The Kangaroo Who Lost His Pockets

In the middle of the Sunnybrook Zoo lived a kangaroo named Iris who had the most wonderful pockets. Not just one pocket, mind you, but two! One on each side, deep and cozy and perfect for keeping things.

Every morning, Iris would fill her pockets with treasures. A smooth blue pebble. Three dandelion puffs. A shiny button she’d found by the fence. Sometimes even a sandwich for later, though that could get a bit squishy.

But one Tuesday morning, something very peculiar happened.

Iris woke up, stretched her arms up high, wiggled her tail, and reached for her pockets to put in her favorite sparkly rock.

Her pockets were GONE.

“WHAT?” Iris gasped, patting her sides frantically. “Where did they go? Pockets don’t just walk away!”

But apparently, they do.

Iris hopped over to her best friend Gerald the giraffe, who was nibbling leaves from the tallest tree.

“Gerald! Gerald!” she called up. “Have you seen my pockets?”

Gerald looked down, chewing thoughtfully. “Your pockets? Hmm. I haven’t seen them, but I DID see something brown and fuzzy hopping past the elephant pool earlier.”

“That’s them! That must be them!” Iris bounced up and down excitedly. “Thank you!”

She zoomed off toward the elephant pool, her tail bouncing behind her. When she got there, she found three elephants having a lovely mud bath.

“Excuse me!” Iris called. “Have any of you seen my pockets? They’re brown and fuzzy and usually attached to me!”

The smallest elephant lifted her trunk. “Pockets? I saw something brown and fuzzy, but it was hanging on the fence by the monkey habitat, flapping in the wind!”

“Flapping in the wind?” Iris scratched her head. “Well, that’s odd. But onward!”

Off she hopped, her big feet going THUMP THUMP THUMP across the zoo paths. Past the sleeping lions. Past the chattering prairie dogs. All the way to the monkey habitat.

Sure enough, there on the fence was something brown and fuzzy, flapping like a flag.

“MY POCKETS!” Iris reached up with both paws.

But when she pulled it down, it wasn’t her pockets at all. It was a very surprised bat who had been taking a nap.

“EXCUSE ME!” squeaked the bat. “I am not a pocket! I am Bernard, and I was sleeping!”

“Oh! I’m so sorry, Bernard!” Iris said, carefully hanging him back on the fence. “I’m looking for my pockets. They’ve gone missing!”

“Well, I’M not missing!” huffed Bernard, wrapping his wings around himself and closing his eyes.

Iris sat down on a bench, feeling rather sad. How does a kangaroo lose her pockets? And more importantly, where do pockets go when they wander off?

Just then, she heard giggling. Lots and lots of giggling.

She followed the sound to the penguin pond, and there, she saw the most ridiculous sight.

Two little penguins were waddling around wearing… HER POCKETS!

One pocket was stretched over a penguin like a hat. The other pocket was being used as a sleeping bag by his brother.

“THAT’S where they went!” Iris exclaimed.

The penguins looked up, startled.

“Are these yours?” asked the first penguin innocently. “We found them lying on the grass this morning. We thought they were hats!”

“Very cozy hats,” added the second penguin, snuggling deeper into the pocket-sleeping-bag.

Iris couldn’t help but laugh. They DID look awfully silly. And the penguins seemed to be having such a wonderful time.

“Well,” Iris said thoughtfully, “they ARE my pockets. But…” She looked at the penguins’ happy faces. “But I suppose they DO make rather nice hats.”

“REALLY?” both penguins chirped together.

“Really,” Iris smiled. “On one condition. You have to help me figure out how I lost them in the first place!”

The three of them thought and thought. They retraced Iris’s steps from that morning. And then Iris remembered – she’d been practicing her hopping tricks! She’d been doing backflips and somersaults and loop-de-loops, showing off for the visiting children.

“Oh!” Iris giggled. “I must have flipped right out of my own pockets!”

“That’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard,” said the first penguin.

“Even sillier than us wearing pockets as hats?” asked the second penguin.

“Well… maybe not THAT silly,” Iris admitted.

They all laughed together.

“You know what?” Iris said. “I’ve decided that pockets aren’t really that important anyway. I can remember my treasures in my heart instead of carrying them around. And besides, you two look absolutely smashing in those pocket-hats.”

The penguins cheered and did a little waddle-dance.

From that day on, Iris was known as the only kangaroo in the world without pockets, and she didn’t mind one bit. She discovered that hopping was much easier without pockets full of rocks and buttons and squishy sandwiches.

And every Tuesday (because that’s when it all happened), she would visit her old pockets at the penguin pond. The penguins would show her how they’d decorated them – with seashells and ribbons and sometimes a fish or two (which Iris thought was a bit smelly, but she was too polite to say so).

Gerald the giraffe would lean down and say, “Aren’t you sad about losing your pockets?”

And Iris would smile and reply, “I didn’t lose them at all. I just gave them a new adventure!”

And that, she decided, was even better than keeping them all to herself.

The End

• Tags:
• Humorous Stories