Previous letters pages can be found here.

Letters page from Volume 4, issue 14.
August 1st – 14th, 1956.

OUR

LETTER PAGE

A letter from Janine Pike, Falmouth, Cornwall.
Dear Enid Blyton,
During my stay in Northern Rhodesia I often went out crocodile hunting with Daddy on Lake Bangweulu, which was near our house. It is a big lake, sixteen miles long. One day I went out on our home-made raft. I must have gone about 30 yards when I suddenly saw the nose of a crocodile approaching me. I knew its trick, it would swing its tail on to the raft and sweep me off. What a horrible thought! When the crocodile was about five yards away, I heard the hum of an engine. It was a boat, and as it came nearer it made such a loud noise that it frightened the crocodile away and I was saved. Some crocodiles measure up to 20 feet long. The natives cut off the tail, hang it up, and make it into soup when it is completely bad. I don’t think I would like to taste it!
Love from
Janine Pike.

(It isn’t often we have a letter about crocodiles, Janine! Yours is so well written and exciting that I have awarded you my letter prize this week.)

A letter from Anne Hardy, Edinburgh 12.
Dear Enid Blyton,
We have two nests in our garage. One day my little sister found two baby birds on the ground near the nests, and we think that a mother cuckoo may have laid her egg in one nest, and when the baby grew big it pushed out the tiny birds. We picked them up, and put them into a box on our wall. Their mother and father came back and fed them—and now they are almost ready to fly !
Yours faithfully,
Anne Hardy (Busy Bee).

(I must say you are a good Busy Bee, Anne! Thank you for a most interesting letter.)

A letter from Anne Taylor, Jersey, C.I.
Dear Enid Blyton,
I have something very amusing to tell you. I am a Busy Bee and am always collecting silver paper, for which I keep a large box in my room. Last week our black cat had twins. One is a sweet black one and the other a tortoiseshell one – and where do you think she had them? In my box of silver paper! From your Busy Bee,
Anne Taylor.

(A very amusing little story, Anne-and what a wonderful surprise for you!)

Definitely an interesting and unusual letter in first place this week! Most animal letters are about household pets or garden birds – not crocodiles! I wonder if Janine ever went out alone on a raft again after that?

Thanks to a commenter explaining on a previous letters page I now know that Edinburgh 12 will refer to what is now EH12, postcodes in the Corstorphine/Gyle/Sighthill areas. Anyway – a nice letter from Anne Hardy. Although the mother cuckoo is clearly in the wrong here, I can’t help but feel bad for the unhatched cuckoo egg!

No fund-raising letters this week, though I assume Anne Taylor’s silver paper was part of a fund-raising campaign.