Randy the Raccoon and the Shiny Pizza
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Raccoons like two things: garbage and shiny things. They like garbage because they are not brave enough to hunt for food and because they don't have any money to go shopping. So the only way they can eat is to find food other people don't want. That's why raccoons like garbage so much. Everytime you don't finish your steak or your spinach or you leave one last potato chip in the bag, you are feeding a raccoon.
Raccoons like shiny things because they are, well, shiny! Shiny things glow in the light and look so nice and bright that a raccoon has to have it. Although raccoons are normally very polite, when they want a shiny thing, they can be quite rude because they want it so much. In Raccoonish, the word for good and the word for shiny are the same because that's how good shiny things are to raccoons.
So you will understand now how excited Randy the Raccoon was one day when he was out looking for dinner. He was looking through the garbage when he saw something shiny! But it didn't smell shiny because it smelled like pizza. He looked closer. It was a pizza! A whole pizza! But the bottom was shiny. Or at least it had some kind of shiny thin thing on it, almost like a piece of metal. He didn't understand why anyone would throw away a whole pizza, particulary a shiny one! So he took a big bite of the pizza. Eeew!. It was horrible! The pizza part at the top tasted good but the shiny part at the bottom tasted bad, and it hurt his teeth. Someone must have used the shiny stuff to cook the pizza in the oven but then it got stuck. Clearly the shiny pizza was not for eating.
Then Randy had a brillant idea. It wasn't for eating because it was for keeping! So he took the shiny pizza back to his house and hung it on his wall. Now it is his favorite thing in the whole world because it is garbage but it is also shiny!
Vocabulary
- Garbage Things that we throw away because we don't need them anymore. Chicken bones, old papers, banana peels and boxes we don't need anymore are all garbage.
- Shiny Bright, especially when light falls on it. Gold is shiny. The opposite of shiny is: Dull
- Brave Not afraid. Fireman are brave because they have to do dangerous things sometimes to help people. The opposite of brave is afraid.
- To Hunt To get food by following and killing animals. Lions and wolves hunt for their food.
- To Glow To be full of light. Digital clocks glow in the dark.
- Polite To be nice and have good manners. The opposite of polite is rude.
- To look through To search all around in order to find something. I look through my desk drawer to find a pen.
- To look closer To examine something, to see what it is. I didn't know who was talking to me so I looked closer and saw it was my friend.
- Eew! The noise we make when we eat something we don't like. The boy hated spinach so he always said, "Eeew!" when they served it to him.
- Horrible Not good tasting. We think garbage tastes horrible even though raccoons like it. The opposite of horrible is good or tasty.
- To get stuck To be unable to move. Raccoons sometimes get stuck in garbage cans because they go in to find food and then the can is too tall for them to jump out.
Comprehension
Try the quiz below. Type in your answers. When you've finished, click and hold down on the C button to see the right answers.
Grammar:The Present Tense
Look at this sentence from the story:
Raccoons are normally very polite.
What does this sentence mean?
It means that usually, normally, in general, raccoons are polite.
The verb are is in the present simple tense because we are talking about something that is almost always true.
They are not brave.
This sentence is in the Present Tense too, but the negative form. Raccoons are in general not brave.
We use the Present Tense to talk about things that are always true, or almost always true, or usually true.
I am a teacher. It is my job to teach. I want to eat cookies.
Look at all the verbs in purple in the story. Notice that they are all in the Present Tense and they all say things that are generally true. Try making some sentences about yourself using those verbs in the positive and negative.
For example, I like pizza. I do not like broccoli.
Speaking
- Do you like garbage?
- Do you ever throw food in the garbage?
- Have you ever thrown something away that was still useful just because you didn't like it or need it?
- Have you ever given something away that you didn't like?
- Why do people who have things they don't want not give them to the poor?
- The story tells us that raccoons are scavangers. That means an animal who finds its food because it cannot hunt or grow ood. Imagine you were a raccoon. Where would you look for food? Where could you live? What would you do every day?
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