Welcome back to Make-Up, the kids' bedtime stories podcast.

My name is Steve. I make up new stories every night without preparing to put my 5-year-old son to bed.

You should listen to another story tomorrow.

But right now, we're ready for today's story.

So get ready. Get tucked in. Makeup story time begin.

Tonight's Makeup story is a request from a listener named Stella, who's eight years old and asked for us to make up a story that includes a dad named Max, a mama named Emma, and

a baby named Estella. And we're also going to add a kitty cat

and a telephone to the story. Once upon a time, a long time ago, there lived an eight-year-old

girl named Stella. And Stella didn't live in a regular city with a lot of buildings. She also didn't live

in a place with a lot of houses. Stella grew up, far away, in a jungle, living in a hut. A hut is like a house,

but it doesn't have so many rooms, and often the hut is made of straw,

or just a little bit of wood, or bamboo, and the hut is not so strong if there's a big rainstorm,

or if it's so, so windy. So Stella and her parents used to always make sure that if it was rainy,

they would go underground. And they liked where they lived because they lived in middle of the forest.

And there were lots of interesting animals in the forest.

One of the interesting animals was a leopard.

And the leopards in this forest were so fast and so good at hunting,

but they were really nice.

What they would do is they would sneak up on animals that they wanted to get.

Like, for example, if they wanted to get a piggy,

they would sneak up on the piggy and hide behind some trees.

And then they would pounce on the animal they were trying to get.

...