Slip Me Liz.
And reading the letter a second time, Hot Balloons said to himself, “No wonder it is scribbled over the paper in pigeon foot blue handwriting. No wonder it is full of secrets and syllables.”
So he jumped into a shirt and a necktie, he jumped into a hat and a vest, and he jumped into a steel car, starting with a snizz and a snoof till it began running smooth and even as a catfoot.
“I will ride to the Shampoo river faster than two pigeons fly,” he said. “I will be there.”
Which he was. He got there before the two pigeons. But it was no use. For the rain and the rainstorm was working—and the rain and the rainstorm tore down and took and washed away the steel bridge over the Shampoo river.
“Now there is only an air bridge to cross on, and a steel car drops down, falls off, falls through, if it runs on an air bridge,” he said.
So he was all alone with the rain and the rainstorm all around him—and far as he could see by shading his eyes and looking, there was only the rain and the rainstorm across the river—and the air bridge.
While he waited for the rain and the rainstorm to go down, two pigeons came flying into his hands, one apiece into each hand, flipping and fluttering their wings and calling, “Ka loo, ka loo, ka lo, ka lo.” And he could tell by the way they began tying the shoestrings on their shoes and the bonnet strings under their chins, they were the same two pigeons ringing the door bell that morning.
They wrote on his thumb-nails in pigeon foot blue handwriting, and he read their handwriting asking him why he didn’t cross over the Shampoo river. And he explained, “There is only an air bridge to cross on. A steel car drops down, falls off, falls through, if it runs on an air bridge. Change my steel car to an air car. Then I can cross the air bridge.”
The pigeons flipped and fluttered, dipped their wings and called, “Ka loo, ka loo, ka lo, ka lo.” And they scribbled their pigeon feet on his thumb-nail—telling him to wait. So the pigeons went flying across the Shampoo river.