Milo Monkey's Jungle Clean-Up

Milo the monkey was having the BEST morning. He'd already swung across the twisty vines by the waterfall — WHOOOOSH! He'd done three backflips off the tall palm tree — BOING! BOING! BOING! And he'd found the juiciest mango in the entire jungle. "Life is GOOD," Milo said, juice dribbling down his chin. Then he landed — THUD — on something that was definitely not a leaf. CRINKLE. CRINKLE. CRINKLE. Milo looked down. A shiny, crinkly wrapper was stuck to his foot. He peeled it off and held it up. "What… IS this thing?" He looked around. And suddenly he noticed MORE weird stuff everywhere. A squished bottle by the river. A soggy box under a fern. Something bright and plastic tangled in a bush. "Polly!" Milo called up to his friend. "What's all this stuff?" Polly the parrot swooped down and landed on a branch. "That's rubbish, Milo. People left it behind." "Well it STINKS," said Milo, wrinkling his nose. "And look — there's a plastic bag heading straight for the river!" He swung down and snatched it just before it hit the water. GRAB! "Nice catch!" said Polly. "But there's WAY too much for just us two." Milo grinned his biggest grin. "Then we get EVERYONE." And that's exactly what they did. Milo swung through the jungle like a furry little tornado. "JUNGLE CLEAN-UP! JUNGLE CLEAN-UP! MEET AT THE BIG ROCK!" By lunchtime, the Big Rock was packed. Ella the elephant was already picking up bottles with her trunk — SCHLORP! SCHLORP! SCHLORP! — and tossing them into a big pile. "Show off," muttered Frankie the frog, dragging a straw twice his size across a lily pad. The toucans flew in formation overhead, scooping up wrappers from the treetops. A whole family of tortoises slowly — very, VERY slowly — pushed a soggy cardboard box toward the pile. "You're doing GREAT!" Milo called down to them. "We… started… Tuesday…" the littlest tortoise puffed. Milo was everywhere at once. Swinging, grabbing, tossing. WHOOSH! SNATCH! FLING! He pulled a plastic bag off a confused iguana's head — "That's NOT a hat, Gary" — and untangled a bottle cap from a spider's web. "Sorry about that," he told the spider. The spider just blinked all eight eyes at him. By the time the sun started to dip, the pile of rubbish was ENORMOUS. But the jungle? The jungle was sparkling. The river gurgled clear and bright. The ferns stood tall without soggy boxes squishing them. Even the flowers seemed to smell better. "WE DID IT!" Milo hollered, and every single animal in the jungle cheered so loud the birds three mountains over probably heard it. Ella the elephant gave a celebratory trumpet — PAAAARP! — that knocked Frankie clean off his lily pad. SPLASH! "…I'm okay," Frankie gurgled. Old Terra the tortoise looked around and nodded slowly. "Nicely done, little monkey. You've made our home better for everyone." Milo hung upside down from his favourite branch, grinning ear to ear. "Same time next week?" he asked. "SAME TIME NEXT WEEK!" everyone roared back. And from that day on, every Sunday morning, the jungle animals got together, cleaned up, and made sure their home stayed exactly the way it should be. Beautiful. Wild. And just a little bit noisy.