Hello, it's me, Lily, a frog.

It's almost Christmas time here at my pond, everything's frozen over, and the stars are

twinkling in the sky, and big fat snowflakes are falling down.

I thought you might like a Christmas story.

Once upon a time, there was a little black and white mouse who lived in a candy cane factory.

Her name was Joy, and she was a very clever mouse who loved to copy patterns.

Like the other mice in the candy cane factory, Joy lived under the pile of rejected boxes.

The factory was a busy, noisy place all day long, machines would swish and shush and swirl

and clang.

They'd stamp bang, press, screech and twirl.

They'd kuchoo kuchoo, they'd hiss, and they'd squeal.

And at the end of the Leino machines, a conveyor belt would carry and dump boxes of

freshly made red and white pebberment candy canes into bigger boxes that would be stacked

into trucks and driven to stores. These were snowball-brand, peppermint-flavored candy

canes, and each box had a gold stamp on it that said minty fresh top quality, and a picture

on the box of a little white mouse wearing green mittens, and a green and red scarf sliding

down a mountain of fresh snow on a toboggan made out of candy canes. There was one woman

who worked at the candy cane factory whose job it was, every day, to watch the boxes that came

out of the box printing and folding machine, just to make sure each and every box met the highest

standards of snowball-brand peppermint-flavored candy canes before freshly minted candy canes

were dropped into it by machines. If there was something wrong with the box, like instead of

saying snowball-brand, it said now-ball-brand, or ow-ball-brand, or the box had three quarters instead

...