Pink Elephant said the trick was to sing “in the style of the rock.” We didn’t know what concrete music would sound like. The rock music sounds gorgeous, though! Anyway, Twonkie-Twonkie spent like an hour walking around on the concrete, tapping it, and even putting his ear on the ground to listen to it. Apparently, some kinds of rock are what the Twonks call Whispering Rocks. They tell stories under their breath very, very quietly.  No human can hear it, and even the pink elephants aren’t the best at figuring out what they are saying. But twonks have no problem listening. It’s important for them to listen because then when the twonks sing, they sing about the stories the rocks are telling. And then the rocks change their shape. After they do, they don’t Whisper anymore. Twonkie-Twonkie said it’s because they know their story has been passed on into music, so they don’t have to tell the story anymore. After that, the rock goes to sleep forever. The Whispering Rocks, unlike other rocks, can’t be sung back into their original shape afterwards. They’re very strong. All the Twonk castles that the twonks live in on Twonkie Land are made out of Whispering Rock. Some of the most famous Twonkie folktales have come from the songs the ancient twonks sang when they listened to the Whispering Rocks. The greatest mystery is where these stories come from. No one has ever figured out where these rocks first heard their stories.

I really hope we go to Twonkie Land and Pinky Land one day. They sound like such magical places.

Anyway, long story short, concrete does not Whisper, which was pretty much what Mandy and I guessed. You know what it DOES like? It likes to be told stories. So weird, right? We figured this out after like two hours. It was really stressful. If Mom came home during that time, she would have noticed we’d cracked our pool. Which is pretty much not something we could explain. But Twonkie-Twonkie sang it some stories and it slowly healed itself. Twonkie was sweating afterwards. He said it was the hardest job he had ever done. Mandy and I were impressed. We had NO idea twonk Singing was so hard! Awesome, though, right?

All I know is, that would be the worst.

We’ve been asked to do a report on an endangered species, and Marianne and I got to do elephants. We’ve been learning a lot about them and why they’re endangered. There are a lot of reasons why, of course, but one of them is related to Mandy’s last post about the elephant wars. Sometimes only daddy elephants have tusks, and so they’re the ones that get poached. But that means that families don’t have a daddy to teach them how to behave, and sometimes boy elephants grow up and become really angry. They seek revenge on the people who have taken their food, their water, and their land, or on people have hurt their family. Then they go wild and trample villages into the ground. This makes the people really angry, so they go out and hunt more elephants. It’s one big, bad cycle. Part of what we’re trying to do now is work with Pink Elephant to stop this. We talk to people about sharing their resources with elephants, and we talk to elephants about trying not to go crazy on the people and to control themselves.

You can help us, too! Learning more is always the first step to helping, because that way you know what to do! Mandy and Marianne and Peter and I have recently joined the World Wildlife Fund, and you should join, too! It’s free, and you can sign up to be a member and learn more about elephants and other animals that live together with elephants.

Anyway, i’m getting off topic. Sorry! So we were going to post up how the party went but fixing the computer and sneaking it out and everything just took a while. But now that things are up and running again we have to mention it! We had some regular balloons and we drew elephants on them with markers. They wouldn’t float at first, because balloons that you blow your breath into never do. But then Pink Elephant used his pinkelephantian powers to make them float like real balloons. That was fun. We passed around the Elephant’s Tear and thought a lot about what we wanted to do to make the day a success. And then we used the Great In-Between to go to a new place in Laos, where we rescued a whole herd of elephants from a bunch of angry villagers. There’s a war going on between them! But more about that later. Anyway, on the way home we also rescued Bushlatch’s (we call him Bushlatch now since Twonkie’s nickname for him stuck) friend. He injured his wing but we made him a little wing cast, just like real doctors do for us. All in a day’s work!

The elephants at war with the humans are holding a meeting next week to talk about plans for peace. Christie and I are going to go to make sure things are all right. We’re special guests of honor because we have the Elephant’s Tear. I’ll let you guys know how that goes once it happens!

Love,

Mandy

You know how there’s the excuse, “my dog ate my homework?” and how no one believes it? I bet I can think of something even less believable. “A twonk ate my homework.” Except, mine is really true!

We’ve started going to Twonkie-Twonkie’s cave after school to do homework, because that way Twonkie can sort of learn more about what it’s like to be a human and go to school…plus his math is really improving. We all know Twonks aren’t particularly strong at math, though, which may be why Mandy’s math skills are like already way better than Twonkie-Twonkie’s. But it’s so much fun! The only bad thing is, I was filling out my science homework worksheets and Twonkie-Twonkie accidentally got really hungry. And when Peter called me over to look at Twonkie’s Aurian flower, Twonkie started snacking on this huge pile of random food, and my paper kind of…got caught up in the rush. Man, can Twonks eat! There was this huge blur and paper started flying everywhere, and the next thing I know I’m chasing my papers across the cave and discovering that some of them are missing. And it wasn’t like a report I wrote on a new sheet of paper — there were problems on it and everything! And it was too late to write to the teacher. So yesterday was like, really awkward. The teacher was like, “where is your homework?” and I was like…”hahaha you wouldn’t believe me if I told you…” I got really desperate and was like “let me dig around in my backpack…maybe it’s there somewhere! I think it’s lost!”

Marianne helped me out last minute, though. I’d called her really late at night and she erased ALL her answers and scanned the paper and printed them out for me this morning before filling in her own answers again. So I did the problems right there in class and the next time the teacher turned around I had something to turn in. Marianne is THE BEST! Now THAT’s what i call friendship.

It’s actually not that exciting. Christie got poison ivy on her face. And it’s red and rashy and looks kinda scary. And she read somewhere that cucumbers are really soothing for the skin, so ontop of that lotion she’s using for the poison ivy, she made mom use the blender to churn cucumbers into this kind of chunky paste. Mom argued with her a lot at first, but then Christie said that she promised not to do it again without telling mom, and that also she wouldn’t get it all over the place. And then she put it on her face.

I found out about it because I walked into the bathroom and Christie was lying on the bottom of the tub, and there was this green stuff ALL OVER! And I screamed really loudly because it scared me so much. But her face does kind of seem better!

On a side note, Twonks can eat poison ivy. We found out by accident. Honestly, is there ANYTHING that TWonks can’t eat?

Probably not.

And I don’t understand blogging — what’s the difference between categories and tags?

Anyway, going back to bed…

Anyway, today we also got to spend time with Twonkie-Twonkie’s pet squirrel. He’s not really a pet, he’s more like a wild squirrel that loves to hang out with Twonkie-Twonkie. He’s so funny. Even though Twonkie-Twonkie called him “scuarral” by accident because he didn’t know how to say “squirrel,” the name stuck so now the squirrel’s real name is Scuarral. I wanted to bring him for show and tell, but Scuarral gets shy in front of crowds. At least, that’s what Twonkie-Twonkie says. None of us speak squirrel language.

Got to go to bed. Mom doesn’t know I’m still up. It’s hard to get homework done when we’re having so much fun going to see Twonkie and teaching him and stuff.

Goodnight!

Some of you might not know about Twonkie-Twonkie yet. He’s Pink Elephant’s Twonk friend, who has come to Earth for his Earth Studies. He’s learning how to live life like normal people here. He’s really tall! And he likes to eat. A lot. I think he likes to eat more than Pink Elephant does! He told me and Christie earlier that he likes to eat rocks, especially crunchy ones. It’s true. I’ve seen him do it. It was sooo scary when I first saw it.

Right now there are two huge things we have to figure out. We’re helping Twonkie-Twonkie learn to fit in. It’s hard because he doesn’t know how to use money yet. I mean, I’m not very good at it either, and sometimes figuring out change is hard. Christie’s a lot better at it than me. But I think he’s getting better! One time Christie used a real 5$ bill to help teach him, and he accidentally ate it! She was so mad. But it’s hard to be mad at Twonkie-Twonkie. He’s the nicest ever.

The other thing we have to figure out is this weird mysterious elephant legend thing. Apparently pink elephants have come to earth before. That’s really weird. I think we would have known about it, but Christie says that there are a lot of things we don’t know. i guess she’s right. But I wish we knew more! Pink Elephant promises we will get to the bottom of this.

This is really long. Got to go now, it’s time time to go visit Twonkie-Twonkie. We’re quizzing him on pennies today. Wish him luck!