The Stolen Bicycle

Hello This is jana and welcome to Storynory, 

And I’m here with one of our very popular monkey stories – actually this story features the Bear as much as it does the monkey.  It’s quite short, and we hope you will find it fun. 

In the opinion of the Monkey the very best bananas grew in the garden belonging to the man. 

One time, he was half way up a tree, peeling a banana, when he saw the Man’s little girl come out of the house. She climbed onto her red bicycle and rode it around the garden. He thought, “That looks fun. I’d like to have a go.”

After she had been around the path three times, the Man called out, “Sonu, come in now.. it’s time for chai!” She parked her bike against the veranda and ran inside. The monkey hopped across to the bike. He sat on the seat, just as the girl had done, and tried to pedal. But goodness!  Cycling wasn’t so easy!  The monkey lost his balance and the bike toppled over.  Tumbling onto the grass, he declared. “I never give up!” He picked up the bike and tried again.  The same thing happened, and he ended up on the ground with a bruise on his bottom. He tried again and this time he was lucky. He rode the bike down the path and out of the garden. “Yay, I knew I’d get the hang of this!” he called out, as he peddled down the track all the way to the clearing in the jungle where the animals enjoyed hanging out. 

The next day the monkey was showing off his new possession. None of the other animals could ride the bike because you really need two feet and two paws. Until the bear came along. Now bears, as you may know, can walk on two feet. He said to the monkey:

“That’s a nice bike, where did you get it from?”

“I found it on the rubbish heap,” said the monkey – who did not want to admit that he had pinched it. 

“Nice, can I have a go?” asked the bear. 

“Sure,” agreed the monkey, who thought it would be funny to see the bear fall off. 

But to his amazement, the bear climbed onto the saddle and rode the bike straight down the jungle track without a single wobble.

“Hey, stop! Thief!” called the monkey. “Bring my bike back or I’ll tell the tigress and you’ll be sorry!”

But the bear was enjoying himself too much to come back.  Now like the monkey, you might not have been expecting the bear to know how to ride a bicycle. But actually, it all makes sense when you know his story. 

You see, when he had been a bear cub, some men came into the jungle and took him away. They brought him to the circus and trained him to do tricks like ride a bike and walk a tightrope. The kids in the audience loved the Bear’s antics and cheered and clapped.  But then some important people came and said it was cruel to keep animals in the circus. The circus animals enjoy the performance, but they don’t like living in cages and travelling up and down the country. So the  clowns put the Bear in the back of a truck, drove to the jungle, and dumped him. 

Still the great thing about learning to ride a bike is that you never forget how to do it. The Bear remembered well. He pedalled until he came to the road. Then he turned right and kept going. 

Some cars drove past him, and one or two beeped. He waved back, just as he had learned to do in the circus. But then the Man and the little girl came along in their pickup truck. 

“Papa ji, that looks just like my bike and a bear is riding it,” she said.

“So it is,” said the man. “The bear must have stolen it!”

And he beeped the horn. 

The Bear looked round and he saw the girl crying and the Man shaking his fist.  

“I knew it!” thought the bear. “That pesky monkey must have stolen this bike and now they think I’m the thief.”

He peddled faster and faster, but the pick-up truck followed on his tail beeping. He rode over the brow of the hill and onto a steep downward slope. The bear really picked up speed now and the wind was blowing through his fur. It was fun, but scary. He looked ahead and saw the road was leading straight towards a cliff. All he could see beyond was blue sky and turquoise waves. He squeezed the breaks as hard as he could, and the bike skidded sideways over the cliff. Fortunately the Bear flew off it and landed on the road with a great big thud! He was grazed, but glad to be alive.

The pickup truck skidded to a halt. The little girl wound down the window and shouted:  “You naughty Bear! That was my birthday present. I cried all night when you stole it!”

“Me? I’m not a thief. It was the pesky monkey wot stole it, honest!” whined the bear. But the humans did not understand him, let alone believe him. 

The bear tramped a long way back home and arrived at the jungle clearing when it was already dark.  

The monkey was sitting on a rock. 

“Hey Bear, where’s my bike? You didn’t lose it did you?  If you did, you owe me a ton of bananas!”

“No I didn’t lose it,” grumbled the bear. “It dropped over the cliff, and I almost went with it. Besides, it wasn’t your bike. It was a little girl’s birthday present. She cried all night when you stole it.”

“Oh,” said the Monkey. “I didn’t mean to make her cry.”

You see, the monkey is not all bad. He did actually feel sorry that he had upset the little girl. So the next morning he asked the Bear: “Are you sure my bike fell all the way down the cliff into the ocean?”

“Your bike? You mean the bike you stole? No, I’m not sure. I didn’t look.”

“I’m not saying I stole it. But I am saying that if we can find it, we can give it to the little girl to make her happy.”

“Alright, I’ll show you where it fell,” said the Bear.

The Bear and the Monkey set out for the cliff. When they arrived, they peered over the edge, and spotted the bike lodged on a rock. 

“I can climb down there, easy peasy,” said the Monkey. 

“But how will you get the bike back up? Even the Man couldn’t do that.” said the Bear. 

“We’ll use a rope,” said the monkey. “Here, help me pull up these vines.”

The Bear used his strength to pull the vines out of the rock. The monkey twisted them together and made a rope. When he climbed down to the bike, he tied the end of the rope to the bike and the Bear heaved it up. Back on the road, the monkey tried riding the bike first. It  worked fine, although the bell didn’t ring. It just made a little clicking sound. The bear pushed the bike up the hill, and they took it in turns to ride it back to the edge of the forest where the Man lived with his little girl. 

  When they reached the house, the monkey rode through the gate while the Bear jogged beside him.

A little girl’s voice called out, “Papa ji, come quick!  A bear and a monkey have brought my bike back!”

The man ran out onto the veranda and scratched his head.

The monkey and the bear put the bike down on the ground and both took a deep bow, before making an exit and waving goodbye from the gate.

The man said, “Well, well, I’ve never seen anything like that since I went to the circus as a little boy.”

Little did he know that it was the exact same bear that he had seen riding a bike all those years before. 

And that was The Stolen Bicycle, read by me Jana for Storynory!  Bertie says he thought of the story after he fell off his bicycle recently.   He’s been limping around, and we hope his leg gets better soon. 

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For now Bye bye