This is very nearly a sad tale, for there are some creatures in ponds and
rivers that like to eat frogs, and Mr Jeremy Fisher is a frog.
He is also very homely. He
doesn’t mind at all if the water comes into his
house, as for getting his feet wet, why, there is no greater delight, and
what’s more, the sound of rain splashing into the pond is like music to
him.
Mr Jeremy has two friends: Mr Alderman Ptolemy Tortoise and Sir Isaac
Newton (probably not the same Isaac Newton who discovered gravity, for
Mr Jeremy’s friend really is a newt, but he is a fine fellow, just the same.)
Mr Jeremy is keen on entertaining and plans dinner for his two friends
with the greatest care. First of all he digs up worms, then he puts on his
mac and
galoshes and off he goes with his
fishing rod to catch minnows
for a tasty main course.
He settles down in his
boat, and he ties a worm to his rod.
Annoyingly, nothing happens for an hour, so he thinks he’ll eat his lunch
(he’s brought a butterfly sandwich.) A black beetle sneaks up and
nibbles his galoshes, so he has to bend himself up small. Almost
immediately he starts hearing noises. It could be a rat. He pushes his
boat out further and then it happens – a nibbling at the end of his rod.
But instead of a minnow it is a spiky stickleback and he certainly doesn’t
want that. Painfully, clasping injured fingers he rids himself of the
stickleback, only to be laughed at by the fish nearby.
Then disaster-on-disaster, the culmination of a worsening day, an
enormous
trout jumps out of the water, snatches Mr Jeremy off his boat
and goes off with him to the bottom of the pond.
This is no fun at all for Mr Jeremy, but fortunately he had the foresight
to wear his macintosh and if there is one thing trout can’t abide, it’s
mackintoshes. Mr Jeremy is thrown out of its mouth.
He makes his way home, his mac torn and his galoshes still inside the
trout, and he vows he’ll never go fishing again.
As for dinner, when Sir Isaac Newton arrives, smartly dressed in gold
and black, and Mr Alderman Ptolemy Tortoise wearing a jangling chain
of office and carrying salad in a bag, Mr Jeremy Fisher serves them a
delicious recipe of his own – grasshopper with ladybird sauce.
Presumably he will have to change his name now he doesn’t fish any
more?
The Armitt Museum and Library at Ambleside in the Lake District houses
many of Beatrix Potter’s original watercolours and natural history
studies. Besides the displays and library collection the actual desk at
which she painted is also preserved there.
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