THE LITTLE GRAY PARROT
A Fletcher Publishing Children's Book
PAGE 1
nce there was a forest of many colors. The trees were green. They were gold
and orange. They were yellow and red in their season. In the fawning time the
trees bloomed. They were hung with ropes of flowers! They were green altars
garlanded with color! The smell of the flowers was a prayer to heaven.
The flowers were many colors, too. They were white and apricot. They were
pink and plum. They were blue and yellow and purple and bronze. The flowers were
courted by bees. They came in colors, too. They were yellow and black; fuzzy and
brown.
Spiders sat in the flowers and waited for the bees. They were even more
colorful than the flowers! Some spiders had eight bright green eyes each! Some
had blue eyes. They wore fine suits of many colors and striped stockings on
their eight legs.
Butterflies came to drink from the flowers with their long tongues. Yellow
butterflies drank from blue morning glories. Blue butterflies drank from red
hibiscus. Giant green moths flew about in crowds, gathering for a dance. All the
butterflies carried the rainbow with them all through the forest.
After the bees had visited the flowers the trees made fruit. Clusters and
clusters of fruits hung on the trees. Purple it hung, and red. Yellow and
orange. And palest green blushed with pink. Soon the forest smelled of too-ripe
fruit. Then the flies came. Flies flew from tree to tree carrying blue and green
with them.
Over the forest the sky stretched. It was a blue cloth with a yellow circle.
At night it was an azure box full of diamonds! But the most colorful thing in
the forest was its birds. Bright among the branches they sang. Living dots of
color they climbed. Shimmering pallets of nature they flew among the shadows.
The birds had all the colors of the trees. They had all the colors of the
flowers, too. They had all the colors of the bees, the butterflies, and the
spiders. And God was very pleased with His creation when He watched His birds
twirling below. God loved His living top spinning in the forest He had made.
But a Little Gray Parrot lived in the forest. She alone had no color. Even
the gray doves had bright red feet! But the Little Gray Parrot had gray feet.
Her beak was gray, and her wings were gray. All her feathers were gray, too.
One day the Little Gray Parrot looked out of her gray eyes at all the colors
spread in the forest below. She looked up at the blue sky, pale and dark. And
she thought, "I am the only one in the whole forest that has no color. God
is pleased by the prayers of the fruiting trees. He is pleased by the beautiful
butterflies and bees. How can I ever give Him anything if I have no color?"
The Little Gray Parrot thought about it all day. She dreamed about it all
night. She was still thinking about it the next morning when the Jungle Bird
woke her up.
"The Jungle Bird is very beautiful," said the Little Gray Parrot.
"He wears a green shawl over his red velvet vest. He wears gold buttons and
sharp orange lace-up boots. I will go to him and ask him to give me some of his
color." And the Little Gray Parrot got her little red wagon. "I will
put all the colors he gives me in my wagon and bring them home," she said.
"Then I will be so beautiful heaven will notice me!"
So the Little Gray Parrot started walking toward the sound of the Jungle Bird
who was still singing to the sun. She pulled her little red wagon behind her
through the forest.
