Smarty Pants and the Hedge Maze

The Mighty Zoo had a brand-new hedge maze, and Smarty Pants had read all about it. “Follow me,” he told Fearless Cub and Negative Natalie. “I know exactly where the exit is.”

At the entrance, there was a map on a wooden sign. Natalie stopped to look. “Maybe we should—”

“No need,” said Smarty. “It’s all up here.” He tapped his head and marched in.

Left. Right. Left again. Every hedge looked like every other hedge. After a while, they passed the same broken twig three times.

“We’re lost,” said Natalie. “We’ll be in here forever. We’ll have to eat leaves.”

“We are NOT lost,” said Smarty, who was very lost.

Fearless Cub wanted to charge straight through the hedge. Natalie wanted to sit down and worry. And Smarty wanted, more than anything, to not be the owl who got everyone lost.

But the sun was getting low, and his friends were getting tired, and finally Smarty took off his glasses and said the hardest sentence an owl can say.

“I don’t know.”

It was quiet for a moment. Then Natalie said, “I looked at the map at the start. The exit is next to a big tree with a red ribbon.”

Fearless Cub scrambled up onto a mossy rock. “I can see a red ribbon! That way!”

Smarty pulled out his notebook. “Then if we keep the sun on our left…”

Ten minutes later, they tumbled out of the maze together, laughing. And on the way home, Smarty asked Natalie what else she’d noticed on the map, and actually listened to the whole answer.