THE ADVENTURES OF JIX
(ee & some ea words – long e sound)
Jix’s pal Pog is free on the weekend, so they agree to meet by the creek to play hide-and-seek. Jix greets Pog with a belly bump. Jix is a jeek, and that is what they do.
Then Jix hides in the weeds between the trees and the creek. He keeps his horns down so Pog will not see him. The weeds have a sweet smell—the smell of a green creeper. Did one come by this way? Jix asks himself.
Jix has never seen a green creeper. Almost no one has, they are so shy. They have six feet and big feelers. They can creep up tall trees, even steep cliffs, but they do not have much speed. They feed mostly on the seeds of the heeka tree, but they will eat the leaf buds too. If you want to meet a green creeper, you need to keep very still. If you do not, they will spit a big gob of green goo on you.
Jix spots a heeka tree just up the creek. Maybe the green creeper is in that tree. Jix peeks over the tops of the weeds. He cannot see very well, so he creeps all the way to the tree on his hands and feet. Then he sees big feelers between the branches. It is a green creeper, and it seems to be asleep.
Jix claps his feet with glee. That is what jeeks do when they feel happy. But then he sees that the green creeper is not asleep. No, it is weeping. Jix feels so bad for the green creeper that he sniffs. If he speaks to it, will it flee? (Creepers may not be fast, but they can leap from tree to tree.) Still, he has to speak up.
“Why are you weeping?” he asks.
The creeper looks down at him sadly. “My feeler is bent,” it says, “so I cannot feel anything with it.”
“We can fix that!” says Jix, and he yells for Pog. Once the creeper is on the ground, the two pals lean its feeler over a big rock and pull down the end as much as they can.
“You did it!” says the green creeper. “How can I ever—”
Just then a big gleech dives down on them. But the creeper spits a gob of goo at it, and it crashes into a tree.
“What was I saying?” asks the green creeper. “Oh, yes. How can I ever repay you?”
“You just did!” say Jix and Pog together.
And from then on, whenever Jix and Pog pass the green creeper’s heeka tree, it creeps down for a visit.
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The Adventures of Jix is a 4-volume series with a total of 35 stories about a heroic little monster in a world of fantastical creatures. Here is a sampling of the 37 illustrations:
