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0每天五分钟听经典英文故事，读绘本，磨耳朵。一头老驴带着老狗、老猫和公鸡，踏上通往不来梅的音乐之路，却在一间强盗的小屋里找到了真正的家。
The donkey was old
Once, he carried heavy sacks every day, back and forth between the mill and the village road
His back grew more and more bent, his steps slower and slower, and his master, seeing there was little strength left to squeeze out of him, slowly lost all patience
The donkey heard those words
He knew staying would lead to no good
So one day, without waiting for the whip to fall, he lowered his head and quietly walked away down the road
He was heading to Bremen
There were streets there, and crowds, and maybe someone would be willing to listen to an old donkey sing
Since he could no longer carry things, he thought, he might as well become a musician
Halfway there, he saw a hound lying by the road, panting heavily, as if even standing up was a struggle
The donkey asked him why he looked so downcast
The hound said he was old, could no longer run, and could not catch prey anymore
His master thought keeping him was useless and wanted to beat him to death
He had no choice but to run away, but after escaping, he had no idea where else to go
After hearing this, the donkey said, then come with me
I am going to Bremen to be a musician, and you can beat the drum or sing the bass
We can always earn a meal with our voices
The hound lifted his head and looked at this equally old and weary donkey
With nowhere better to go, he followed him down the road
The two old fellows continued on their way
Not long after, they saw a cat sitting by the road, his face long and drawn, as if he had just stepped out of the rain
The cat said his teeth were loose, he was no good at catching mice anymore, and all he wanted was to doze by the stove
But his mistress thought he was useless and wanted to throw him into the water to drown
He had escaped, but he did not know how to survive
The donkey said, then come with us
You know the songs of the night, your voice is sharp and bright, in Bremen, that might just come in handy
The cat thought for a moment, stood up, shook the dust from his coat, and joined the band
Later, they passed a farmyard and saw a rooster standing at the gate, crowing at the top of his lungs
That sound was not like a morning call, it was more like saying goodbye to someone
The donkey asked him why he was crowing so sadly
The rooster said guests were coming tomorrow, and the mistress had already said she would turn him into soup
Today he could still stand at the gate and crow, but tomorrow there would be nothing left but a pot of steam
The donkey said, then you come with us too
Your voice is so bright, it would be a shame to leave it in a pot
Let us go to Bremen together, and form a band
And so the donkey, the hound, the cat, and the rooster, four creatures cast out by their old lives, walked on together down the road
But Bremen was farther than they had thought
The sky slowly darkened, the trees along the road turned black one by one, and the wind passed through the woods like someone whispering
Too tired to go on, they had to find a place in the forest to spend the night
The rooster flew up into a tree and looked into the distance
Suddenly he called out, saying there was a light over there
They walked toward the light and saw a house deep in the forest
Through the window glowed firelight, a table was spread with food, and inside sat a band of robbers, eating, drinking, and laughing
The four animals stood outside, cold and hungry
They had no knives and no guns, only their voices and a handful of old bones
The donkey thought for a moment and told everyone to stack up
The donkey stood at the bottom, the hound jumped onto his back, the cat climbed onto the hound's back, and the rooster flew to the very top
As they drew near the window, all four voices burst out at once
The donkey brayed, the hound barked wildly, the cat screeched, and the rooster crowed at full volume
The next moment, they crashed through the window together and charged into the house
The robbers could not make out what it was at all, they only saw dark shapes rushing in, glass shattering everywhere, and the room filling with terrible shrieks
Scared out of their wits, they dropped their food and fled into the forest
The house fell quiet all at once
The four animals stood by the table, breathing in the smell of hot food, and not one of them said a word
It had been a long time since any of them had seen a meal this solid and real
The donkey ate the hay, the hound gnawed the bones, the cat licked the plates, and the rooster pecked at the breadcrumbs
After they had eaten their fill, they found places to sleep
The donkey lay down on the straw pile in the yard, the hound slept behind the door, the cat curled up by the stove, and the rooster flew up onto the roof beam
The firelight faded little by little, the night of the forest wrapped around the little house, and for the first time, the house belonged not to robbers, but to four old animals who had run away
In the middle of the night, the robbers saw from afar that the house had gone quiet, so they sent one man back to investigate
The man crept into the dark house, saw two glowing points by the stove, thought they were embers, and reached out to light a candle
But those were the cat's eyes
The cat was startled awake, pounced at him fiercely, and scratched his face
The robber turned and ran, but just as he reached the door, the hound bit him hard on the leg
He dashed into the yard, and the donkey raised his hind legs and kicked him flying
The rooster on the roof beam was woken too and let out a piercing crow
The robber tumbled all the way back to the forest and, trembling all over, told his companions, inside the house was a terrible witch who had clawed his face, by the door was a man with a knife who had stabbed his leg, in the yard was a black monster who had beaten him with a club, and on the roof was a judge who kept shouting to bring him forward
After hearing this, the robbers never dared go near that house again
When morning came, the forest was still the same forest, and the road still led to Bremen
But the four animals were in no hurry to keep going
They looked at the table, at the fire in the stove, at the straw pile by the door and the spot on the roof beam, and suddenly understood, this place was already good enough
They had set out to become musicians in Bremen
In the end, they never reached Bremen
They simply moved into a little house left behind by robbers
The donkey could walk slowly, the hound could guard the door, the cat could sleep by the warm stove, and the rooster stood on the rooftop every day to wake the morning
The forest was vast, and the night would still fall dark
But from that day on, the four old creatures who had been driven from their homes were never driven away again
