The Twits

end.

'Will it stay there?' they cried. 'Is the glue strong enough to hold it up?'

'It's the strongest glue in the world!' Muggle-Wump replied. 'It's the special bird-catching bird-killing glue for smearing on trees!'

'Please,' said the Roly-Poly Bird. 'I have asked you before not to mention that subject. How would you like it if it was Monkey Pie they made every Wednesday and all your friends had been boiled up and I went on talking about it?'

'I do beg your pardon,' said Muggle-Wump. I'm so excited I hardly know what I'm saying. Now the chairs! Do the same with the chairs! All the chairs must be stuck upside down to the ceiling! And in their right places! Oh, do hurry up, everybody! Any moment now, those two filthy freaks are going to come rushing in with their guns!'

The monkeys, with the birds helping them, put glue on the bottom of each chair leg and hoisted them up to

the ceiling.

'Now the smaller tables!' shouted Muggle-Wump. 'And the big sofa! And the sideboard! And the lamps! And all the tiny little things! The ashtrays! The ornaments! And that beastly plastic gnome on the sideboard! Everything, absolutely everything must be stuck to the ceiling!'

It was terribly hard work. It was especially difficult to stick everything on to the ceiling in exactly its right place. But they got it done in the end.

'What now?' asked the Roly-Poly Bird. He was out of breath and so tired he could hardly flap his wings.

'Now the pictures!' cried Muggle-Wump. 'Turn all the pictures upside down! And will one of you birds please fly out on to the road and watch to see when those frumptious freaks are coming back.'

I'll go,' said the Roly-Poly Bird. 'I'll sit on the telephone wires and keep guard. It'll give me a rest.'

The Ravens Swoop Over

They had only just finished the job when the Roly-Poly Bird came swooping in, screaming, 'They're coming back! They're coming back!'

Quickly, the birds flew back on to the roof of the house. The monkeys rushed into their cage and stood upside down one on top of the other. A moment later, Mr and Mrs Twit came marching into the garden, each carrying a fearsome-looking gun.

‘I'm glad to see those monkeys are still upside down,' said Mr Twit.

'They're too stupid to do anything else,' said Mrs Twit. 'Hey, look at all those cheeky birds still up there on the roof! Let's go inside and load our lovely new guns and then it'll be bang bang bang and Bird Pie for supper.'

Just as Mr and Mrs Twit were about to enter the house, two black ravens swooped low over their heads. Each bird carried a paint-brush in its claw and each paint-brush was smeared with sticky glue. As the ravens whizzed over, they brushed a streak of sticky glue on to the tops of Mr and Mrs Twit's heads. They did it with the lightest touch but even so the Twits both felt it.

'What was that ?' cried Mrs Twit. 'Some beastly bird has dropped his dirty droppings on my head!'

'On mine too!' shouted Mr Twit. I felt it! I felt it!'

'Don't touch it!' cried Mrs Twit. 'You'll get it all over your hands! Come inside and we'll wash it off at the sink!'

'The filthy dirty brutes,' yelled Mr Twit. I'll bet they did it on purpose! Just wait till I've loaded up my gun!'

Mrs Twit got the key from under the doormat (where Muggle-Wump had carefully replaced it) and into the house they went.

The Twits Are Turned Upside Down

'What's this?' gasped Mr Twit as they entered the living-room.

'What's happened?' screamed Mrs Twit.

They stood in the middle of the room, looking up. All the furniture, the big table, the chairs, the sofa, the lamps, the little side tables, the cabinet with bottles of beer in it, the ornaments, the electric fire, the carpet, everything was stuck upside down to the ceiling. The pictures were upside down on the walls. And the floor they were standing on was absolutely bare. What's more, it had been painted white to look like the ceiling.

'Look !' screamed Mrs Twit. 'That's the floor! The floor's up there! This is the ceiling! We are standing on the ceiling !'

'We're upside down !' gasped Mr Twit. 'We must be upside down. We are standing on the ceiling looking down at the floor!'

'Oh help!' screamed Mrs Twit. 'Help help help! I'm beginning to feel giddy!'

'So am I! So am I!' cried Mr Twit. 'I don't like this one little bit!'

'We're upside down and all the blood's going to my head!' screamed Mrs Twit. 'If we don't do something quickly, I shall die, I know I will!'

'I've got it!' cried Mr Twit. 'I know what we'll do! We'll stand on our heads, then anyway we'll be the right way up !'

So they stood on their heads, and of course, the moment the tops of their heads touched the floor, the sticky glue that the ravens had brushed on a few moments before did its job. They were stuck. They were pinned down, cemented, glued, fixed to the floorboards.

Through a crack in the door the monkeys watched. They'd jumped right out of their cage the moment the Twits had gone inside. And the Roly-Poly Bird watched. And all the other birds flew in and out to catch a glimpse of this extraordinary sight.

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!'