Arthur was a brown bear, and he lived somewhere nearby Juneau in Alaska, and after a long day by the river searching for fish, along with a little bit of climbing trees trying to find some bees, he was ready to go to bed.
So, he looked around the forest, eventually finding a nice meadow covered in small flowers and grass, it was the perfect place for a bear to sleep.
Arthur put his arms up, and yawned, and right as he was about to lay down on the ground he heard a little voice-
“Excuse me!”
Arthur stopped, confused, “Hello?”
“Yeah” said the little voice, “I’m right here.”
Arthur looked down and noticed a tiny mouse, he was confused “Yeah?”
The mouse stood as tall as he could, despite being rather short- “You can’t sleep on a flower unless you’re a field mouse.”
“Says who?” asked Arthur.
“Me! Says me! I sleep in these flowers, and you’re far too big to sleep in them, so if you even try you’re going to crush them!” The little mouse seemed angry, “It’s as if I started crushing your den!”
“But you couldn’t crush my den, you’re a mouse.”
This pissed off the mouse even more, “it’s a metaphor! Put yourself in my shoes!” The mouse paused, realizing that maybe the bear didn’t quite know what a metaphor was. “I’m sorry,” he said, “my name is Bernard.”
Arthur and Bernard talked for a long while, Bernard telling Arthur all about metaphors, amongst other things that Arthur had never heard of, like the names of certain constellations or whatever the most comfortable flower to sleep on was. They talked for a very, very long time, and the two of them eventually became very, very tired.
Arthur eventually asked, “Well if I can’t sleep on a flower, Bernard, where can I sleep?”
Bernard thought for a moment, “don’t you have a cave or den? Is that not where bears sleep?”
“No,” said Arthur, “that’s not where we sleep, we normally do sleep on flowers.”
“Oh,” said Bernard, “well could you try to sleep next to the flowers?”
Arthur looked around, there were plenty of places in the meadow where he could fit comfortably, without disturbing any sleeping mice.
“I suppose I could,” Arthur smiled, as he laid down on the floor, Bernard climbed into a nearby flower and the two of them slowly dozed off to sleep. Bernard was safe in his flower, and Arthur comfortably snored, knowing he wasn’t disturbing any mice or their flowers.