The Three Planets
Once upon a time
the Star Goddess made three little planets:
a yellow planet, a red planet, and a baby blue planet.
She took them fresh and piping hot from her cauldron.
Then she tried to plant her flowers and trees and grass on the
planets, but all
three of them were still too hot.
So she tried blowing on them to cool them off, but they were
still too hot.
So she tried spitting on them to cool them off, but they were
still too hot.
So she set them aside in the corner of the Galaxy to cool down
for a few billion
years, but so they wouldn’t cool down too much for the flowers
and trees and
grass to grow, she went around and gathered up some fuel and
built a nice warm
cheery little sun to shine on them. Of course, she couldn’t put
all the planets in
the same place, because they would bump into each other, so,
she put the yellow
planet a little closer to the Sun, and the red planet a little
further out, and the
baby blue planet she put right in the middle.
After a while, the yellow planet, which was sitting too close
to the sun, got really
hot. It got so hot that the Goddess’s breath, which was still
sticking to the
yellow planet, turned all foul and yucky. It got so hot that
the Goddess’s spit,
which was still sticking to the yellow planet, all fizzled away,
just like water on a
hot stove.
Meanwhile, the red planet, which was sitting too far from the
sun, cooled down a
lot. It got so cold that the Goddess’s breath, which was still
sticking to the red
planet, frosted over in places. It got so cold that the Goddess’s
spit, which was
still sticking to the red planet, froze up and disappeared, just
like frost in a frost-free freezer.
But meanwhile, the blue planet, which was not too far from the
sun and not too
close to the sun, cooled off until it was really nice. It was
so nice that some of
the seeds the Star Goddess had planted were starting to grow,
and the soft
grasses made a nice warm place to lie down and rest, and the
tall trees were all
nice and shady and kept things cool, and the flowers grew all
over the place in
beautiful gardens. It was so nice that buttlerflies and bees
and bunny rabbits
came to live in the gardens where the Goddess had planted seeds,
and birds
came to fly in the air that was the Goddess’s breath, and fish
came to swim in the
oceans that were the Goddess’s spit.
A little while later, a monkey came around looking for a place
to live.
First it tried living on the yellow planet, but it was too hot.
Then it tried living on the red planet, but it was too cold.
Finally it tried living on the baby blue planet, and it was just
right.
So the monkey decided to settle down on the blue planet, and
it went looking for
just the right spot to live. First it tried living in the Atlantic
Ocean, but it was
too wet. Then it tried living in the Grand Canyon, but it was
too dry.
Finally it found this beautiful big garden in northern Africa,
and it was just
right. It was full of soft grasses to sleep in and fruit to
eat and trees to climb
and beautiful flowers to smell, with bunny rabbits hopping through
the grass
and bees buzzing through the flowers and deer chasing butterflies
through the
forests. And the monkey said to itself, “Look, someone has made
this beautiful
garden just for me. I think I’ll live here.”
And the monkey named the garden, and it called it the Sahara
Garden.
And there were all sorts of good things to eat in the Sahara
Garden. There were
apples, and bananas, and cantaloups, and dates, and eggplant,
and figs, and
guava, and honeydew, and kiwifruit, and lemons, and mangos, and
nectarines,
and papayas, and raspberries, and something for just about every
letter of the
alphabet. But the monkey never got as far as zuchini; in fact,
it liked bananas so
much that it stopped at “B”. So it chopped down all the other
plants so it could
plant just banana trees and have all the bananas it could eat.
And everywhere it
went, it picked bananas, peeled bananas, ate bananas, and tossed
banana peels
over its shoulder. And everywhere it went, it left a trail of
banana peels.
And
everywhere it went, all the cute little deer would scamper after
it, slip on the
banana peels, and break their necks. Pretty soon there were
no more deer left to
chase the butterflies through the forests (I mean through the
banana plantations),
and the butterflies got no exercise at all, and so all the butterflies
got fat and lazy
and took to crawling around on the ground instead of flying on
their beautiful
wings, and the little bunny rabbits hopping through the forest
(I mean through
the banana plantations) kept hopping right on the butterflies
and squashing them
flat. Meanwhile, the bees, who used to drink the nectar of the
apple blossoms
and the cantaloup blossoms and the mango blossoms and all the
rest, had
nothing to drink but sickly sweet banana blossom nectar, which
made them so
hyperactive that they started stinging bunny rabbits on the nose,
until all the bees
and bunny rabbits were gone. With no bees to fertilize them,
the banana trees
started producing fewer bananas. When the monkey saw this, it
knew what it
had to do. It went around and found all the surviving trees
it could that were not
banana trees, and it chopped them down so it could plant more
banana trees to
make up for some of the loss.
Then one day the Star Goddess came back to see how her planets
were doing.
First she checked on the red planet, and said “Brr! This one
came out too
cold.” Then she checked on the yellow planet, and said “Ouch!
This one came
out too hot.”
Finally she checked on the baby blue planet, and
said “Ah! This
one came out just right.” So she went around the planet admiring
her
handiwork. She was particularly proud of the pretty shade of
blue the oceans
turned out. But then she noticed that the pretty blue oceans
had all sorts of junk
floating in them: an old inner tube, an old rubber ducky, an
empty bottle of Full Body Hair Conditioner,
and all sorts of stuff like that. “Somebody’s been swimming in
my ocean,” she
said. But she continued her tour, and was admiring the beautify
way the colored
layers of earth had turned out in the Grand Canyon when she noticed
that there
was junk lying all around there too: old sun glasses, old beach
towels, old paper
cups from banana daiquiris, and all sorts of stuff like that.
“Somebody’s been
sun-bathing in my desert,” she said.
But she continued her tour,
and was
admiring the trees and grasses and flowers in Northern Africa
when she noticed
this big ugly patch in the middle that was full of nothing but
banana trees with
no bananas. And right smack in the middle of that was a very
fat monkey with
banana breath.
“Somebody’s been living in my garden,” she said.
“And there it
is, right there!”
The monkey looked up and beheld the face of the Goddess, and
said “Hey! Are
you the lady in charge here? I have some complaints. These
banana trees aren’t
producing as much as they’re supposed to, and there are squashed
bugs of some
kind all over the ground, and everything’s starting to smell funny,
and— hey!
What happened to the sun?” because the Goddess had picked up the
whole blue
planet and tilted it so that the northern hemisphere was pointed
away from the
sun. And she said “Foolish monkey! Do you want to throw everything
out of
balance so that the blue planet winds up too cold, like the red
planet?” It started
getting very dark and very cold, and the monkey’s long toes curled
up until they
were just little stubs, too short to pick up a banana, and the
monkey’s tail got
frostbite and fell off.
The monkey fell to its knees and said “Oh great and powerful Goddess,
bring
back the sun from wherever you hid it, and I’ll sacrifice to you,
uh, this dead
deer!” But the Goddess was not appeased, and said, “So, you want
the sun back
again? Do you want to throw everything out of balance so that
the blue planet
winds up too hot, like the yellow planet?” This time the Goddess
tilted the blue
planet so that the northern hemisphere was right under the sun.
It started
getting very bright and very hot, and most of the monkey’s fur
fell out. And the
monkey said “Oh great and powerful Goddess, put back the sun where
it
belongs, and I’ll burn for you this incense of, er, banana leaf!”
But the Goddess was not appeased, and said “Put that awful thing out before you
stink up the
whole planet! Tell you what. I’ll put it back again, but just
to remind you of how
delicate the balance is, I’m going to set things up so it gets
a little too hot
sometimes, and a little too cold sometimes. Now be a good monkey
and play
nice with the other animals.”
And to this day, everyone who lives on the blue planet gets reminded
once a year
of what it’s like when it gets too hot, and what it’s like when
it gets too cold, and
not to take it for granted when it’s just right.
The End
Animated illustrations are the property of The Animation Factory