Why the Pukeko is Blue - by Oliver

One day Pukeko was admiring the bright blue sky thinking about how nice it would be to be blue and not orange, when the ground started to rumble and split in two.  Then smoke drifted out of the hole.  A few seconds later a rocket emerged from the hole in the earth and a door opened slowly.  An alien stepped out and said, “are ya’ coming or what?”  Pukeko spluttered back, “where are you taking me?”  “Ah, well, to outer space,’ he said finally.  “So why do I need to come?”  “To turn blue,” said the alien.

So the Pukeko stumbled into the rocket.  The alien fumbled around with some buttons and “three, two, one… lift off!” boomed a deep voice.  Whoof went the engines, roar went the boosters and zing, they were off!  They zipped past comets, shooting stars and planets.  The pukeko hadn’t noticed what the alien was doing behind his back.  When he turned around, “wow,” he exclaimed for he had a jetpack on his back.  “Stand over there,” said the alien, so he did… then the floor fell open and pukeko dropped into orbit.  Pukeko circled around for a few hours then he started to change blue.  “Wow,” shouted pukeko.  If he got too close to the sun he went red.  He went red on the beak, legs and feet.  Then pukeko hit the sun with his tail and blasted back to Earth.  When he broke through Earth’s atmosphere, his tail cooled off then went out.  Falling, falling the world was spinning and finally he landed with a thud.  Everything stopped spinning.  When he looked at his tail it was burnt white and that’s how pukeko turned blue.