The Treacle Tree was so dejected that Doctor Snuggles and his friends felt more than ever that they should help him to fly. They all trooped into the doctor’s old shed which was known as Rickety Rick, to consult the robot, Mathilda Junkbottom. Mathilda usually came up with the answers to their problems. Doctor Snuggles made several adjustments to Mathilda and then stood back to wait.

Instantly her eyes revolved, her bulbs flashed, and little paper cards flew out of her mouth. Painted on every card was a little bird in flight.

"A bird? How can that be the answer to our problem?" enquired Dennis.

Doctor Snuggles and his friends didn’t really know. "Try again, Mathilda," they yelled. Try harder this time!"

"Try harder this time!"

Naturally, they all knew that birds have wings and can fly but that didn’t seem to help the Treacle Tree. However, Mathilda’s second attempt offered no further assistance. She merely spluttered out another shower of paper birds.

Doctor Snuggles absent-mindedly scratched his head and inspected the cards once more. Those little painted birds did not provide the answer to the problem of launching an awkward, big Treacle Tree into flight.

Just then Quiffy, the duck, came walking into the shed. He picked up one of the cards and looked at it.

"That’s easy!" he exclaimed. "If you want to fly you need wings like a bird, and that’s why Mathilda produced cards with birds."

"Yes, but we’ve already made wings for the tree and they didn’t work at all," Dennis replied.

"Wings! Do you call those wooden things wings? You need real feathered ones just like mine," said Quiffy, proudly flapping his wings. "Furthermore, you need a firstclass flying instructor — someone who knows everything about flying — me for instance!"

AT Last they knew what they had to do. The Treacle Tree had every chance of flying if they gave him wings made from real feathers.

When word got around, animals from near and far collected leathers from every imaginable bird and brought them to the shed. Soon there were so many feathers stuffed into Rickety Rick that some of them got up his nose and caused him to give a thunderous sneeze. Whoosh~oo! Clouds of feathers were blown out of the shed, but there were still more than enough left to make a splendid pair of wings for the Treacle Tree.