Knock, Knock, Who's Hopping?
The sun has barely cracked its eye open over Meadow Hollow when Hop wakes with a jolt, ears springing straight up like two exclamation points. Something is fizzing in his brain, popping and sparkling like the last bit of soda in a shaken bottle. It's a joke. A brand-new, never-been-told, freshly-hatched knock-knock joke, and it is absolutely, positively refusing to wait its turn.
"Oh no," Hop whispers into the dim burrow, blinking at the dirt ceiling above him. "Oh no, oh no, oh *no*. Not now. I haven't even had breakfast."
But the joke doesn't care about breakfast. It doesn't care about the fact that it's practically still nighttime, with only a thin gray light seeping through the burrow's little round doorway. It just sits there in Hop's head, tapping its foot, clearing its throat, absolutely *vibrating* with the need to be spoken aloud.
Hop tries to ignore it. He really does. He shuffles to the little pile of dandelions he keeps stacked in the corner like golden treasure and picks the fluffiest one, the one he's been saving. He opens his mouth to take a nice, calm, sensible bite.
"Knock, knock," he says instead, to the dandelion.
The dandelion, understandably, does not…
