The Yawn That Went Round the Farm

It started with the cat.

The cat was lying on the warm step by the kitchen door, in the last stripe of sun, and she opened her mouth so wide you could see all the way to the back, and she yawned.

It was a small yawn. The cat was a small cat. But a yawn does not stay where it is put.

The hen, scratching in the dust nearby, saw it. "Oh," said the hen, and before she could help it her beak opened, and out it came, a hen-sized yawn with a little cluck on the end.

The yawn went round the corner of the barn.

The goat was there, chewing a shoelace. He saw the hen yawn. Goats do not like to be left out of anything. His jaw stopped chewing, his eyes went half shut, and the yawn went through him from his horns to his hooves.

It went across the yard.

The pig in the mud saw the goat. The pig had been having a lovely time, but a yawn is a yawn, and hers was enormous, a pink and muddy one, and it made a noise like a door that needs oil.

It went over the fence.

The sheep were in a line in the field, and that was the end of them. One sheep yawned, and the next sheep saw it and yawned, and the next, and the next, all down the line like a row of lights going out, until the last sheep yawned so hard she sat down.

It went up the hill.

The cow was on the hill. She was the biggest animal on the farm, and when the yawn reached her it had grown, the way snowballs grow, and the cow's yawn was so long and so deep that the chick who had been sitting on her head fell asleep in the middle of it and did not fall off, which is a thing chicks can do.

The yawn went down the other side of the hill.

The horse caught it in the stable. The dog caught it on the path. The ducks caught it on the pond, all of them at once, with their beaks pointing up like a row of little tents.

And by now there was only one creature on the whole farm who had not yawned.

She was sitting at her bedroom window in her pyjamas, watching. She had seen the cat start it. She had watched it go round the barn and over the fence and up the hill and down again, and she had held her mouth tight shut the whole time, because she was not tired, not even a bit.

The dog on the path looked up at her window.

She looked back.

The dog yawned.

She held on. She held on for nearly four whole seconds, which is a long time to hold a yawn, and then it got her, the biggest yawn on the farm, the one that had been all the way round and collected something from everybody: a bit of cat, a bit of hen, a bit of goat and pig and sheep and cow and horse and duck.

It went on for ages. When it finished, her eyes were wet and her ears had popped and the window was dark.

"Oh," she said, in the voice of someone who has lost an argument.

She climbed into bed. Outside, the farm was silent from the step to the hill. The yawn had done its work. There was nobody left to pass it to.

Except, somewhere down on the warm step, a small cat, who had started it, and who had been asleep for ages.