The Vanishing Puddle

Pip and Dot were playing after breakfast when they found a shiny puddle on the garden path. It was shaped like a funny shoe. When they leaned over it, the puddle showed a wiggly picture of their noses.

“Hello, puddle,” said Pip.

“It needs a name,” said Dot. “Puddlesaurus!”

They drew a chalk circle around Puddlesaurus. Then the snack bell rang, and they ran inside.

When they came back, the chalk circle was there. The puddle was not.

“Puddlesaurus has vanished!” gasped Dot.

“Then we are Fact Detectives,” said Pip. He put on an invisible hat. Dot put on another. Their dog, Noodle, wagged and put his nose near the empty circle.

“Clues first,” said Dot. She crouched low. “I see no cup and no bucket. No one slurped it.”

Pip touched the ground. “The path is warm. Warm like toast.” He waved his hand. “I feel a little wind.”

Noodle sniffed the chalk, yawned, and flopped under the bench. His water bowl was still full.

“Not Noodle,” Dot said. She peered at the fence. “No hose drip. No pipe leak.” She peered closer at the circle. Inside the chalk ring, the ground looked a little darker than the path around it.

Pip tapped his chin. “If it did not splash away, and it did not get slurped… where did it go?”

Dot’s eyes sparked. “Facts! We need facts. Let’s do a test.”

They carried two small plates to the path. Pip poured one spoon of water on each plate. Dot drew a chalk circle around each wet spot.

“This plate sits in the sun,” said Dot. “This one rests in the shade.”

“Good plan,” said Pip. “We watch. We wait. Detectives count.” They counted slow hops. “One hop, two hops, three hops…” A soft breeze brushed their cheeks. A shirt on the clothesline flapped and wrinkled less and less as it dried.

Dot leaned over the sun plate. “Look! The wet part is smaller than the chalk circle.”

Pip leaned over the shade plate. “This wet part is still big.”

They waited five more hops. The wet spot on the sun plate faded to nothing. The chalk ring sat around dry plate, like a necklace with no stone.

“The water is gone,” said Pip. He wiggled his fingers in the air. “But not lost.”

Dot grinned. “It went up! When water gets warm, it breaks into teeny, tiny bits too small to see. They float and mix with the air. That is called evaporation.” She said the long word slowly, like a secret password.

Pip breathed on the metal watering can. Foggy dots appeared, then faded. “Water can hide and un-hide,” he said.

Dot wrote in their Fact Notebook: Case: Vanishing Puddle. Clue 1: Warm path. Clue 2: Little wind. Clue 3: Sun plate dried fast. Fact: Evaporation moves water into the air.

Pip tapped the empty chalk circle on the path. “So Puddlesaurus warmed in the sun. The breeze helped. It turned into tiny bits and floated away.”

“Maybe those bits will join a cloud sometime,” Dot said, looking at the puffy cotton shapes above the trees. “Then one day, they’ll fall again as raindrops. Hello again, Puddlesaurus.”

Noodle stood up and stepped into the shade plate with a plop. His paw made a perfect wet print. Pip and Dot laughed.

“Another clue!” said Pip. “Wet makes marks.” He pressed his hand on the stone, then lifted it. A handprint appeared for a moment, then faded as the warm air licked it dry.

Dot put a tiny puddle on the path with the watering can. “We’ll watch you,” she whispered. “We know your secret.” The little puddle shimmered like silver. Slowly, slowly, it thinned and disappeared.

Pip drew a big stamp in their notebook: SOLVED.

“Let’s find our next mystery,” said Dot. She pointed to their shadows stretching beside them. “Why do those move?”

Pip smiled. “New case soon. For now—Detectives dance!”

They danced inside the chalk circles while Noodle chased a butterfly. The warm wind tugged at their shirts. The path was dry. Their heads were full of clues, and their pockets held chalk.