It was a warm autumn, the sun was shining and Masha and the bear went to play in the forest.
“Let’s have a race,” suggested Masha. “Whoever runs to the big stump first wins.”
Bear nodded and was looking forward to winning this race for sure.
“So three, two, one… Now!” Masha counted down the time to start, and the two of them took off as fast as a lightning.
“Help me!”, echoed a voice through the forest.
Masha and the bear stopped immediately. They had forgotten all about the race and listened to where the desperate call was coming from.
“Help, please! I can’t move.”
The bear pointed in the direction from which the cry came. Several large rocks lay beside the path and a thicket was growing. And it was from this thicket that the pleas for help came. Masha and the bear hurried there at once.
As Masha was approaching the place, something seemed wrong. There were crumpled candy bags, plastic bottles and cans strewn in the spaces between the boulders. A little further on in the undergrowth, a black bag stuffed with smelly garbage was thrown. And just beyond the bushes lay the unfortunate little one. It was the squirrel that had been calling for help all along. It was tangled in a plastic bag and couldn’t move.
“Squirrel, how did you end up here?” Masha wondered as she slowly approached the frightened squirrel.
“There was a bag with a few nuts left in it. I wanted to get them out, but when I tried to climb out, I got tangled in the ear handle,” the squirrel pointed with her eyes to a part of the bag as her paws were tied. “I tried to get out, but I just kept tangling into the bag until I got stuck like this.”
“Wait, let me help you out,” said Masha, unwrapping the plastic bag.
“Thank you, my friends,” the squirrel cheered when she was free. “Be careful here. Sometimes there are sharp pieces of glass lying around.”
Masha looked at the bear. He was holding his chin, thinking hard and frowning at all the mess around him.
“Some people are worse than pigs,” Masha said. “Garbage doesn’t belong in the forest. Someone might get hurt.”
The bear nodded and ran off. Before Masha could look around, he came back with the carriage. He loaded the sack onto it and continued to pick up the trash. Masha immediately joined in.
In this way, she and the bear went through and cleaned up the whole forest. As they were walking back through the forest, they saw a man with a black sack over his shoulder picking his way along the path. He was about to push it into the tall grass when Masha shouted at him, “The forest is not a garbage can, you scoundrel!”
The man was startled, but quickly recovered. He didn’t want to be scolded by a little girl.
“Mind your own business, kid.”
The man turned to throw the trash away, but a bear emerged from the brambles. He growled darkly and looked very angry.
“I, I, I,” stuttered the man fearfully, “I’ll take it to the dump. I promise. Bear!”
And he ran out of the woods with the bag.
Bear and Masha smiled at each other. Now that’s what you call a job well done… The man would surely tell all the other scoundrels who throw the trash around, so that no one else will ever do this again.
In the evening, when Masha and the bear had all the rubbish sorted in the bins, the bear hammered a sign by the path to the forest, on which he wrote: “Attention! Masha and the bear take care of this forest.”
