WHY LOUIE THOMSON WHISTLED
All night long Tad Coon kept still in his cage down in the dark,
smelly cellar. He wasn’t waiting for a mouse to come and nibble his
bread--they’d learned it wasn’t safe to do that. He was trying not to
wake Nibble Rabbit’s poor little bunny.
All night he watched those mice scuttling about the floor with his
mouth just watering. He was so dreadfully hungry. He didn’t have
enough to eat, and it didn’t agree with him, and the damp air made his
bones ache. It was worse yet when a rat came snooping in and caught
one of the mice. He ate part of it and then left it lying right under
Tad Coon’s hungry whiskers. But it was worst of all when that rat
began to gnaw the bunny’s box. Tad shook his bars and chattered at
him. “Go away! Go away, you brute, or I’ll trim your ugly whiskers!”
“Yah!” sneered the rat. “A lot you’ll do. You’ll die pretty soon. And
when they throw you out on the rubbish-pile I’ll be the one who eats
you!” Then he peered at the bunny. “I won’t bother to gnaw in and get
her,” said he. “They’ll throw her out in the morning. She’s dead
already!”
My, but Tad was sorry! But the rat was mistaken. The bunny wasn’t
dead. She was just stretched out because she felt too weak to sit up
any more. And Tad had waked up Louie Thomson with his snarling and
shaking.
The little boy looked in at Tad. Tad glared back and growled at him.
He gnashed his teeth when Louie tried the door to be sure it was
locked. “You’re a horrid, hateful thing!” Louie snapped crossly. But
he didn’t feel that way about the little rabbit.
He picked her out of the box, and she tried to curl up in his hand
again, for it was the warmest thing she’d felt since she left her
Mammy Silk-ears. That was too much for Louie. She was still trusting
him; he felt a choke in his throat. “Don’t die, Bunny,” he almost
sobbed. “Please don’t die. I didn’t know you were too little to leave
your mother. If I take you home maybe she’ll find you.”
So he covered her up all warm and snug in his hands and began to run.
He ran away down to the end of Doctor Muskrat’s pond, where it goes
under the woods-bridge. He didn’t put her down in the road where he
found her--even a boy knew that was no place for bunnies. He took her
across the fence and laid her down where she could hide under the edge
of the very same stone that belonged to the hop-toad. Then he went
back to the fence to watch.
When she found herself all alone the poor baby began to call again in
her weak voice: “Mammy, mammy!” Of course, the hop-toad heard. Out he
came scrambling; he took just one look at Nibble Rabbit’s bad baby and
then off he went in the biggest kind of a hop-toad hurry after Nibble.
Did you ever see a hop-toad in a hurry? He doesn’t hurry very often
and he doesn’t hurry very fast, but he makes an awful fuss about it.
He gulps a great big breath and then he shuts his mouth tight, tight,
and flops along as hard as ever he can. Because when he’s used up that
mouthful of breath he’ll have to stop and gulp another. That was the
way the hop-toad hurried when he went to find Nibble.
But he didn’t have to hop so very far, because Bob White Quail was
scratching about in his thicket. The hop-toad took two big gulps and
then he had breath enough to gasp: “Fly quick! Tell Nibble Rabbit I’ve
found his lost bunny.” And Bob White didn’t stop to ask any questions;
he flew!
It seemed a long time to the poor, cold, hungry little bunny; she lay
there under the edge of the hop-toad’s stone, calling her mammy, for
she didn’t know where the hop-toad had gone. But I can tell you it
seemed a lot longer to Louie Thomson. He was sitting on the fence
feeling very sorry that he’d picked up that cunning little rabbit, and
taken it home with him. And she wasn’t wishing her mother would come
any harder than he was.
Then--ka-flick-it, ka-flick-it, ka-flick-it, came furry footsteps.
Silk-ears came leaping over the tops of the grasses faster than Nibble
ever ran, even when Glider the Blacksnake was after him. Faster than
Bob White Quail can fly she came; as fast as a fish darting across
Doctor Muskrat’s pond. And four other little bunnies came swishing
through the grasses behind her. They couldn’t begin to follow her
tail; they had to follow Nibble’s.
In just about two licks of a tongue Silk-ears had that lost bunny
cuddled down beside her and was feeding her. My, how that hungry baby
did eat! She ate and ate with her little eyes shut, too busy to pay
any attention to her brothers and sisters, or to Nibble, or even to
that very nice hop-toad. Her little sides grew fatter and fatter. By
and by she felt so fat she had to roll over on her side, and the first
thing anybody knew she was asleep. Right there in the sun--no place in
the world for a sleepy bunny--but there she dozed. And nothing
troubled her, not even a buzzy fly--because the hop-toad soon gulped
him in. Tommy Peele’s Woods and Fields were all quiet and peaceful.
Even Louie Thomson tried not to wriggle for fear of disturbing them.
But the top rail of that fence wasn’t any too comfortable, and the
flies buzzed about his ears, because he hadn’t any hop-toad to gulp
them, and at last a mosquito stabbed its stinger into his cheek. Slap!
You ought to have seen those rabbits scuttle home--and the little lost
bunny ran just about as fast as the rest. So Louie didn’t care. He put
his hands into his pockets and went off home, whistling as gayly as a
fiery-coloured oriole.
He whistled so loud that all the birds stopped to listen. He didn’t
know just why he felt like whistling. He got to thinking about that
coon he caught in his corn-crib. He’d had it in a cage for ever and
ever so long, and it was crosser than ever. But he didn’t stop
whistling. He went right down into his cellar, leaving the cellar door
wide open behind him. Then he opened the door of the cage where he had
Tad Coon. “Git along, you bitey old thing,” he said. “I don’t want any
pets. They’re too much trouble.”
Tad Coon sat back in a corner, snarling. He didn’t believe Louie meant
to be kind to anything. He just guessed that the minute he poked his
nose out Louie’d hit him with something. Then he’d be thrown out on
the rubbish-pile with Nibble Rabbit’s baby bunny, and the rats would
eat him. He thought of course Louie had killed it because all the
Woodsfolk knew he always killed things.
Sure enough, Louie picked up a stick and poked him in the ribs. “Hey,
you!” he shouted crossly, “git out o’ there! Git a wiggle on!”
Tad grabbed that stick with his teeth and his handy-paws and snatched
it right out of Louie’s hands. Then maybe he didn’t run! Bounce! He
hit the cellar floor! He hit the cellar steps just twice--blam! blam!
Louie came out and watched him gallop across the garden. When he
disappeared into the cornfield he was still running. Pretty soon Louie
saw him sneak under the fence into Tommy Peele’s potato patch. “Huh!”
he grunted disgustedly, “Tommy can have his cranky old coon if he
wants him.” He was just pretending he didn’t want Tad; he did, all the
same. He felt so sorry he stopped whistling.
He just wanted him so much that he climbed up on the fence to see the
last of him. And what do you s’pose Tad Coon was doing? He was lying
on his back in the nice warm earth, wriggling and squirming. My, how
good that felt! When he jumped up again he was actually smiling. He
scrubbed his face and ears all neat and clean, and he fluffed out his
tail, and he didn’t look a bit like the snarly beast who’d been living
with Louie Thomson. He looked like the smarty one who had been playing
with Tommy Peele’s watch and chain the day Tommy and Tad Coon and
Stripes Skunk and Nibble Rabbit and Doctor Muskrat all went fishing.
And when Louie Thomson saw how happy he was, why, he just began
whistling all over again louder than ever! But still he didn’t know
why.