very best time to plant wheat, and that it would grow tall and every grain would produce a plant and every plant would have twenty or thirty more grains of wheat growing at the top. She decided to plant the grains.
She asked Cat and Dog and Duck if they would like to help her to plant the wheat. Cat was sunbathing and was stretched out in the warm sun. “No, I don’t want to help. I am lying in the sun and it doesn’t sound like fun”. Dog was lying in the sun as well and said,” No, it sounds rather boring and I’d rather lie here snoring” and Duck just floated on the pond and said nothing at all.
So the little red hen sighed and started to walk to the field with her basket of grain, when she heard a little voice saying “I’ll help!” and she looked round and there was a small blue mouse, with quivering whiskers and bright eyes, and he said’ I like to help and I’ve never planted wheat. I’ll help you”.
And so down to the field they went, carrying the basket together. Little Red Hen dug the rows with her clever little feet, scritch scratch, scritch scratch.. and the blue mouse dropped the grains in one by one till two long rows had been planted. The little red hen scratched the mounds of dirt back over the ditch with the grains lying in it, and they went off to the river for some water to water the grains with. They managed to pull up one bucket of water and carefully spilled a little for each grain of wheat but it only did one row, so they had to go back for more.
What with all their tugging and pulling and spilling the first time, the bank was quite muddy and slippery and just as they were pulling the bucket out, they both fell in! Splash and splish! Neither of them could swim and they thrashed about in some alarm , wondering if they would get swept out to sea or even if they might drown, when suddenly they hit a big branch that had fallen over the stream and they were able to scramble to the bank and dry off in the sun.
When they were dry, the Little Red Hen turned to Mouse and said’ You know Mouse, I think that was very scary but it was also a little bit exciting and I think that if I practised every day, I could get quite good at swimming”. And so it was that every day when they watered the wheat, they also had a practice swim. Sometimes, Mouse would swim a little too, but mostly he ran along the bank, shouting encouragement and sometimes he would ride on the little red hen’s back.
And so, when the summer had passed and autumn was beginning and the autumn leaves were starting to turn rusty gold, the wheat was ready to be harvested and Little Red Hen had learned how to swim.
Now it was time to take the wheat to the miller at the windmill and so Little Red Hen called out to her farmyard companions, Cat and Dog and Duck, to ask if they would like to help. Cat was washing herself in the sun, and said, ‘No, I need to keep myself fresh and clean, I’m too busy, I’m just not keen’ and Dog growled out. ‘ I’ve got a bone to chew and then to bury, I haven’t got time to carry and ferry”, and Duck just floated on the pond and said nothing at all.
Little Red Hen was setting off for the windmill with her heavy sack of grain, when she heard a cheerful little voice saying ‘I’ll help. I’ve never been to the windmill, and I’ve never seen wheat being ground into flour. Can I come?’ “ You certainly can’ said the little red hen, “ and thank you”. So off they went, dragging the heavy sack of grain between them.
Well, the mill was very exciting with its big sails whirling around and around. The miller showed them the big stones that lay on top of each other and explained how the wheat was crushed to flour between them.
Then he offered to show them the big blades of the sails.. and so they climbed up and up the stairs right up the middle of the mill till they came to a little door with a balcony on which they could stand and see the sails whooshing slowly and grandly past.. whooompf, whoompf… it was a wonderful sight, and then the miller said something truly wonderful. He told them that the had a little abseiling harness just the right size for the mouse and a small basket that could be attached to a sail, and if the mouse would like he could get himself strapped in and see how it felt to fly! Goodness, the mouse’s whiskers were shivering with excitement. ‘I would love to fly!’ and so the miller stopped the blades and the mouse got into his harness, and then they started the sails spinning again, and wheee! around went the mouse. The little red hen stood on the balcony and waved at Mouse as he went by… whooooosh, whoooosh!.. oh me, oh my, you could hear the little shrieks of delight from Mouse every time he sailed past!
And so eventually the job was done, the grains were ground, and the little red hen and the blue mouse set off home again.
Finally it was time to bake the bread and to do this, they needed heat. Little Red hen planned to use a camp oven to cook her bread, and so they needed to make a big fire and when it had all burned down to hot embers, the bread could go into the camp oven which was like a bit cast iron pot with a lid, and it could rest over the embers on a little grill.
Little Red Hen called out to Cat and Dog and Duck to ask if they would like to help cook the bread and make the fire, but Cat said, ‘Oh no, I have been washing myself all afternoon, I will need to take a nap very very soon. Sorry, no thanks” and Dog said, “ Chasing sticks can be a lot of fun for a dog, but gathering them for a fire sounds like a bit of a slog. Sorry, no thanks.” And Duck just floated on the pond and said nothing at all.
So the little red hen and the blue mouse ( of course! He never liked to miss out on any adventure) gathered dry pine cones, and twigs and larger twigs and small branches and stacked them up like a tepee just so, and then the farmer’s wife came and lit it with a match, and the Little Red Hen and the mouse told stories and sang songs and played with sparklers making patterns in the evening darkness, while they waited for it to die down and then they cooked the bread.
When it was crusty and brown and done to a turn, the Little Red Hen put it on a picnic cloth and fetched butter and knives and called out to Cat and Dog and Duck, “Who would like to help me to eat the bread?’ and all three of them shouted out,”Me, me, I would , I would like to help you eat the bread, yes please!!”
And the Little Red Hen looked at them and thought how they had not helped at all with all the hard work, and she said, “Well, you old sillies, you missed out on swimming and you missed out on flying and you missed out on bonfires and sparklers! So you had better not miss out on yummy homemade bread. Come on , you lazy scallywags!” and so they all shared the loaf of bread together.
I like this story much better than the original, and the children adored the flying mouse and the excitement of it, and i like to think that the message of the story is that working together and making fun out of work is an appealing and joyful goal, and less based on the gooody good puritan work ethic. Community working bees are sometimes the best community times of all, and I could never bring myself to tell the original with her po-faced self righteous approach, eating her bread in solitary priggish splendour! This is more in the spirit of the prodigal son. He probably got the lesson too.