What a capital joke! Ha!
ha! ha! ha! ha! Oh! oh! oh! How my sides do ache! What a joke! How
they'll laugh when I tell them." Then came a great flight of
kookooburras, for they had heard the laughter, and all wanted to know
what the joke was. Proudly the Kookooburra told them all about the
Snake sleeping on Dot, and the great fight! All the time, first one
kookooburra, and then another, chuckled over the story, and when it
came to an end every bird dropped its wings, cocked up its tail, and
throwing back its head, opened its great beak, and laughed uproariously
together. Dot was nearly deafened with the noise; for some chuckled,
some cackled; some said, "Ha! ha! ha!" others said, "Oh! oh! oh!" and
as soon as one left off, another began, until it seemed as though they
couldn't stop. They all said it was a splendid joke, and that they
really must go and tell it to the whole bush. So they flew away, and
far and near, for hours, the bush echoed with chuckling and cackling,
and wild bursts of laughter, as the kookooburras told that grand joke
everywhere.

"Now," said the Kookooburra, when all the others had gone, "a bit of
snake is just the right thing for breakfast. Will you have some,
little Human?"

Dot shuddered at the idea of eating snake for breakfast, and the
Kookooburra thought she was afraid of being poisoned.

"It won't hurt you," he said, kindly, "I took care that it did not bite
itself. Sometimes they do that when they are dying, and then they're
not good to eat. But this snake is all right, and won't disagree like
cockchafers: the scales are quite soft and digestible," he added.

But Dot said she would rather wait for the berries the Kangaroo was
bringing, so the Kookooburra remarked that if she would excuse it he
would like to begin breakfast at once, as the fight had made him
hungry. Then Dot saw him hold the reptile on the branch with his foot,
whilst he took its tail into his beak, and proceeded to swallow it in a
leisurely way. In fact the Kookooburra was so slow that very little of
the snake had disappeared when the Kangaroo returned.

The Kangaroo had brought a pouch full of berries, and in her hand a
small spray of the magic ones, by eating which Dot was able to
understand the talk of all the bush creatures. All the time she was
wandering in the bush the Kangaroo gave her some of these to eat daily,
and Dot soon found that the effect of these strange berries only lasted
until the ne