Pip’s Wild Mornings: When Sounds Go Silly and Kids Save the Day

The first sound Pip heard that morning was the cat purring at the end of the bed. Except it wasn’t a purr. It was a ribbit. This was somehow even stranger than last week, when all the sounds had gone completely silent. Now they weren't gone... they were just... wrong. Pip sat bolt upright. The alarm clock on the nightstand wasn't beeping. It was... oinking? Like a tiny pig. This was NOT right. Pip jumped out of bed and ran to the window.

Outside, a car drove by, but instead of a vroom-vroom engine sound, it made a gentle... whoosh, like the wind. And when the driver honked the horn? A bird chirped. A perfect, little tweet-tweet-tweet! Pip’s dog, Barnaby, trotted into the room and let out a huge, happy bark. Or... he tried to. What came out was a very confused, very loud... MEOW. This was a problem. A big one. How could anyone understand anything if a dog’s bark was a cat’s meow?

What if a fire engine’s siren sounded like... like a babbling brook? Someone had to fix it. And Pip knew just who that someone had to be. Following the weirdest sounds—the school bell that croaked like a frog, the wind that clanged like a cymbal—Pip traced the mixed-up noises to their source. The trail led up, up, up to the old, abandoned radio tower on Whisperwind Hill. The giant metal door was slightly open. And from inside came the strangest sound of all...

a thousand whispers that sounded exactly like a waterfall. Pip pushed the door open. And saw it. A machine. It was a giant, humming contraption of wires and levers and two enormous funnels. One funnel was pointed at a collection of things in the room—a cat, a bell, a toy car. The other funnel was pointed out a huge window, aimed right at the town. And in the middle, a panel of wires was a complete mess! The wire labeled “DOG BARK” was plugged into the slot for “CAT MEOW.” The “CAR HORN” wire was jammed into the “BIRD CHIRP” slot!

It wasn’t broken. It was just a puzzle put together all wrong! Pip knew what to do. With careful hands, Pip started unplugging the wires. Out came the frog-croak from the bell socket. Out came the oink from the alarm clock socket. One by one, Pip matched the labels on the wires to the labels on the machine. BARK to BARK. RING to RING. HONK to HONK. With the very last wire snapped into place——it happened. A wave of sound rushed out of the tower.

A real sound. From down in the town, Pip heard it. A car horn blared a proper HONK. A dog let out a glorious, window-rattling WOOF! The world sounded like itself again. And high up on the hill, Pip listened as the right sounds settled back into all the right places, a quiet hero in a world that was, finally, no longer mixed-up.