Page 16 - Stories for Thinking Children 2

hat Sunday, Irfan went for a walk in the woods with his father.

T While he was walking, he was thinking about how beautiful the
trees and all of nature were. His father then bumped into a friend, and
as the two grown-ups were chatting Irfan heard a sound:

Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap...

The sound was coming from a tree.
Irfan walked up to the bird that was mak-
ing it and asked:

"Why are you hitting the tree with
your beak like that?"

The bird stopped what it was doing,
and turned to look at Irfan. "I am a
woodpecker, " it answered. "We make
holes in trees and build our nests in them.
Sometimes we store our food in these
tree holes. This is the first hole I've ever
made. I will make hundreds more like it

though." Irfan looked closer at the hole.
"Fine, but how do you store food in such
a small place?" he wondered.

"Woodpeckers mostly eat acorns, and acorns are quite small," the
woodpecker explained. "Inside each hole I make I'll put one acorn.
That way I'll be able to store enough food for myself."

Irfan was puzzled: "But instead of struggling with lots of small
holes," he said, "you could make one big one and store all your food
there."
14