When Otto the hunter caught the white bear, it was so big, so beautiful and so friendly that he decided to give it to the King of Denmark for Christmas. But as they traveled down the mountain together, night fell. "Let’s get out of the cold," Otto said to him. "Look, there’s a cottage!"
He knocked at the door and a voice inside said, "Why are you knocking? You’ve never bothered before." Anxious children’s faces peered out the window. "Oh, I’m sorry," said the farmer, opening the door. "I thought you were those terrible trolls."
"Trolls?" said Otto. "My friend the bear and I were just looking for somewhere safe to shelter until morning."
"You’ll be better off in the caves, friend," said the farmer’s wife. "That’s where we’re all going now. It’s Christmas Eve, you know. And every Christmas Eve a pack of nasty trolls came down from the mountains and make themselves at home in our little house. They eat every scrap of food and drink all our beer. They break the furniture and smash the plates. Then, they all pile into our bed to sleep - and they don’t even take their boots off!"
"It’s just as well we came along when we did," said Otto. "Let us stay the night here, and I don’t think you or your family will need to go to the caves this Christmas."
So the hunter bedded down in front of the kitchen fire, his bear curled up under the table, and the farmer and his wife went upstairs to their own bed.
At the stroke of midnight, shrieks of laughter and hideous howls rang out all around the cottage. Then the trolls shouted, "Farmer Neils! We’ve come for our Christmas dinner, do you hear? What have you got for us this year? It had better be good - or else!"
They forced the window open and tumbled in - the ugliest pack of creatures Otto had ever seen.
They opened every cupboard and drawer and began wolfing down all the food they could lay their paws on - whole eggs, raw meat, cakes in their tins and all the sweets on the Christmas tree. Then they drank beer until they were reeling and rolling and singing at the tops of their voices.
"Oh, look," said a drunken troll. "Here’s a sweet little pussy cat."
The bear opened one eye. "Have a sausage, little kitty," mumbled another troll, and he pushed a hot sausage up the bear’s nose.
"RROOOOOOAAAOOOOAARR!!!" The white bear pounced out from under the table, grabbed the troll and threw him straight out of the door and into the snow.
You never saw anything like the look on those troll’s faces when they saw how big the "pussy cat" really was!
They jumped through the window, climbed up the walls and fled up the chimney. The bear chased them out of the cottage and across the snow - back to the mountains.
Silence settled over the cottage. Farmer Neils and his wife crept downstairs. "I don’t think you’ll have any more trouble from those trolls," laughed Otto.
The grateful Mrs. Neils gave him lots of the food that had been saved from the trolls, and he set off early the next day with his present for the King. By then, the news had reached every troll in the land: "Don’t go to Farmer Neils for your Christmas Dinner! He’s got himself the biggest pussy cat you have ever seen!"
Story Time � 1984-1989 by Rubicon Press CC