THE FIELD MICE PROTEST
When Stripes Skunk heard that triumph song he was completely overcome.
You see he hadn’t known he was being brave. He just was thinking so hard
about poor Coquillicot’s wife and what that awful snake was trying to do
to her that he forgot to be afraid. He forgot to think about himself at
all—and that’s the way most people get to be heroes.
Now he felt all choked up and sniffly. So the next thing he knew Doctor
Muskrat came shuffling up and asked most sympathetically: “Poor Stripes,
does it hurt you so very much? Where were you bitten? Those fool
meadowlarks called out to me five minutes ago and then they flew right
off without letting me know where to find you.”
“Right here,” said Stripes, opening his mouth. And he was just going to
explain that it didn’t amount to anything at all—because it wasn’t that
kind of a snake that had bitten him—when in Doctor Muskrat popped one of
his perpetual root poultices. It wasn’t the kind he usually keeps on
hand, but a special one, from the root of a spotted plantain, but it
worked just the same in one way. Stripes couldn’t talk while he held it.
But he could laugh. He laughed until his sides hurt. For he wasn’t any
hero to Doctor Muskrat; he was just fat furry Stripes Skunk, to be
cuffed and coddled like any kitten. He felt like himself again. So he
rolled and giggled until he got some of the laugh out of him, and then
he bounced up and began his dancing. He chased his shadow and he chased
the leaves and he chased his tail until he had all the birds chuckling.
And when Miau the Catbird perched low down and tried to explain that
hero notion to the doctor, he tweaked Miau’s tail, too. And Miau began
to squawk and peck his ears for him.
No wonder Doctor Muskrat wasn’t impressed a bit. He just said: “Then you
don’t vote against letting him stay here?”
“Of course not!” shrieked the birds.
“That’s good,” said the wise old beast. “We ’re going to have a meeting
about it to-night, at moon-up, down by my pond. The mice have entered a
protest.”
“The mice?” squawked the birds all together. “The mice? What have they
to say about it? What can they do?”
“That remains to be seen,” said the doctor. “They’ve entered a protest,
so all who fly by night must come and put in a good word for him.”
“Yah,” called somebody. “I’m going right away now to send the little
owls with my vote.”
“No, you don’t,” said the doctor. “I’m guaranteeing that we’ll hear them
and let them go home again in safety. There are two families who aren’t
invited—the hawks and the owls.” With that he set off home, flapping his
front paws and shuffling his hind ones, with his tail making a snake
track between them, and Stripes went, too. But his tail had a sassy
little quirk at the end.
Promptly at moon-up the Woodsfolk began to gather at Doctor Muskrat’s
Pond. Stripes was there already, and Tommy Peele’s dog Watch to
represent Tommy because Tommy doesn’t talk the Woodsfolk tongue, and
Chaik the Jay, and a whole company of small birds who can fly by
moonlight, besides Bob White Quail and the whippoorwill Pretty soon
Doctor Muskrat looked all around and asked: “Where are Tad Coon and
Nibble Rabbit?”
“Nibble’s coming,” answered the whippoorwill. “I just saw him. He’s——”
Here he interrupted himself. He remembered the old bird proverb, “A long
tongue makes a ragged tail,” meaning that you’re apt to get pecked if
you talk too much about other people ’s affairs. So he just finished,
“He’s on the way.”
Both Stripes and Doctor Muskrat suddenly wondered why Nibble was away so
much of the time lately. But before they could ask any questions, up
hopped Nibble, as careless as you please, with a clover blossom sticking
out of his mouth. He’d eaten it stem first, keeping the best till the
last, just like you save the nice buttery middle of your bread for your
last bite. But the doctor knew very well that he hadn’t picked it in the
clover-patch over by the potatoes. He knew that because he’d just been
there. Besides, the whippoorwill came out of the deep woods, and he was
the only one who had seen Nibble.
“Hey, Bunny!” called the doctor. “Where’s Tad?”
“He hasn’t been with me,” Nibble called back. “I haven’t the least
idea.”
“Well, where were you, then?” the doctor wanted to know.
“Studying scents,” said Nibble. But his whiskers bristled as though he
were trying to keep from laughing. He had a secret all right.
“Well, you just study a scent or two over by Tad’s tree and see where
he’s gone. We have to have him.”
Just then who should come crawling up but Great-Grandfather Fieldmouse.
You remember him. He’s very fat and old; so fat that his tummy drags on
the earth like Miner the Mole’s; so old that his ears are all crinkled.
He makes as much fuss getting over the ground as a mud turtle and lots
more noise with his grunting and sniffling. And of course he had a
bodyguard of his family. He has a tremendous one, you know—a great big
stump simply alive with them. Watch escorted him to the flat stone where
Doctor Muskrat was sitting.
Doctor Muskrat greeted him. “We ’re all ready to listen,” he said,
“except Tad Coon. We can’t find him.”
“Uff, uff!” panted Great-Grandfather Fieldmouse. “We’ll pass over the
matter of Tad Coon, then. It’s unimportant. Then we can get down to
business.”
“Crawling Crawfishes!” thought Doctor Muskrat. “He must know something
about what’s happened to Tad.” He was puzzled.
When Great-Grandfather Fieldmouse said that he was willing to pass over
the question of Tad Coon, that meant only one thing—he didn’t think
there was any question. He must know that something had happened to Tad.
But it’s no use asking anything of a fieldmouse. So Doctor Muskrat
didn’t try.
“Mr. Fieldmouse,” he said, “we have been asked to meet and consider your
reasons for barring Stripes Skunk from Tommy Peele’s woods and fields.
Here we are, ready to listen.”
Great-Grandfather Fieldmouse’s crinkly ears began twitching. “We
fieldmice have had many grievances in times past,” he sniffled in his
high, squeaky voice. “But we have never spoken of them. As long as these
woods and fields were run in the sensible way Mother Nature started them
in the First-Off Beginning we took our chances like sensible mice. But
things are changing. Some of you have made friends with Man—a thing we
have never done. Man makes no difference to a fieldmouse, so even of
that we will not complain. But when you make friends with the sworn
enemy of the mice, a Thing-from-under-the-Earth, who has no proper place
in the sun—I refer to this skunk,” he said as he waved his wriggly tail
at Stripes—“it is high time we refused to let him remain. He must go!”
And he sat back in a fat, shaking heap.
[Illustration: When the moon came up there wasn’t a single tail
stirring]
“Ah,” said Doctor Muskrat. “Then you mice will give up gnawing roots and
spoiling plants and go back to the sensible way Mother Nature started
you in the First-Off Beginning. In that case, I expect we will have to
agree to your demand.”
“Give up eating roots? What do you mean?” gasped the fieldmouse.
“Yes, eat a nibble here and a nibble there, leaving the plants to be
again as they were before. Are you willing to change?”
“Change! A fieldmouse never changes. Let me remind you, Doctor Muskrat,
that we lived as we do to-day before any of you were made. This earth
belongs to us fieldmice.”
“Perhaps,” said Nibble Rabbit, “but let me point out to you that if you
fieldmice tried to run it there wouldn’t be a green thing left to grow
out of the earth. We’d all starve, down to the very last mouse.”
“Impossible! Idiotic!” gasped the mice. “We will never change. Never!”
“If that is your answer, I shall put the matter to a vote. Does Stripes
Skunk go or stay?” asked Doctor Muskrat.
“He stays! He stays!” shouted every one but the mice.