HOOTY THE OWL CHANGES HIS HUNTING GROUNDS
A full stomach makes a pleasant Day;
An empty stomach turns the whole world gray.
Peter Rabbit.
Hooty the owl sat on the tip-top of a tall dead tree in the Green Forest
while the Black Shadows crept swiftly among the trees. He was talking to
himself. It wouldn't have done for him to have spoken aloud what he was
saying to himself, for then the little people in feathers and fur on
whom he likes to make his dinner would have heard him and known just
where he was. So he said it to himself, and sat so still that he looked
for all the world like a part of the tree on which he was sitting. What
he was saying was this:
“Towhit, towhoo! Towhit, towhoo! Will some one tell me what to do?
My children have an appetite
That keeps me hunting all the night,
And though their stomachs I may stuff
They never seem to have enough.
Towhit, towhoo! Towhit, towhoo!
Will some one tell me what to do?”
When it was dark enough he gave his fierce hunting call--“Whooo-hoo-hoo,
whoo-hoo!”
Now that is a terrible sound in the dark woods, very terrible indeed
to the little forest people, because it sounds so fierce and hungry. It
makes them jump and shiver, and that is just what Hooty wants them
to do, for in doing it one of them is likely to make just the least
scratching with his claws, or to rustle a leaf. If he does, Hooty, whose
ears are very, very wonderful, is almost sure to hear, and with his
great yellow eyes see him, and then--Hooty has his dinner.
The very night when Peter Rabbit started on his journey to the Old
Pasture, Hooty the Owl had made up his mind that something had got to
be done to get more food for those hungry babies of his up in the big
hemlock-tree in the darkest corner of the Green Forest. Hunting was very
poor, very poor indeed, and Hooty was at his wits' end to know what he
should do. He had hooted and hooted in vain in the Green Forest, and
he had sailed back and forth over the Green Meadows like a great black
shadow without seeing so much as a single Mouse.
“It's all because of Old Man Coyote and Granny and Reddy Fox,” said
Hooty angrily. “They've spoiled the hunting. Yes, Sir, that's just what
they have done! If I expect to feed those hungry babies of mine, I
must find new hunting grounds. I believe I'll go up to the Old Pasture.
Perhaps I'll have better luck up there.”
So Hooty the Owl spread his broad wings and started for the Old Pasture
just a little while after Peter Rabbit had started for the same place.
Of course he didn't know that Peter was on his way there, and of course
Peter didn't know that Hooty even thought of the Old Pasture. If he had,
perhaps he would have thought twice before starting. Anyway, he would
have kept a sharper watch on the sky. But as it was his thoughts were
all of Old Man Coyote and Granny Fox, and that is where Peter made a
very grave mistake, a very grave mistake indeed, as he was soon to find
out.