not its rider. He needed a single piece of wood instead of a tray made from bamboo poles lashed together – a big, flexible board that could withstand the pressures that a champion surfer would demand from it.
As luck would have it, five minutes later, as he wandered past the fat ranger’s office, he stumbled upon the perfect piece of wood lying across his path. Someone had even smartened it up for him by painting it bright green. He went to knock on the back door of the office to ask if he might take it, but to his surprise there was no door, just a hole in the wall where a door had once been. He waited outside the office for a couple of minutes, but nobody came, so he helped himself and, clamping his new surfboard underneath his arm, he set off for the River Trickle.
When he arrived he was surprised at how different the river looked. He had never seen it after the rainy season. It was at least six times wider than normal and as deep as the tallest tree in the forest. It rushed past faster than a galloping horse and roared like a cloud full of thunder. Luckily there was a shallow pool to one side where Ping could do his warm-up. It was the vet who had taught him how important it was to stretch before physical activity and he started his warm-up by lunging forward on his left leg while touching the ground with the knee of the right. After ten seconds of grunting he swapped legs, lunging forward on his right leg while touching the ground with the knee of the left. It was frightfully complicated, and Ping started to get in a bit of a muddle. When it came to stretching his arms, he couldn’t remember if they should be pointing up or down, or whether he should be bending forward or standing up, or whether his feet should be pointing in or out, or whether he should shut his eyes or keep them open.
After five minutes of warming up he was in trouble. Bending at the waist, he had threaded both of his arms between his legs from behind, grabbed on to his ankles and then tried to stand up. But when he came to pull his arms back again they were knotted round his knees. He slowly toppled forward until his forehead was resting on the ground. With his black and white bottom sticking up in the air and his head curled under his tummy he looked like a rolled-up woodlouse. Now what was he going to do? Unfortunately this decision was taken out of his hands, because just then, with whoops and mocking cheers, the golden monkeys arrived to poke fun at poor Ping. They sat in the branches above him and poured scorn down at him.
“Oh, look,” screamed Choo, their oh-so-witty leader. “A weird new animal’s come to live in the forest… It’s a giant black and white snail.” The other monkeys laughed, while a cocky young monkey called Foo approached Ping and sniffed him.
“It smells like a panda,” he said. “But it can’t be a panda, because pandas only ever do three things – eat bamboo, poo forty-seven times a day and pose for tourists’ cameras – and this one,” he said, running his finger down Ping’s curved back, “is trying to be a ski slope!”
“You know very well I’m a panda,” said Ping.
The monkeys leapt backwards on their branches pretending to be shocked.
“A snail that can TALK!” they yelled, bursting into another chatter of laughter.
“Can you un-knot me, please?” Ping asked.
“My pleasure,” said Choo, dropping to the ground and delivering a light kick to the panda cub’s bottom. Ping rolled forward into the water and uncurled with a splash.
“Thank you,” he said, getting to his feet with as much dignity as he could muster. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m busy.”
“You! Busy!” sniggered Choo. “The last time I saw a busy panda was never!”
“He’s busy paddling in the water,” snorted Foo.
“Paddling’s for babies,” Choo roared. “Are you sure you shouldn’t be wearing armbands?”
“I am not paddling,” said Ping. “I am surfing.”
Never before had the monkeys laughed so hard. Their jags of laughter skimmed across the surface of the water like sharp stones.
“We’ve seen your surfing before, Ping, and there is only one way to describe it,” sniggered Choo. “It STINKS! Talking of which, we’ve got a new name for you – Ping PONG!”
This time the monkeys laughed so hard that they couldn’t catch their breath.
Ping had had enough of their jibes. He’d jolly well show these stupid monkeys. He waded out into the middle of the river, which was running a whole lot faster than he had thought, and hopped up on to his board. At first he found it almost impossible to get his balance. His arms whirled, his knees buckled and he wobbled around like a jack-in-the-box on a spring, but then he bent his knees, spread out his arms and sat back on his haunches… and suddenly he was in control. The current grabbed hold of his board and, with a kick like an outboard motor, whooshed him off downriver.
“Wooooohooooo!” Ping yelled. “I’m doing it! I’m the King of the Surf!” He couldn’t see them, but he could hear quite distinctly that the monkeys had stopped laughing. The river bent sharply to the right, allowing Ping to glance back over his shoulder, where, to his delight, he saw that the monkeys were so shocked to see him surfing that they had fallen out of their trees and were thrashing around in the water trying to get out.
“You should have had some armbands!” hollered Ping. “So long, suckers!” And with a final cry of, “Now you see me, now you don’t!” he disappeared round the bend.
The River Trickle twisted and turned through the Wolagong Nature Reserve like a miniature train in a zoo. It carried Ping past all of the other pandas, who seemed strangely unperturbed by the extraordinary sight, as if a panda on a surfboard was something they saw every day. They turned their gentle eyes to watch him pass, but not once did they stop chewing.
Ping floated past the fat ranger, who was madly searching for something in the garden outside his office. Upon hearing Ping’s cry of “Cowabunga!” the fat ranger lifted his head out of a bush and pointed at Ping’s surfboard.
“There it is!” he screamed. “There’s my back door!”
“Back door!” gulped Ping, looking down at the board beneath his feet. Now that he studied it more closely he noticed that it had a handle and a cat flap. The fat ranger loved his cats.
“And the paint’s wet!” shouted the fat ranger.
Nothing I can do about that, thought Ping. That’s the problem with surfing – everything gets wet… my face, my legs, my feet, the board, the paint. He noticed that the fat ranger was waving a paintbrush. “Oh, I see what you mean!” gasped Ping, lifting up his feet to discover that underneath they were bright green. “You mean the paint’s still wet. Sorry!” he cried as he sailed past. “I’ll have the door back in two shakes of a cat’s tail.”
But the cats would have to wait a little longer than that, because Ping’s bright-green door-board showed no sign of stopping.
“Look at meeeeeeee!” Ping screamed, punching the air for all he was worth.
