Masha and the bear went into the forest to listen to the birds singing beautifully. The bear wanted to teach Masha how to recognize a bird by its song. They sat down on a stone warmed by the sun and listened.
“Cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo,” echoed the sound through the silent forest.
“It’s a cuckoo,” Masha whispered.
The bear nodded his head. Then he raised his finger. Masha was listening. From the edge of the forest, a beautiful melodious bird’s voice reached them, as if someone were playing a flute.
“Is that a nightingale?”
The bear shook his head and wrote “BLACKBIRD” in the dirt with a stick.
“I had no idea it could sing so well.”
But suddenly its singing turned into a warning tick-tick-tick. Before Masha could ask what made the blackbird change its note, another voice was heard. But it certainly didn’t belong to any of the birds.
“Hello, hey, Joe! I found a mushroom!’
The bear lowered its ears to its head. Such a scream in the woods? Wow!
“I only found a puffball, ,” shouted a second voice through the forest.
“Hey, look! There’s a tree growing here!’
“Well, you’re in the forest, you nitwit,” replied the second voice, again shouting through the whole forest.
“Well, yes, but this one is so twisted. It looks like my grandmother.”
A squirrel jumped up to Masha and the bear. She was all startled.
“What’s that noise? It woke me up from my sleep. You don’t shout like that in the forest.”
“They spoiled our listening of the bird sounds. The only thing we can hear is them, and all the birds decided it’d be better to fly away,” complained the squirrel to Masha.
“We have to do something about it.. We can’t just let people come to the forest to shout.” the squirrel was angry.
The bear nodded and the three of them began to think about the ways to punish the two shouting birds. The bear set several mushrooms in the moss in the clearing. There they were waiting for them in hiding. And they didn’t have to wait long.
“Well, what a beauty! Jirka, come hare, as fast as you can!’
“Mushrooms? Are you kidding me?!’
“I’m not kidding, really. Come and see for yourself.”
The two shouting boys met near the mushrooms. But they didn’t have time to collect them. The bear jumped out and put a paw in front of its mouth to signal that they should be quiet. But the men got scared and started screaming. So a squirrel came running and stuffed a cone in everyone’s mouth. It was suddenly quiet!
“You don’t shout in the forest!” Masha reminded the boys.
The boys just rolled their eyes and didn’t understand what was going on.
“You scare the animals one more time and we’ll stuff your mouth with something much uglier than a cone,” the squirrel warned them. “Now go home and tell everyone there’s no shouting in the woods.”
The boys obediently nodded and ran home. They completely forgot about the mushrooms. The next time the boys went into the forest, they tiptoed and you could barely hear them whisper. Masha and the bear could listen to the birds in peace and the squirrel could sleep on its favorite branch. The boys discovered that when they weren’t shouting in the forest, they could hear the birds singing and the trees rustling and it was the most beautiful music they had ever heard.
