PIKA OF THE PEAKS
ALL that summer Fuzzy wandered, wandered everywhere in search of
adventure. There was hardly a spot within miles of the Ranger’s cabin
that he had not explored. For he was looking for a range that he could
call his own. Sometimes he found an inviting bit of country, but some
other bear had already made his home on it.
One mellow day that autumn he climbed to the very tree line. Coming out
on a wind-swept height where the only trees were the twisted junipers
whose branches clung to the ledge, he was just about to drink at a
trickle of water that welled out of a crack in the rocks when he heard
the queerest sound.
It sounded like a giant cricket, “cheep, cheep, cheep,” high-pitched
and plaintive. He looked about to see where it came from, for a cricket
would make fine eating.
First the sound seemed to come from behind him, then from the side;
then it sounded for all the world as if it must be in the rocks around
on the other side. Fuzzy was mystified.
Like a gray shadow, something glided to the top of a stone not far
away. It looked like a small rabbit, except that it had big, round ears
rimmed with white. It was a pika.
The little bear had never seen a pika. He knew nothing of its ways.
That is why he made a dash for this one. Had he known, he might have
saved himself a lot of trouble. For no sooner had he moved than the
little creature had disappeared from the stone. What had become of it
he could not imagine.
Again came that long-drawn cricket sound, echoing from somewhere
underneath the rocks. Madly he started digging into the slide-rock,
near where the bunny-like creature had disappeared. He might as well
have tried to dig a hole through the mountain for all the results he
got. The pika was not there.
Pausing to get his breath and cool off, he suddenly espied, sitting
calmly watching him, the same gray shadow on the same gray stone.
This time he made an even swifter dash, but again the pika was not
there. When Fuzzy became quite worn out, and had curled up in a furry
ball to take a nap, the little dweller of the mountain peaks went
calmly to work getting in his winter food supply.
Nibbling through the stems of as many flowers and grasses as he could
carry in his mouth, he would lay the little bundle neatly on a rock in
the sunshine and spread it out to dry. After awhile, when the sun no
longer shone on those rocks, he carried his hay to one where it did.
That way, he worked steadily on, all alone on the mountain top. Soon,
he knew, would come the biting cold and the banking snow, and he would
need enough hay to keep him fat and warm in his den in the rocks.
Once a hawk spied him out as he worked, and made a swoop for him.
Yesterday it had been a lion, the day before coyotes. But Pika only
slipped in between two rocks where nothing could get at him, and waited
till the danger was gone.
When at last the sun grew cool and the little bear awoke, and
stretched, Pika was sitting watching him like a gray shadow on a gray
rock, but so still he sat, and so silently, that Fuzzy-Wuzz never even
dreamed how near he was, but went shambling off down the mountain side
in the gathering dusk, while Pika once more sang his cricket song.