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squirrels.

    So What wasn’t used to being on his own and he became bored with no one to pester. But just before night fell, he wandered into a clearing in the middle of the big woods. There he saw the strangest house. It had a roof of straw and beautiful diamond-paned windows that badly wanted cleaning with a solution of water and ammonia. It had an overgrown flower garden in the front. And the whole thing was about as tall as a high school gymnasium.

    “Welcome to the Land of the Giants,” whispered So What to himself, and because he was curious and hungry, he crept closer.

    He opened the door, which was tall enough to carry a Christmas tree through without clipping the top branches.

    Inside, So What found a terrible mess. There were seven hooks high on the wall—much too high for him to reach, as he was only a little chimp. There was a table with seven enormously tall chairs, almost like seven stepladders. In another corner of the room there were seven long beds beside each other; they looked like seven lanes in a bowling alley. Except they were not made.

    “What a mess!” said So What. “Whoever lives here is a bunch of slobs!” So What looked for something to eat. The icebox was filled with about a hundred heads of lettuce. Then, because he was so bored, he began to trash the place. But since it was such a mess already, he couldn’t make it much worse. It wasn’t much fun.

    After a while he grew tired, and he fell asleep at the foot of one of the seven beds.

    He didn’t hear the noise of hooves tripping through the forest when evening came. But before long the door opened, and the owners of the tall house in the big woods came home.

    They were seven giraffes who worked at a nearby circus. Their names were Pumpkin, Goldskin, Jackielantern, Orangelight, Nimble, Limber, and Kimberly.

    “Someone has been trashing our house,” said Goldskin.

    “Who would bother?” said Nimble.

    “Someone has been thrashing and mashing our lettuces,” said Pumpkin.

    “Who would care?” said Limber.

    “Someone has been jumping on our sofa,” said Orangelight.

    “Someone has been thumping through our garden,” said Jackielantern.

    “Someone has been rumpling up the blankets on my bed, and here he is!” said Kimberly.
    “Isn’t he an ugly little thing!”

    Just then So What woke up to find the seven giraffes looking over him. They were still dressed in their work clothes: spangles, capes, tights, and caps with brightly colored ostrich feathers.

    So What had never been to the circus, and he had never seen giraffes before. He screamed like a psycho chimp.

    “Someone has a powerful set of lungs,” said Kimberly.

    “There, there, my dear. What brings you to our tall home in the forest?” When So What calmed down, he told them that his wicked stepmother had wanted to cut his heart out and eat it.

    “That reminds me, what are we having for supper?” said Goldskin.

    “Lettuce,” said her six sisters.

    “This is a horror story,” said Jackielantern to So What. “We giraffes will protect you.
    Would you like to stay with us and be our houseboy? We need some help. We work too hard to do housework at the end of a long day, and besides, we hate it. Life Is Too Short to Vacuum Every Day! That’s my motto.”

    “Work? Me work?” said So What. “Lady, you’re out of your gourd.”

    “It’s either work or walk,” said Jackielantern. “We’ll protect you if you keep our home as neat as a pin. If you don’t like the deal, find yourself somewhere else to hole up. We’re not the Witness Protection Bureau. Sisters, am I right? Back me up here!” The other giraffes agreed, and therefore So What was allowed to stay on in the tall house.
    Though he griped and whined about it, he learned how to do housework when the giraffe sisters were out at work in the circus every day. He got pretty good at folding crisp hospital corners in the bedsheets and keeping the very tall toilet spotlessly clean, with