FUZZY-WUZZ PLAYS FATE
FUZZY-WUZZ lay basking in the late September sunshine. The mountains
had blossomed forth since the frost with patches of berries that
gleamed handsomely against the evergreens.
He had followed the children to a sandy place among the granite ledges
back of the cabin, where they found a colony of the giant black ants.
The children had been having a lot of fun with these ants. First they
laid a piece of leaf over the entrance to an ant hill. Promptly one of
the inmates poked his head forth to see what had so suddenly shut off
the light.
Seeing the leaf, he went back and got help, and about a dozen ants came
out and took hold of one edge of the leaf, and pulled, while the first
ant stood on the stem and directed operations. That way, they had
their entrance clear again in no time.
The next thing, the children laid a bit of bark over their front door.
This time they shoved the obstruction from underneath till they had
turned it over, out of their way.
Then the children laid a pebble over the hole. That was almost too
much for the little colony. At first they couldn’t even get out. Then
they tunneled a way past the edge of the stone, and began studying the
situation. Some clambered over the pebble while others walked around
it, measuring. Then they tried pushing, but it was too heavy for them.
They tried pulling, but with no result. They tried getting underneath
and shoving, but still they could not budge it. And at last the
children got tired of waiting for them, and went away, deciding to come
back later and take away the pebble if the ants had not succeeded in so
doing.
Meantime Fuzzy-Wuzz had gone to sleep. His dreams were cut short by
the awfullest pinching on the sensitive tip of his nose. The ants had
finally tunneled a new opening beside the pebble, though it had meant
a long afternoon’s work for them. Seeing the cub asleep so near, they
naturally decided that he must be responsible for all their trouble,
and appointed a committee to drive him away.
But because of his thick fur, they couldn’t find a spot where they
could reach him with their pincers except on the nose.
“Gee! I always get the worst of things!” rumbled the little brown bear,
as he swept them off with one swipe of his furry paw, and would have
shuffled away but for the sight that met his gaze.
Chuck, the chipmunk, stood there before him, paralyzed with fright.
Coiled in front of him swayed an enormous bull snake, with red jaws
open to swallow him.
If the snake had been stretched out full length, he would have been as
long as the Ranger was tall. Just now he looked like a coil of thick
rope, with his ugly head coming up out of the middle of the coil and
pointing his forked red tongue straight at the young chipmunk.
He was a white snake, with brownish stripes that seemed to mark his
back in squares. As is true of most snakes, he was not a kind that
would do any harm to a child, but he swallowed chipmunks whole, and
poor Chuck knew it.
It seemed to Chuck as if his legs had frozen too stiff to run away, yet
if he did not run, the snake would swallow him.
At that fateful moment, Fuzzy-Wuzz caught sight of them. One pounce and
the fat cub had the snake writhing between his jaws. Then the snake had
wriggled away and was making for his hole, the chipmunk forgotten.
“That certainly squares the matter of the pine nuts,” Chuck told his
partner when he was safe back home. For the cinnamon cub had certainly
played the rôle of Fate, though without realizing it. For him the snake
had only meant a bit of sport.