[Illustration: “Winkie! It’s my Winkie!” cried Mrs. Woodchuck.]
_Kneetime Animal Stories_
WINKIE, THE WILY
WOODCHUCK
HER MANY ADVENTURES
BY
RICHARD BARNUM
Author of “Squinty, the Comical Pig,” “Tum Tum, the
Jolly Elephant,” “Tamba, the Tame Tiger,”
“Toto, the Bustling Beaver,” “Shaggo,
the Mighty Buffalo,” etc.
_ILLUSTRATED BY_
WALTER S. ROGERS
PUBLISHERS
BARSE & HOPKINS
NEW YORK, N. Y. NEWARK, N. J.
KNEETIME ANIMAL STORIES
By Richard Barnum
_Large 12mo. Illustrated._
SQUINTY, THE COMICAL PIG
SLICKO, THE JUMPING SQUIRREL
MAPPO, THE MERRY MONKEY
TUM TUM, THE JOLLY ELEPHANT
DON, A RUNAWAY DOG
DIDO, THE DANCING BEAR
BLACKIE, A LOST CAT
FLOP EAR, THE FUNNY RABBIT
TINKLE, THE TRICK PONY
LIGHT FOOT, THE LEAPING GOAT
CHUNKY, THE HAPPY HIPPO
SHARP EYES, THE SILVER FOX
NERO, THE CIRCUS LION
TAMBA, THE TAME TIGER
TOTO, THE BUSTLING BEAVER
SHAGGO, THE MIGHTY BUFFALO
WINKIE, THE WILY WOODCHUCK
BARSE & HOPKINS
New York, N. Y. Newark, N. J.
Copyright, 1922
by
Barse & Hopkins
_Winkie, the Wily Woodchuck_
PRINTED IN THE U. S. A.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I WINKIE PLAYS TAG 7
II WINKIE HEARS A NOISE 16
III WINKIE FINDS A WAY OUT 27
IV WINKIE IN THE WOODS 37
V WINKIE MEETS DON 46
VI WINKIE IN A STORM 55
VII WINKIE IN A TRAP 68
VIII WINKIE’S NEW HOME 75
IX WINKIE LEARNS TRICKS 86
X WINKIE IS IN DANGER 96
XI WINKIE GETS OUT 104
XII WINKIE FINDS HER FOLKS 110
ILLUSTRATIONS
“Winkie! It’s my Winkie!” cried Mrs. Woodchuck _Frontispiece_
PAGE
And run home is what Winkie and Blunk did 19
By pulling and hauling they managed to get Mrs. Woodchuck
up and out 43
Caused Winkie to bump into a tree full tilt 57
Out toppled Winkie 83
She came out of her pen and did her tricks 99
Winkie ate so much she could hardly waddle 115
WINKIE, THE WILY WOODCHUCK
CHAPTER I
WINKIE PLAYS TAG
“What shall we do next?” asked Winkie, the wily woodchuck.
“Isn’t it too hot to do anything?” was what Blinkie, her sister, wanted
to know. “Let’s just sit here by the front door, where we can easily
pop down into our underground house if anything happens.”
“Do you think anything is going to happen?” asked Winkie, who was
called wily because she was so smart and careful, always on the lookout
for traps and danger. “If you think anything is going to happen,” went
on Winkie, speaking to her sister, “I’m going in now and tell mother.
I’d tell pa, only he isn’t home yet from the woods, where he went to
get something special to eat.”
“Oh, I don’t know that there is any special danger,” said Blinkie, as
she pawed out a bit of thistle that had become stuck to her fur. “But
it’s too hot to do anything, Winkie.”
“Except to eat clover,” half grunted Blunk, who was the woodchuck
brother of Winkie and Blinkie. “Let’s go over in the farmer’s big field
and eat a lot more clover,” suggested Blunk. You know clover is what
woodchucks like best of all.
“Clover!” laughed Winkie, tapping her brother playfully on his black
nose. “If you eat any more clover, Blunk, it will run out of your ears,
as grandma says.”
“Pooh! I never eat too much clover!” boasted Blunk. “And I’m going over
to the field now and get some more. Do you girls want to come?” he
asked. “I know where there’s some clover with red blossoms.”
“Oh, it’s too hot to move, especially with this thick fur we have to
wear,” said Blinkie. “In the winter it isn’t bad; but now, with summer
coming on, I wish I didn’t have so much fur.”
“Some of it will fall out, so mother said,” explained Winkie. “She
told me that the fur of all woodchucks and other animals like us gets
thinner in summer.”
“Well, I’m glad of it,” sighed Blinkie, stretching out her two front
paws lazily. “I’m so warm now I don’t know what to do!”
“Let’s slide down the back-door hole inside our burrow,” suggested
Winkie. “We can have fun that way, and it’s nice and cool away down
deep underground. Let’s slide down the back-door hole!”
Woodchucks, you know, have two holes, or doors, leading into their
houses, which are dug in the earth below the surface. The reason for
this is that if a fox, or other pursuing animal, chases them down one
hole they can run out the other.
“Oh, I don’t want to slide down any holes!” complained Blinkie.
“Nor I,” added Blunk. “I’m going over after clover.”
“Don’t let the farmer catch you eating his clover, or he may set a trap
for you or fire his gun at you,” warned Blinkie, as her brother waddled
off, his little short legs slowly carrying his rather fat body.
“I’ll be careful,” promised Blunk.
Winkie stood for a moment near the edge of the sloping hole that led
down into the dark underground house. This hole was the front door of
the little woodchuck’s home. The back door was around behind a big
rock. The hole had been used so often by the woodchuck family when
crawling in and out that the bottom of it was worn smooth. When it
rained, and the earth became wet, the front entrance to the burrow was
very slippery.
But the back door had been dug down through some earth that had in
it many shale-rocks――that is rocks which were little flat pieces of
smooth stone. On these it was almost as easy for a woodchuck to slide
as it is for a boy or girl to slide or coast on the ice or snow. Winkie
knew she did not need to wait until it rained to have a slide on the
shale-covered back-door hole, and this she was now eager to do. Only,
she didn’t want to play alone!
“Please come on and slide with me,” begged Winkie of Blinkie.
“No, indeed!” answered the other woodchuck girl. “It’s too warm. I’m
going to sleep.”
“Well, I’ll have to go by myself then,” said Winkie, a bit sadly. “Will
you play after you wake up, Blinkie?”
“Maybe――maybe,” answered Blinkie, sleepily.
“Oh, I never saw such creatures!” murmured Winkie, as she ran along,
giving a look toward her sister and a glance over into the next field
where Blunk was nibbling clover. “All they think about is eating
and sleeping! I’m going to do something! I wish I could have some
adventures! That’s what I wish――adventures!
“Flop Ear, the rabbit who used to live here before he went away, had
lots of adventures. He told me so when he came here on a visit. Oh
dear! I wonder if I’ll ever have any adventures?”
Had she only known it, Winkie was, even then, about to start some very
wonderful adventures, which I will tell you about.
But just at present all there seemed for the little girl woodchuck to
do was to slide down the back-door hole of her underground home. And
this she did until she was tired.
She would gather her paws under her, sit down on the smooth shale-rocks
at the top of the hole, give herself a little push, and down she would
go, landing in the big underground earth-room, where all the woodchucks
of this one family lived.
“My goodness, Winkie! what are you doing?” cried her mother, who was
having a nap all by herself.
“Just sliding down the hole,” answered Winkie. “Blinkie and Blunk won’t
play with me, so I have to slide all alone.”
Mrs. Woodchuck did not answer, for she had fallen asleep once more. But
she awakened when Winkie came sliding down again, and the mother of the
little animal girl said:
“I wish, Winkie, you’d go somewhere else to play. I want to sleep, and
you wake me up every time you land.”
“All right, Mother, I’ll see if I can get Blunk and Blinkie to play
tag,” said Winkie, for she was a good little thing.
Taking just one more slide, while her mother was still awake, Winkie
crawled up the back-door hole again, and went softly to Blinkie’s side.
Blinkie was still slumbering.
“Tag! You’re it!” suddenly cried Winkie in her sister’s ear.
“What’s that? You’re going to put me in a bag? Oh, please, Mr. Farmer,
don’t put me in a bag!” begged Blinkie. “I didn’t take any of your
clover!”
“Ha! Ha!” laughed Winkie, as Blinkie sat up, rubbing her eyes. “You
must have been dreaming that you were over in the field with Blunk,
taking clover! I’m not a farmer, and I haven’t any bag. I just cried,
‘Tag! You’re it!’ Come on and play!”
“Oh, it’s you,” said Blinkie, not frightened now that she saw only her
sister. “Yes, I was dreaming. And when you awakened me so suddenly I
thought you were a farmer trying to catch me in a bag.”
“Well, come on and have a little tag game and you’ll feel better,”
advised Winkie. “I can’t slide any more because mother wants to sleep.
Let’s play tag!”
“You go and tag Blunk,” suggested Blinkie. “I’ll be wider awake after
that, and then I’ll play. Go and tag Blunk.”
“All right,” agreed Winkie, who was very obliging. “I hope he hasn’t
fallen asleep from eating too much clover,” she added.
But Blunk was wide awake. He was sitting up on his haunches, as a dog
sits up to beg, and he was slowly nipping off the sweet clover tops and
the tender leaves, chewing them very contentedly.
“Hello, Winkie! So you came over, after all, to get something to eat,
did you?” asked Blunk.
“No, I came to see you,” replied Winkie. “Tag! You’re it!” she suddenly
cried, tapping her brother with an extended paw, and then springing
away before he could touch her. “Come on! Chase me!”
Blunk was fonder of games than was his sister Blinkie, who, to tell the
truth, was a bit lazy. So when Blunk found he was “it,” he made up his
mind not to stay that way any longer than need be.
“Oh, I’ll tag you all right!” he cried, racing after his sister Winkie.
“I’ll tag you!”
“If you do, then I’ll tag Blinkie and we can have a regular game!”
merrily laughed Winkie, as she sprang over a clump of clover. “This is
more fun than sliding down the back-hole door all alone, or even going
to sleep. Come on, Blunk! Let’s see you tag me!” she cried.
Nearly always when the woodchuck children played a game of tag, or any
other running game, Blunk would easily catch Winkie or Blinkie. For,
being a boy woodchuck and strong, he could go faster than the girls.
And this time Blunk thought he would have no trouble in tapping Winkie
with his paw, tagging her and making her “it.”
But Blunk forgot about all the clover he had eaten. He had, I am sorry
to say, rather stuffed himself. He had eaten too much, but not enough
to make himself ill, for animals know better than that. But Blunk had
swallowed so much clover that his little stomach was sticking out like
a toy balloon, and this made him so heavy that he could not run fast.
Because of this, Winkie could easily keep ahead of him. On and on
ran the wily little girl woodchuck, laughing and teasing her brother
because he could not catch her to tag her.
“Come on! Come on!” cried Winkie. “Why don’t you tag me, Blunk?”
“I will――in a――minute!” panted Blunk. “I――I haven’t started――running――yet!”
He was getting out of breath, and he was beginning to wish he had
done what Winkie had asked him to do at first――come and play with
her――instead of eating so much clover.
“But I’ll catch her after a while. I always do,” thought Blunk to
himself, as he raced on and on, while Winkie, the wily woodchuck,
dashed this way and that, making quick turns, which was the best way of
avoiding her brother.
“I never knew her to keep away from me so long as this――before. I――I
guess I ate too much clover!” panted Blunk.
“I know you did!” called Winkie, laughing, for her brother had said
this last thought aloud. “Ha! Ha! You can’t tag me!”
“Yes, I can! There! Now you’re it!” cried Blunk.
He gave a sudden jump, and so did Winkie, for she wanted to keep from
being tagged as long as possible. Just as she and Blunk leaped, a harsh
voice cried:
“Ha! There’s them pesky woodchucks in my clover again! I’ll fix ’em!”
There was a loud bang, like a clap of thunder, and as Blunk looked back
he saw his sister falling in a crumpled heap.