Suddenly, a short-tailed shrew named S.T. appears, turns Jackie into a short-tailed shrew, and begins to show Jackie all of the wonderful creatures that live in these woods.

Jackie first meets earthworms, beetles, white grubs, and other creatures she can’t identify that live in the ground. She is confused, what do these creatures eat down there? She learns that earthworms eat their way through the soil and digest bits of plants and other food from the dirt. White grubs suck juices right out of roots and when they become pupae and change into adults, they will crawl up out of the ground and fly around as beetles. Black beetles eat dead animals to keep the forest clean.

Jackie then meets Millie the Millipede who lives inside a log that looks like a tiny factory. Millie tells Jackie that there are tons of workers who are busy day and night breaking the log down into soil. Jackie saw so many creatures chewing, tunneling, and boring through the wood. These included wood roaches, small white termites, and hard-shelled pill bugs!

Then Jackie meets Sitta, the nuthatch bird. Sitta shows Jackie the other birds flying in and out of treetops, the bugs that live on the underside of leaves, the wasps and flies buzzing around, and the caterpillars crawling on the leaves. Jackie learns that there are different things living all the way from the leaves at the trop of trees right down into the dirt.

Finally, Jackie opens her eyes and is a human again. She wonders if she dreamt the whole thing but realizes that she has a lot to write about for her report!

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