WINKIE FINDS A WAY OUT
Just as soon as Winkie told the other woodchucks to be quiet and
listen, they all remained as still as though frozen in their places.
Not one made a move. This is what wild animals always do when they
hear or see anything strange. They stay quiet for just a moment or two
before making up their minds what is best to do to save themselves from
danger. And that danger was at hand Winkie, the wily woodchuck, felt
sure.
As I have told you, she was the smartest of all the woodchuck children,
and that is why her mother nicknamed her “Wily,” which means smart and
cunning.
“I don’t hear anything!” whispered Blunk.
“Hark!” cautioned Winkie once more.
This time they all heard it. Silently they listened in their
underground house to the strange noise. It was up above them――a
thudding, rasping, scraping sound.
“What can it be?” asked Mrs. Woodchuck. She spoke in a whisper, as,
indeed, they all did, for they knew their little whispering voices
could not be heard outside their burrow.
“I don’t know what it is,” answered Mr. Woodchuck. “But whatever it is
I’m glad Winkie heard it before I started out; otherwise I might have
run right into danger!”
“Do you suppose it’s that farmer looking for us?” asked Blinkie.
“Or his dog?” added Blunk.
“If it’s a dog maybe I could fool him in some way!” said Winkie.
“How can you fool a dog?” Winkie’s mother asked.
“I can poke my nose out of the back door, and when he sees me I’ll duck
down in here again,” explained Winkie.
“What good will that do?” asked Daddy Woodchuck. “You would only be
running your nose into danger!”
“Well, but listen!” exclaimed Winkie, and she was so eager that she
forgot to speak in a whisper until her mother said:
“Hush! Keep quiet!”
“All right,” hissed Winkie. “But this is what I could do. I could poke
my nose out of our back door. The dog would see me, and run to get me.
I’d duck down in here, and the dog would begin digging at the back door
to make it big enough for him to come down.”
“Yes, that’s just what the dog would do,” sighed Mrs. Woodchuck. “I
know dogs, to my sorrow! Once one bit me on the leg!”
“Yes, but wait!” went on Winkie eagerly. “While the dog was digging at
our back door we could run out the front.”
“That’s a good idea!” exclaimed Blunk. “But I think I’m the one to do
it, and not Winkie.”
“No! No!” exclaimed Mr. Woodchuck. “I see your trick, Winkie, and it is
very good of you to think of it and good of Blunk to offer to do it.
But it is too dangerous! The dog might dig his way in here through the
back door before we had a chance to run out the front. And who knows
but what the farmer with his gun may be waiting up above for us! No, we
will stay right here safe in our burrow. I don’t believe they will find
us here.”
“But what is that strange noise?” asked Blinkie. “There it sounds
again!”
Indeed there came once more that strange noise which Winkie had first
heard. The rumbling kept up, and now and then came a pounding as if
heavy feet were tramping on the ground overhead.
“Oh, that must be the farmer trying to break his way in here with his
heavy boots!” cried Blinkie.
“Hush! Do you want him to hear you?” whispered Winkie, and her sister
grew quiet.
As the woodchuck family listened, the noise grew louder, and then, very
plainly, they all heard a man’s voice shouting:
“Whoa!”
Instantly the noise stopped.
“That was the farmer!” exclaimed Blunk. “I know his voice!”
“What was he saying?” asked Blinkie.
No one could tell her, of course, for the woodchucks did not understand
man talk, any more than the farmer understood animal language. But
Blinkie made a guess.
“Perhaps that farmer was talking to his dog,” she said.
“Maybe,” agreed her mother. “I hope neither of them finds his way down
here!”
But the farmer was not talking to his dog. One doesn’t say “whoa!” to
dogs, one says it to horses. And that is to whom the farmer called the
word which means stop.
“Whoa there now!” cried Farmer Tottle again. “Stand still, can’t you?
Want to drag this plow over all them rocks? I’ve got to blast ’em out.
That’s what I’ve got to do. These rocks and stumps are in the way, and
I’m going to get some powder and blow ’em to bits. What with big stones
on my farm, and the pesky woodchucks eating the clover, I won’t have
enough left to buy me a new shirt at the end of the year. Stand still,
can’t you? Not that I blame you much for not wanting to plow in this
field of rocks,” he went on. “Guess I’ll go and get some powder and
blow ’em up now. I’ll finish plowing to-morrow.”
It was this noise of the plow rasping and cutting its way through the
earth over their heads, and the heavy thud of the hoofs of the horses,
that Winkie and the other woodchucks had heard down in their burrow.
There was silence while Farmer Tottle was thinking of the best way to
blast the rocks from his field, not far from the clover patch where
Blunk and Winkie had played tag that day. Then, having made up his mind
what he would do, Mr. Tottle turned his team around and drove them back
to the barn.
“The noise isn’t so loud now,” whispered Winkie, after a bit.
“No. Maybe nothing is going to happen after all,” said Blinkie.
But the danger was over only for a little while. The noise stopped as
Farmer Tottle drove away, and, for a time, the ground-hogs thought
everything was going to be all right. Ground-hog is another name for
the woodchuck.
“I guess I can go out now,” said Mr. Woodchuck, when an hour or more
had passed and there were no more thumping sounds and no further cries
of “Whoa!”
Mr. Woodchuck went softly to the back-door of the burrow. He crept up
the little incline, or hill, that led to out-of-doors, and he was just
poking his nose out when, all at once, there sounded a loud:
_Bang!_
And that was not the worst! As the loud noise sounded, louder than any
thunder the ground-hogs had ever heard, Mr. Woodchuck came slipping,
sliding, and half falling back into the burrow.
“Oh, Nib! what has happened?” cried Mrs. Woodchuck. “Nib” was a pet
name for her husband. “Are you shot?” she asked. “I’m sure I heard a
gun!”
“It was the biggest gun I ever heard shot off, if that’s what it was!”
said Mr. Woodchuck. “It fairly stunned me! Why, I fell right over
backward, and a lot of little stones and dirt flew in my face!”
“Did the farmer see you and shoot at you?” asked Winkie.
“No. He couldn’t see me, for I hadn’t yet poked my nose outside,”
answered the father. “I don’t understand what happened!”
Blunk, just like a boy, had run to the back-door to be near the scene
of excitement. Now he came running back, all out of breath.
“Oh, you ought to see!” he cried. “Our back-door hole is closed up!
It’s full of dirt and stones, and nobody can get out that way!”
“You don’t tell me!” cried his father, who was, by this time, getting
over the shock. “I must take a look!”
Timidly, all the woodchucks followed him to the back-door. Just as
Blunk had said, a lot of earth and stones had caved in, completely
filling up the passage way and the door.
“No getting out there,” said Winkie, for she had been quicker than any
of the others to see what had happened.
“Hurry!” cried her father. “We must try the front-door hole! I think I
know what happened. The farmer shot off his gun down our back-door hole
and blew it shut!”
But alas for this woodchuck family! As Mr. Woodchuck was patting and
tapping Winkie, Blinkie, and Blunk with his paws to make them run
faster, and just as they were close to the front-door hole, there came
another loud sound, and the earth trembled under the paws of the little
animals.
“Oh! Oh, dear!” whined Blinkie.
“Dear me! I hope no one is hurt,” said Mrs. Woodchuck. “This is
dreadful!”
No one was hurt; but they were all covered with moist earth that had
rattled down on them. But as woodchucks are always burrowing and
digging in the earth, this did not matter.
Daddy Woodchuck scrambled on ahead of the others until he reached the
front door.
“Just as I feared!” he sadly said. “This door is closed too! We are
prisoners here in our burrow!”
“You don’t mean to tell me the front-door hole is closed up, like the
back door!” cried his wife.
“Yes, that is what happened,” answered her husband. “The farmer has
shot both our doors shut! We can’t get out!”
This last part was true enough, but not the first. Farmer Tottle had
not exactly shot shut the two door holes of the Woodchucks’ underground
house. He had blasted some rocks in his field, using powder to blow up
the big stones. It was the shock of the blastings that had closed the
doors of the burrow. Dirt and rocks had been shaken into the passages
until they were almost completely filled, and none of the children, to
say nothing of big Mr. and Mrs. Woodchuck, could squeeze their way past.
“What are we going to do?” cried Mrs. Woodchuck.
“Shall we have to stay here forever?” asked Blinkie.
“We can’t stay here forever!” exclaimed Blunk. “There isn’t anything to
eat down here, and we’ll starve!”
“Oh! Don’t talk that way!” faintly screamed Blinkie.
“Maybe we can find a way out,” suggested Winkie, who always looked on
the bright side.
“That’s so!” exclaimed her father. “This is no time for sitting down
and biting one’s paws. We must look for a way out! Come, Blunk, you
and I will try the back-door again. And, Mother, you take Winkie and
Blinkie and try the front-door. Maybe there is a little hole which we
can dig larger, and so get out through it. Look sharp!”
This was better than sitting still sighing; at least so Winkie felt.
But while her mother and sister went to the front-door hole, and
her father and brother to the back door, the wily little woodchuck
nosed off by herself. She remembered that once, when she was playing
hide-and-seek with Blunk and Blinkie she had hidden herself in a side
passage of the burrow. The passage was larger and longer than she had
at first thought, and she had made up her mind, after the game, to see
where it went. But, somehow or other, she had never done this.
“But I’m going into that hole now and see if it leads anywhere,”
thought Winkie. “Maybe it’s a tunnel that will let us out.”
Winkie could see quite well in the dark. She soon found her old
hiding-place, and, going to the far end, where she had never before
been, she looked upward. To her delight she saw a little bit of
daylight gleaming. Scrambling her way forward, Winkie began to dig. She
had soon made a larger hole. She put her nose close to this, and could
smell fresh air.
Much excited, Winkie climbed down and ran to the middle of the burrow,
just as her father and Blunk came from the back door.
“There is no way out there,” said Mr. Woodchuck sadly.
“Nor at the front!” added Mrs. Woodchuck, coming back with Blinkie.
“But where have you been, Winkie?”
“I think I have found a way out!” cried the wily woodchuck. “Yes, I am
sure I have. Come! I’ll show you!”