Cedric the Walnut Squirrel father ran a hot dog stand. The children liked the hot dog stand very much. When the children were playing or walking home from school, they would suddenly notice the delicious smell of hot dogs. Their tummies would rumble and they would run to the stand and ask Cedric for a hot dog.

The stand was always surrounded by happy children chatting as they enjoyed their delicious freshly cooked hot dogs. Cedric was the best inventor in the village and he loved to come up with new ideas. He was always trying to think of a way to make his stand even better than before. He tried asking the children for help, but the only answers he got were
“Why don’t you put a picture of yourself on the wall?” and
“Make chocolate hot dogs!”
Nobody could think of a good idea.

Then one day, when Freya the Chocolate Rabbit girl was eating a hot dog at the stand, she had a thought.
“We’re all going to the Sea Breeze Cape next week”, she said.
“I wish we could eat hot dogs at the beach, but we can’t take them all the way to the Sea Breeze Cape because they’d go cold.”
When Cedric heard that, he had a brainwave.
“That’s it!” he said.
“That’s how I can make my hot dog stand better!”

The next day, the hot dog stand was closed. It was closed the day after, too, and the day after that. The children were disappointed that they couldn’t have hot dogs.
“Why has the hot dog stand been closed so long?”
Freya asked her father and Eleanor the Hedgehog mother, who was the village baker. But they just smiled and said
“I wonder.”

The next week, the children went to the Sea Breeze Cape as they had planned. They played in the sea for a long time, and worked up quite an appetite.
“I’m hungry”, they said.
Just then, they smelled something they loved.
“Could it be...” said Freya .
“It is!” cried Piers the Bear boy .
“It’s hot dogs!”
The children followed their noses and came to a beautiful, colourful van by the sand dunes.

The van had a big sign on the roof saying
“HOT DOGS”.
The children couldn’t believe their eyes. They walked up to the van and heard a familiar voice.
“Hello! Would you like a hot dog?” said Cedric, smiling happily at them from behind the counter.

“I changed my stand to a van”, he explained.
“Now you can have hot dogs at the Sea Breeze Cape too. I can sell my hot dogs anywhere at all!”
The children were very happy to hear this and gobbled up their hot dogs with delight.
“Hot dogs taste even better when we can eat them by the sea”,
said Freya happily.

Cedric was happy too. His hot dog van had made all the children smile!

THE END