AWFUL STICKY
Now that it was too late, I could see that if I had only landed that meat
inside the house, it would have been easy to get away. And the animal would
have been a prisoner, too, because he could never have got out of that
house. The windows were boarded on the inside and the door was good and
heavy. But what was the good of thinking about that when it was too late?
I have to admit that for about half a minute I wasn't a good scout. I was
just scared and excited and I didn't do anything. Then I saw the animal
prowling around the tree and looking up and heard him making that noise.
Oh boy, it was terrible!
Then, _bang,_ just like that, I remembered about him wiping the leaf off
his paw by rubbing it on his face. It was lucky for me he did that, because
it put into my head something I had read, about the way the natives in
India catch tigers. I read it in a natural history book. There's a kind of
a tree in India named the prauss tree; anyway, its something like that. And
it has big flat leaves.
So the natives spread gum on those leaves. They get the gum from the trees,
too. Then they put the leaves in the path and when the tiger comes along he
steps on them and rubs his paws over his face, so as to get the leaves off.
But that only makes it worse for him, because they stick to his face and
over his eyes and everywhere. He gets just plastered up with them. Then he
gets excited-gee whiz, you can't blame him. And he rolls around on the
ground and can't see and just rolls and rolls and bangs against trees and
gets all played out and then he lies still just like a horse does when he
falls down. And that's when the natives come and get him. And it's easy,
too, because he can't see and all the fight is knocked out of him.
Oh boy, wasn't I glad I remembered that! I just tore out that box of fly
paper and pulled the sheets apart and dropped them on the ground. Some of
them fell upside down. I should worry. I tried to drop them so they'd fall
around the foot of the tree and a lot of them did. More than half of them
fell right side up. A couple of them stuck to the trunk, but I didn't care.
Maybe that would be good, I thought. Believe me, in about ten seconds I had
the ground around the tree covered with fly paper. He'd have to do a fancy
two-step if he wanted to get between them.
All the while he was crouching and watching me with those two eyes that
were just like fire. Pretty soon a sheet of fly paper drifted down right
near him and he pawed it. Maybe he thought it was a chop, hey? It just
caught his paw and he tried to wipe it off against his face. Good night!
There he was with one of his eyes and the whole top of his head plastered
flat. He looked as if he had been in a fight.
Then he came closer to the trunk, pawing at his head all the time and
stepped, kerflop, right on another sheet-plunked his foot right down in
the middle of it. Oh bibbie, then you should have seen him! He tried to
rub it off against his head and it stuck there and then there was a circus.
He rolled over on the ground and caught another sheet against his side. In
another second he had one flopping on the end of his tail and he kept going
around after it until pretty soon it got stuck to one of his legs.
Jiminetty! But you should have heard him howl I bet he was mad clean
through.
But safety first-oh boy! I dropped another one and it landed right on his
nose; lucky shot. By now he was acting just like a cat having a fit and
bowling like mad. I guess he couldn't see at all, because he went,
kerplunk, up against a tree and then rolled away and went banging against
the spring house. He had two sheets on his face and another one on his paw
and the whole front of him was all mucked up with gum and the grass and
dirt were sticking to him. Believe me, he was a sight. He didn't look much
like a lord of the jungle; he looked more as if he was on his way home
from the hospital.
You can talk about tanks and machine guns and poison gas and hand grenades,
and all the other new fangled weapons, but tangle foot for mine; that's
what _I_ say. If the Allies had used tanglefoot, the war would have been
over three years ago. And if they had spread it all along the banks of the
Marne, the Germans would never have gotten across, that's one sure thing.