Who Ate the Stuffies' Dinner? 🦃

Kiki (0:08)

My name is Kiki, and welcome to Sleep Tight Stories.

SPEAKER_2 (0:18)

Thanksgiving is coming soon in Canada, so we would like to share a story about a Thanksgiving meal. Maggie has traveled to her grandparent's house for Thanksgiving, and the house is very full with yummy smells and way too many people. She has brought her stuffies and is wondering where they are going to eat when she sees there is definitely no room at the table.

Who ate the stuffies dinner?

It was Thanksgiving Sunday, and grandma and grandpa's farmhouse smelled yummy and was a bit loud and so full of people that Maggie had already been stepped on twice. Once by Uncle Jack and once by her cousin Theo. He was only four, so it wasn't that big of a deal, but her toes thought it was.

The kitchen smelled especially yummy, because it smelled like turkey and special spices you only smelled this time of year. With all the pots boiling, the windows became so steamed up, you couldn't see the potato fields anymore, which was okay, because then Maggie could draw happy faces on the windows. And she tried a pumpkin, but it just looked like the faces. She also tried to draw Bun, her rabbit, but he came out looking like a potato with ears. Drawing on the window was hard, but Grandma said it looked nice.

She had brought her stuffed friends with her, Bun, Mr. Rex, Lulu, and Pickle, and they were lined up on the bench by the back door, so they wouldn't get stepped on too. They'd come all the way over the bridge in the back seat, and nobody had asked them if they were hungry, or if maybe they wanted some dinner too. Not one person, and they had been quiet the whole time, for the most part, except when Bun and Pickle argued about something silly.

Grandma, Maggie said, why can't stuffies have Thanksgiving too?

Grandma was peeling potatoes, about a hundred of them, or maybe a thousand, because it was a lot. She put the peeler down, and it looked like she was thinking hard, because her wrinkled forehead wrinkled more. This was what Grandma always did. Pause when Maggie asked questions. I don't know why not, Grandma replied. Then there was a scratching noise inside the kitchen wall, right behind the bench. Scritch, scritch. Maggie could hear it. Then nothing. What's that? Grandpa came in with an armload of wood and his boots still on, which Grandma gave him a serious look about. He dumped the wood by the stove and listened. How settling, he said. This old place is a hundred and twenty odd years old, so it's allowed to make a few noises. She has earned it. Maggie went and put her ear against the wall anyway and kept it there until Mom needed the bench for the coats.

Now the stuffies had nowhere to sit and there was no room at the big table either. Maggie had counted 14 people, and Uncle Jack was getting the piano bench.

Grandma, she said, if stuffies can have Thanksgiving, where do they have it?

Grandma wiped her hands on the apron and thought about it, the same way she thought about the first question, just with less wrinkles this time.

Grandma said the stuffies could have the little room under the front stairs, at the end of the hall, as long as nobody touched the pickles. Grandma kept about 40 jars of them in there. Maggie sat pickle with his back to the shelves, just in case. He was known to be naughty.

The little room ceiling was slanty, and there was one light bulb with a string you had to pull. There were spiderwebs, which Maggie liked, except when they had flies in them or got stuck in her hair. It smelled like potatoes and grandpa's boots. Maggie could stand up straight in it, almost. Grown ups had to bend way, way over, which meant it might be a good dining room for the stuffies.

Grandpa found an old milk crate he used for tools or something and turned it upside down for a table. Grandma gave her a tea towel with lighthouses on it. For plates, Maggie used the gold lids from some canning jars and grandma's thimbles from the sewing tin were cups, even though one had a hole in it.

Mr. Rex got the end of the table because he was the biggest, and also he was sort of the grandpa. Lulu couldn't really sit because she was a whale, so she lay on her side, which is allowed for whales, but not allowed for kids. Bun went next to Pickle, but nobody knew what Pickle ate, even though Maggie had decided once that it was buttons, but she wasn't sure anymore.