Читать книгу Tad Coon's Great Adventure - John Breck - Страница 3

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Tad Coon was lost! And Doctor Muskrat and Nibble felt pretty discouraged over their chances of ever seeing him again. All the same they meant to try. They sent word of a meeting to the Woodsfolk by everyone they met. When they reached the pond, Stripes Skunk was sitting out on Doctor Muskrat’s flat stone, waiting for him.

“I’m leaving,” said he. “But I have to thank you for all you’ve done for me. Perhaps I’ll come back some time.” He seemed very sorry over it. His tail was droopy.

“You can’t go!” exclaimed the doctor. “You belong here in the Woods and Fields ever since you killed the crook-tailed snake for us. Now we’re counting on you to help us hunt for Tad.”

“But I must go,” said Stripes. “My mate wouldn’t leave the Deep Woods. She knew it was a dangerous place to live and she sent me hunting about to find a better one. Then she refused to come. I couldn’t think why she wouldn’t. But Chewee the Chickadee just came flying in with the news that the weasel has killed her. And she’s left three little kittens behind. I’ve got to do their hunting for them.”

“I see,” nodded the doctor. “But you send Chewee back here to-morrow at sunset. I’ll have a message for you.” He didn’t say a word about the meeting. So off went Stripes, with his ears drooped low and his tail most sorrowfully dragging.

When the Woodsfolk gathered by his pond the next afternoon Doctor Muskrat laid Tad Coon’s case before them. “We know what has happened to Tad Coon,” he said. “He chased some mice into a corn-crib and a man shut the door on him. What man, what corn-crib we do not know. One mouse escaped to tell the tale but the little owls ate him. If Tad is still alive the Woodsfolk must do their very best to find him.”

“We will, we will!” they squealed and yapped and chirped and whistled in all their different tongues. Even the little bats woke up inside their hollow tree and squeaked out that they, too, would keep an eye open for him.

“Another thing,” went on Doctor Muskrat. “Tad Coon is gone. Now Stripes Skunk has had to go into the Deep Woods to look after his kittens. The fieldmice are foolish but they are many and full of notions. We have only the hawks and owls to fight them. First thing we know the minks will be creeping in, unless Stripes brings his family to live with us.”

“Hooray! Hooray! for Stripes and his family! Bring ’em along!” shouted the Woodsfolk and that’s just the very message he wanted to send.

But just as the shouting was beginning to die down Chewee the Chickadee broke out in his shrill little voice: “And Nibble Rabbit’s mate said I was to tell him his bunnies were out of the ground and ready to travel.”

“Nibble Rabbit! Nibble Rabbit!” they hooted. “Oh, you sly one!” And Nibble dragged his ear down and licked it so he could hide his shyness behind it. There was more shouting and laughing than ever. But Doctor Muskrat was fairly flabbergasted. “Nibble!” he gasped. “You never told me!”

He was hurt because Nibble Rabbit had gone off and found himself a mate and raised a family without saying a word to him. He sat on his stone and almost sulked about it.

“But, Doctor Muskrat,” pleaded Nibble, “please let me explain----”

“What is there to explain?” retorted the doctor, “except that you never even told me.”

“There’s this much,” Nibble answered with a funny smile, “I didn’t know about them myself until just now.”

“What do you mean-‘didn’t know’?” snorted the old muskrat. “Is this some joke of Chewee’s? I don’t understand.”

“No,” said Nibble, and he looked very happy about it. “They’re mine all right enough, but this is the first I’ve heard from them.” Then he went on to tell about how it happened.

“You told me about scents. Of course I went off to find how everyone used them. My, it was fun! I could tell how folks lived, and what they ate, and when they were home, and where they went and who they saw while they were away. And I found that nearly everyone was making love to someone. I just couldn’t understand it.

“I couldn’t until I found a rabbit trail back in the Deep Woods. It was a lady rabbit’s trail. Of course I let her know I’d called before I came away. But next day I went back there. And I could see her bright eyes shining underneath the Pickery Things she hid in. By and by she came hopping out. Oh, Doctor Muskrat, she was the loveliest rabbit you’ve ever seen. She was just full of tricks and games and frolics. And run? she was swift as a fish, darting across your pond.

“She liked me, too. She didn’t even think I looked funny when I danced under the last full moon, even if the mice say I do. I kept telling her how nice it was here and she kept promising to come and meet you. Wouldn’t you have been s’prised?”

“No, I can’t really say I would,” chuckled the old muskrat.

That did surprise Nibble. “Then,” he went on, “she disappeared. Of course I thought Slyfoot the Mink had caught her. Why do you s’pose she hid away like that?”

“Ask her,” laughed Doctor Muskrat. “Run along, Bunny. Run along and ask her that yourself. They all do it.”

Everyone in the Woods and Fields insists that Chewee the Chickadee can’t keep his wings still or his tongue silent for a minute at a time. But they’re wrong. He sat perfectly quiet all the time Nibble Rabbit was telling Doctor Muskrat about his mate back in the Deep Woods. He had promised to let his mate know when Nibble was coming. He didn’t even let himself laugh when Nibble wanted to know why she had hidden away from him. That is, he didn’t until he saw Nibble hopping around the end of Doctor Muskrat’s pond to the place where Nibble jumps across the brook. Then Chewee took to his stubby wings and maybe you think he didn’t chuckle about it. He got the giggles so hard that he had to perch and hang on tight until he got over them.

Lippity, lippity, lippity, went Nibble’s furry feet--my, but he was in a hurry to find his mate and his baby bunnies! Thump, thump, he went outside the Pickery Things she used to hide in while she waited for him. And out she came, with five of the cunningest, fattest, softest little balls of brown fur you ever saw. And they all twiddled their little tufty, cottony tails and pricked up their soft ears and opened their bright eyes wide at Nibble. But they wouldn’t let him come near them.

They all twiddled their little tufty, cottony tails.

That was because they thought he was angry. He thought he was, too. He said: “Why did you treat me like this, running away and hiding from me, and never even letting me know we had a family? You hurt my feelings dreadfully, Silk-ears.”

“Why, we always do it,” she protested. “Every mother rabbit makes her nest in some place where it’s hidden even from the father rabbit.”

“But you didn’t need to,” said Nibble. “We’re different. You didn’t think I’d hurt them, did you? Birds don’t do that. I’d have helped you take care of them.”

“That’s what father rabbits always say,” laughed Silk-ears, for that was the mother rabbit’s name.

“How many families have you raised, anyway?” Nibble wanted to know.

“This is the first,” smiled Silk-ears. “Aren’t they lovely bunnies for the first ones? But I’ve had a wise old mother rabbit, who’s raised ever and ever so many, to show me how. That was one reason I stayed here. And the other reason is that you couldn’t have helped me. We’re not like the birds. I don’t need your help to feed them and you leave a trail that’s ever so much plainer than mine. You’d have insisted on coming to see them and then Slyfoot the Mink would have followed you and found them. That’s why we mother rabbits always hide them away, even from you, until they’re big enough to run.”

Then wasn’t Nibble sorry he’d been cross! “I might have known you had a good reason,” he said. “You’re so clever.” He said it just as though she’d thought of it all by herself. And the minute those bunny babies heard he wasn’t angry any more they began to come closer and closer. One of them patted his white tail that was so much bigger than its own little puffy wisp, and another cuddled right up to him.