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I’ll kill
myself,” thought Stuart. So he ducked back into the can and waited. The men
threw the can with a loud bump into the truck, where another man grabbed it,
turned it upside down, and shook everything out. Stuart landed on his head,
buried two feet deep in wet slippery garbage. All around him was garbage,
smelling strong. Under him, over him, on all four sides of him—garbage. Just an
enormous world of garbage and trash and smell. It was a messy spot to be in. He
had egg on his trousers, butter on his cap, gravy on his shirt, orange pulp in
his ear, and banana peel wrapped around his waist.
    Still hanging on to his
skates, Stuart tried to make his way up to the surface of the garbage, but the
footing was bad. He climbed a pile of coffee grounds, but near the top the
grounds gave way under him and he slid down and landed in a pool of leftover
rice pudding.
    “I bet I’m going to be sick
at my stomach before I get out of this,” said Stuart.
    He was anxious to work his
way up to the top of the pile because he was afraid of being squashed by the next
can-load of garbage. When at last he did succeed in getting to the surface,
tired and smelly, he observed that the truck was not making any more
collections but was rumbling rapidly along. Stuart glanced up at the sun. “We’re
going east,” he said to himself. “I wonder what that means.”
    There was no way for him to
get out of the truck, the sides were too high. He just had to wait.
    When the truck arrived at
the East River, which borders New York City on the east and which is a rather
dirty but useful river, the driver drove out onto the pier, backed up to a
garbage scow, and dumped his load. Stuart went crashing and slithering along
with everything else and hit his head so hard he fainted and lay quite still,
as though dead. He lay that way for almost an hour, and when he recovered his
senses he looked about him and saw nothing but water. The scow was being towed
out to sea.
    “Well,” thought Stuart, “this
is about the worst thing that could happen to anybody. I guess this will be my
last ride in this world.” For he knew that the garbage would be towed twenty
miles out and dumped into the Atlantic Ocean. “I guess there’s nothing I can do
about it,” he thought, hopelessly. “I’ll just have to sit here bravely and die
like a man. But I wish I didn’t have to die with egg on my pants and butter on
my cap and gravy on my shirt and orange pulp in my ear and banana peel wrapped
around my middle.”
    The thought of death made
Stuart sad, and he began to think of his home and of his father and mother and brother
and of Margalo and Snowbell and of how he loved them (all but Snowbell) and of
what a pleasant place his home was, specially in the early morning with the
light just coming in through the curtains and the household stirring and
waking. The tears came into his eyes when he realized that he would never see
them again. He was still sobbing when a small voice behind him whispered:
    “Stuart!”
    He looked around, through
his tears, and there,
    sitting on a Brussels sprout,
was Margalo.
    “Margalo!” cried Stuart. “How
did you get here?”
    “Well,” said the bird, “I
was looking out the window this morning when you left home and I happened to
see you get dumped into the garbage truck, so I flew out the window and
followed the truck, thinking you might need help.”
    “I’ve never been so glad to
see anybody in all my life,” said Stuart. “But how are you going to help me?”
    “I think that if you’ll hang
onto my feet,” said Margalo, “I can fly ashore with you. It’s worth trying
anyway. How much do you weigh?”
    “Three ounces and a half,”
said Stuart.
    “With your clothes on?”
asked Margalo.
    “Certainly,” replied Stuart,
modestly.
    “Then I believe I can carry
you all right.”
    “Suppose I get dizzy,” said
Stuart.
    “Don’t look down,” replied
Margalo.
    “Then you won’t get dizzy.”
    “Suppose I get