Snake Clara peeked outside of her woodpile home. Even though it was sunny outside, she was very sad because the golden bell that had been above her entrance was gone. Clara was so sad she didn’t even feel like hunting anywhere in Ponderings Pond.

She was about to go back inside when she saw snakes Jake and Joe about to slither past her house. Perhaps they had seen her bell, so she thought she might ask them about it.

“Hi guys. Have you seen the bell that was over the entranceway to my house?”

“Oh, hi Clara. Uh, er, no, we have not seen your bell,” said Joe. He was lying. Both he and Jake had seen the bell the other day, took it without permission, played with it and were too tired to bring it back.

Joe thought to himself that Clara did not ask if they had seen the bell the “other day,” so he purposely thought she was asking, “Have you seen my bell TODAY?” That was his way to fool himself into thinking that it was OK to say that he and Jake had not seen her bell.

It was still lying. Anyhow, Joe slithered off as fast as he could so Clara would not ask anymore questions, and Jake was right behind him.

They kept crawling until they came to where they were playing before and soon saw Clara’s bell. What they had done the other day was that they placed the bell on a round block, and one of them watched as the other slowly nudged the bell off of the edge so that it would fall and ring.

Jake thought that now might be a good time to bring the bell back, but just as he was about to say something, Joe said, “Hey Jake, let’s have some more fun with this bell. Help me get this thing back on to the round block.”

“Uh, OK,” said Jake. This time, though, he wasn’t too sure of how much fun there would be. He kept thinking about how sad Clara was.

However, once the bell was up on the block, he forgot about Clara as he nudged the bell toward the edge while Joe waited on the ground.

“Klunk-ring!” went the bell as it the ground, and Joe started loudly laughing again.