Welcome to Story Quest, a weekly podcast where we bring your stories to life!

In this episode we bring Petra’s story – The Carrot Thieves – to life.

If you have a story idea, you could be like Petra and have it turned into a Story Quest. All you have to do is send us your story idea here. We know you have the best imaginations and together we can create the most brilliant stories!

That’s just what Petra did. You can watch the story she suggested come to life below, plus she tells us all about the inspiration behind the story at the end.

Listen out for brand new Story Quest episodes every Thursday!

Stories for kids and families from Fun Kids – the UK’s children’s radio station. Perfect for all ages – listen in the car, when chilling at home and before bedtimes.

Get Story Quest in Your Podcast App

Story Quest - Stories for Kids

Stories for kids and families, perfect for all ages! New episodes every week.

MOBILE: Story Quest - Stories for Kids

Stories for kids and families, perfect for all ages! New episodes every week.

Read along to The Carrot Thieves!

You can read along to the story while you listen. Just follow the text below. Don’t worry if you find a word tricky – you can pause the video whenever to give yourself more time.

Tia and Marc lived at number 34 Wisteria Way, and they were lucky because their mum fostered dogs – sometimes just for a little if their owners were poorly – sometimes for longer until they could be found a forever home. Some of the dogs were big, and some were tiny – some were old, and best of all – some were puppies!

And as our story starts the children were really excited because a dog had been placed with them – with three of her puppies! She seemed to be a stray but was very gentle and mum said she was a retriever – the pups were small and silky with golden fur and they all soon settled in.

The puppies had to stay in the house until they had had their injections and were a little bigger and when they were let out into the garden – they barked and scampered happily, sniffing every leaf and twig.

Someone was NOT happy about this, however. Or rather some RABBIT. The Rabbit had lived peacefully in the garden for a long time and considered it to be HIS garden. Having noisy smelly dogs running around was annoying to say the least, and made him feel rather twitchy, after all dogs and rabbits don’t usually get along.

I forgot to tell you the puppies names didn’t I? They were Freddie, Flora and Fifi. Fred was the first to see the rabbit and cautiously came closer.

“Hello Rabbit! I’m Fred!” he said.

The Rabbit bounded away in fright, Freddie was a bit upset, after all he’d been as polite as he could be. Fifi came to see what was going on, followed by Flora but the bunny stayed resolutely in his burrow.

“Come out and play! We only want to be friends” they said but all the rabbit could hear was a load of noisy barks.

The puppies scampered off and Rabbit sulked and sulked and SULKED until he thought he might have come up with a way to get the puppies to go away.

He poked his nose out of the burrow and cleared his throat. “Ahem! Puppies! Sorry I didn’t see you there! Welcome to the garden! Now which of you is Top Dog?”

The puppies ran over but then looked at each other – “What’s Top Dog?”

Rabbit’s eyes widened – “You don’t know? It’s only the most important Dog in the House. So which of you is it?”

“I’m top!” barked Freddie.

“No I’M TOP dog!” said Flora

“Of course it’s me!” interrupted Fifi and there was general disagreement and more noise and fuss. Rabbit covered his ears.

“Well of course there’s only one way to find out for sure”.

The puppies stopped their yacking and looked at him expectantly.

The Rabbit looked thoughtful and then a sly smile spread over his rabbity little face.

“So you’re retrievers right?”

The puppies nodded. They knew this was right although they weren’t 100% sure what that meant.

“Well what do retrievers do?”

There was a puzzled silence. Freddie scratched his ear with his back leg.

“They RETRIEVE things! So Top Dog will be the dog who retrieves the most things.”

“But what things?” Asked Fifi. She could only think of toys and slippers and the other things in the house.

“CARROTS! It’s all about carrots!”

“Excuse me?” Said Flora. “I might not be a very big dog but I never heard of dogs retrieving CARROTS.”

“Well you live and learn. Whoever retrieves the most carrots gets to be top dog. So off you go!”

Of course this was not true, it was in fact absolute rubbish. The Rabbit simply wanted a bit of peace and quiet and he also quite fancied having a big pile of carrots but the puppies weren’t to know. They found a tiny hole in the fence and when the owners weren’t looking scampered out on a quest for carrots – the race to be Top Dog was ON!

Freddie got lucky straight away – he’d wandered into an allotment and what should be the crop growing in the tidy bed – Carrots! The gardener had gone to fill up his watering can – there wasn’t a moment to loose – quick as a flash Freddie picked as many juicy carrots as he could – pulling them from the earth and holding them in his mouth. The gardener caught sight and began to run to wards Freddie – shouting and shaking his fist but Freddie was too quick!

Flora too had some luck – a man was carrying two heavy bags of shopping and she could see the tufted tops of carrots in the bag. She dashed towards his feet yapping and he yelled in surprise and yes you’ve guessed it the shopping bags fell to the ground spilling the contents – including the precious carrots. Flora grabbed them and ran as fast as she could back to the Garden.

It took Fifi a bit longer but she ended up coming up with a very clever scheme. There was a greengrocers shop on the high street and she managed to sneak round to the back where the vegetables which were lumpy and bumpy were stacked in boxes to be turned into compost. There were dozens of them and so she carefully sneaked a few at a time making sure she wasn’t seen.

Then before anyone had noticed they had gone, quick as a flash they were back in the garden as if nothing had happened. Well, nothing except for a modest pile of carrots on the lawn.

As you can imagine Tia, Marc and Mum were VERY puzzled about this They were even more surprised to find more carrots the following day, and by the end of the week there was an enormous PILE of carrots. The pups had been busy, and turned out to be very good at collecting carrots. Rabbit relaxed in delight – taking the choicest specimens to chomp in peace in his burrow and enjoying the peace as the pups went off on another carrot hunt.

The plan wasn’t to last – The pups mum who’s name was Flower came ambling out to stretch her legs one morning and caught Freddie in the act – coming through the hole in the fence with a very big carrot that he’d sneaked from the Church harvest festival display.

“What on EARTH are you doing?” said Flower and the pup looked a bit guilty but explained that they were only trying to be Top Dog. And when Flora and Fifi returned with more guilty carrots they explained what the Rabbit had said. They were worried that they had landed themselves in a LOT of trouble.

Flower looked serious and then laughed and laughed and laughed. “You’ve been tricked! Retrievers don’t retrieve CARROTS – well not normally and there’s no such thing as top dog. You’re all top dogs to me!”

The puppies wagged their tails and were relieved – they decided it might be best to keep out of Rabbit’s way in future in case he played any more tricks and this arrangement suited Rabbit perfectly too – as I’ve said dogs and rabbits don’t really get along. Rabbit did make sure he’d retrieved a few of the carrots for himself however before Tia and Marcs mum collected the strange pile of carrots and took them into the house.

“Even if we never solve the mystery of where the carrots came from we can take these to the food bank so they won’t be wasted” said Mum.

And in time the pups grew into bigger dogs and you’ll be pleased to hear they all found loving new homes and enjoyed playing and walking and yes, retrieving things. Things like balls and toys – but never carrots – they’d had enough carrots to last them a lifetime! And that’s the story of the Carrot Thieves.