Chaos

Smudge sat at his desk. Biscuit sat in his basket. Both very quiet. Too quiet.

Smudge looked at Biscuit. Biscuit looked at Smudge. Smudge raised his eyebrows. Biscuit raised his eyebrows. Then—

Cheep!

From high in the rafters came the tiniest of sounds. A bright little bird tilted its head and chirped again, more aggressively this time.

CHEEP!

Smudge glanced up at the bird, then down at his register. He fumbled with his pen before hurriedly finding the name.

“Okay, okay—check, little angry bird!”

After a few moments of awkward silence together, all three—Smudge, Biscuit, and the little angry bird—turned their heads toward the pitter-patter of teeny-tiny feet.

A small mouse scurried across the tiles, scrambled up a chair leg, and perched proudly on the best seat in the house.

“Check, little mouse!” Smudge called, ticking off another animal.

Then came a raccoon, a deer, and an owl.

“Check, check… check!”

What began as a trickle soon became a flood.

Parrots swooped through the windows like flying rainbows. Jaguars slipped inside like shadows. And the monkeys—of course—bounded in wherever and however they could.

Smudge raced to keep up: “Check, check, check!” His eyebrows climbed higher with each new arrival.

The room was now a wash of squeaks, growls, oinks, and barks.

Luckily for Smudge, he had spent many years learning animal languages… though sometimes it was more a curse than a blessing.

The parrots were terrible gossips, the monkeys couldn’t stop interrupting, and the frogs—well, the frogs were the worst. A single drop of rain and they’d drone on and on and on… and on.

Amongst the commotion, the sloth slumped into a chair at the very back with a heavy sigh. His eyes drooped closed, but at least he had shown up.

“Biscuit,” Smudge said calmly, breaking from his furious checking. “Coffee. For the sloth. Immediately.”

Biscuit ruffed once, then vanished into the kitchen at full tilt.

Smudge returned to his register, but try as he might, he just couldn’t keep up. His eyebrows had reached their limit; he had no choice left.

With a dramatic flourish, he scrawled one giant line across the page:

ALL ANIMALS—CHECK!

Circle of Chaos

Smudge can’t keep up—but can you? Circle up the silliness before it escapes!

• Draw a large circle on your page.
• Inside, pack it full of animals—squeezed, squashed, tumbling, climbing, and piling wherever they’ll fit.
• Let tails tangle with wings, paws press against trunks, and heads pop up at funny angles. The only rule is: everyone must be inside the circle.
• Add decorations in the gaps—spirals, zigzags, stars, or anything else to fill the empty spaces.
• Colour it as wildly as you like.

When you’re done, you’ll have a noisy, silly, crammed-full circle of life—proof that even the wildest chaos can be tamed by a circle.