Monday

The Squeeberang Mystery


Hello Friends,

I thought I'd tell you a story about a mystery we uncovered last summer.  We'd been playing a new game in The Lake with the Flipfish and if you take a look on the Map of Squeeble Island, you'll be able to see exactly where we were. That summer, we loved racing on the Flipfish up the narrow passage of water, around 'M' Island and then back down the channel again to a finish line which was usually marked out by two Squeebles treading water (we took this in turns as it was a tiring job)!


This was normally great fun, although we did get very wet: Flipfish are slippery creatures and it's a struggle to stay on the fish's back. We'd normally fall off several times in each race and the Flipfish would have to swim over to the bankside in order for us to climb back onto their backs, as it's too tricky to do this from the middle of the lake. 

One day Bash was riding one of the Flipfish, racing against Juju. He was having a particularly good run - he'd made it all the way up the narrow passage of the lake, then all the way around 'M' Island and was on the home strait, not too far from where Ruby and Jingo were marking out the finish line. But suddenly, when a win felt almost certain, he fell off, sliding down the side of his Flipfish like a dribble of ice-cream on a hot day. And then he was gone. We waited for Bash to bob back up, but his cloud shaped head didn't appear. A terrible silence fell over the Squeeble spectators standing on the bank and we all stared at one another. Bash's Flipfish ducked beneath the water at the spot where Bash had disappeared and what happened next was really quite terrible, although we didn't know any of this as it was happening. Only afterwards. 


When Bash's Flipfish ducked beneath the water, he saw Bash almost straight away and, in his excitement, he joyfully lunged forward, accidentally overshooting the point where he'd intended to stop, and
                SWALLOWED
                                             BASH
                                                           WHOLE!!!!


Bash went from being lost in the water, to suddenly being trapped inside a Flipfish! He looked around. He could see the fish's insides! The bones of the Flipfish's body were outlined through walls of pink, fleshy padding and everything had a strange dark orange glow. It sounded just like it does when you put your head under the water in the bath and can hear all the normal noises swishing around, muffled and far away. There were strange things inside the Flipfish too. This is what Bash said he saw: a frying pan; something that looked like a very old sewing machine; a coat hanger; a football AND a tennis ball, which both rolled around a lot and bounced off the fish's bones; part of a sofa, a violin; and a Squeeberang that he never even knew existed!


The Flipfish appeared above the water, looking slightly shaken. And then we saw something very strange indeed. Have you ever seen a fish cough? Neither had we. But as we stood on the bankside, we watched as Bash's Flipfish began to cough. Each time he did, his tail would flip up in the air and the middle of his body would bulge in and out, and bubbles would appear on the surface of the water around his scales. Nothing happened when he coughed the first two times. On his third cough, a tennis ball flew straight out of his mouth, hitting Ruby on the head, where she was still treading water as a finish-line-marker. On his fourth cough, an old violin with no strings shot through the air, falling into a pile of broken pieces as it hit the bank. And on his fifth cough...

Inside the Flipfish, Bash was beginning to get really, really worried. Things were flying past him and then disappearing altogether. Bash is really, really noisy ALL THE TIME, but suddenly his voice didn't feel very loud. 'H E L P!!!', he bellowed desperately. 'H E L P!!! H E…..' and suddenly, before he could finish the word, he was being catapulted out of the Flipfish's body and skimming past the fish's teeth, before being shot up into the air to the rapturous applause of all the Squeebles standing on the bankside! It was a glorious sight!


Bash was fine, just a bit shaken, and once he'd settled himself and was happily eating an ice-cream from Ruby's ice-cream parlour, he began to tell everyone all about his adventure. The thing that fascinated us most was the golden Squeeberang that Bash saw inside the Flipfish. No one could ever remember losing one, or seeing one that matched Bash's description…so we had an exciting mystery on Squeeble Island and we were giddy to think that there might be a hidden Squeeberang inside every Flipfish!

Based on Bash's description, our inventors later designed a Squeeberang just like the golden one that Bash saw inside the Flipfish and it's available to win in the Squeebles Spelling app! On Squeeble Island, to this day, it's still trapped inside the Flipfish, so the only time that we can ever ride on it is inside the Spelling app. Do look out for it when it comes to trading in your stars for doing well with your learning your spellings - we LOVE that Squeeberang!

Whizz :)

P.s. If you don't already use the Squeebles Spelling app, Squeeberangs are the boomerang-like gliders that we ride on in the mini-game inside the app!

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