Once there was a mother raccoon who had three cubs; they all lived in
the woods eating fruits and berries and birds' eggs. Whenever they were
on a tree top and heard a noise, they would jump head foremost to the
ground and scamper off with their tails in the air.
One day when the cubs had grown to be quite large sized raccoons, their
mother took them up all together to the top of an orange tree--you must
know that in South America orange trees, which came originally from
Spain, now grow wild in the forest--and spoke to them as follows:
"Cublets, you are almost big enough to be called raccoons; and it is
time you began to hunt for your meals by yourselves. It is very
important for you to know how to do this, because, when you get to be
old, you will go around all alone in the world, as all raccoons do. The
oldest of you likes snails and cockroaches. He must hunt around
woodpiles and under trunks of rotting trees, where there are always
plenty of snails and cockroaches. The next to the oldest of you seems to
like oranges. Up to the month of December there will be plenty of
oranges right here in this grove. The youngest of you is always asking
for birds' eggs. Well, there are birds' nests everywhere. All he will
have to do is hunt. But one thing, however: he must never go down to the
farm looking for eggs. It is very bad for raccoons to go near farms.
"Cublets, there is one thing more you must all be afraid of: dogs! dogs!
Never go near a dog! Once I had a fight with a dog. Do you see this
broken tooth? Well, I broke it in a fight with a dog! And so I know what
I am talking about! And behind dogs come people, with guns, and the guns
make a great noise, and kill raccoons. Whenever you hear a dog, or a
man, or a gun, jump for your lives no matter how high the tree is, and
run, run, run! If you don't they will kill you as sure as preaching!"
That is what the mother raccoon said to her cublets. Whereupon, they all
got down from the tree top, and went each his own way, nosing about in
the leaves from right to left and from left to right, as though they
were looking for something they had lost. For that is the way raccoons
hunt.
The biggest of the cubs, who liked snails and cockroaches, looked under
every piece of dead wood he came to and overturned the piles of dead
leaves. Soon he had eaten such a fine meal that he grew sleepy and lay
down in a nice cozy bed of leaves and went to sleep. The second one, who
liked oranges, did not move from that very grove. He just went from one
tree to another eating the best oranges; and he did not have to jump
from a tree top once; for neither men, nor dogs, nor guns, came anywhere
near him.
But the youngest, who would have nothing but birds' eggs, had a harder
time of it. He hunted and hunted over the hillsides all day long and
found only two birds' nests--one belonging to a toucan, with three eggs
in it, and the other belonging to a wood dove, with two eggs in it. Five
tiny little eggs! That was not very much to eat for a raccoon almost big
enough to go to school. When evening came the little cub was as hungry
as he had been that morning; and he sat down, all cold and tired and
lonesome, on the very edge of the forest.
From the place where he was sitting he could look down on the green
fields of the farm, and he thought of what his mother had said about
such places.
"Now, why did mamma say that? Why shouldn't I go looking for eggs down
along those fences on the farm?"
And just as he was saying this all to himself, what should he hear but
the song of a strange bird: "Cock-a-doodle-doo-oo-oo"; coming from far,
far away and from the direction of the farmhouse.
"My, did you ever hear a bird sing so loud?" said the cublet to himself.
"What a big bird it must be! And its eggs must be the size of a
cocoanut!"
"Cock-a-doodle-doo-oo-oo," came the bird's song again. The hungry little
raccoon just couldn't do without one of those eggs the size of a
cocoanut. The bird was singing somewhere off to the right. So he made a
short cut through the woods toward the field on the other side.
The sun was setting, but the raccoon cub ran with his tail in the air.
At last he came to the edge of the woods, and looked down again into the
fields.
"Cock-a-doodle-doo-oo-oo!"
Not far away now he could see the farmhouse. There was a man in the
yard. The man was wearing long boots, and leading a horse by the bridle
into a barn. On the fence in the barnyard, the little raccoon saw his
bird.
"What a silly little 'coon I am," he said to himself. "That isn't a
bird! That's a rooster! Mamma showed him to me one day, when we were on
top of a big tree up in the woods. Roosters have a fine song; and they
have a great many hens that lay sweet eggs. I think I could eat a dozen
of those eggs, right now!"
For some time the little raccoon sat looking at the rooster and the barn
and the farmhouse, and thinking of what his mother had said. But at last
he thought: "Mamma is far away! She will never know"; and he made up his
mind that as soon as it was dark he would run down to that hen coop and
see what he could find.
Before long the sun had gone completely and it was so dark you could
hardly see your hand before your face. Walking on tiptoe, the little
raccoon came out from the shadow of the woods, and began making his way
toward the farmhouse.
When he got into the yard, he stopped and listened carefully. Not a
sound! The little raccoon was as happy as could be: he was going to eat
a hundred, a thousand, two thousand of those eggs! He looked around for
the hen coop. There it was! He stole up to the door and peered in.
On the ground, and right in front of the door, what should he see but an
egg? And such a large egg! If it was not as big as a cocoanut, it was at
least as big as an orange! And how brightly it shone in the dark! "Guess
I'll keep that egg for dessert," thought the cub for a moment. But his
mouth began to water and water, and he simply couldn't wait. He stepped
up and put his front teeth into that egg. But--
Trac-c-c!
He had hardly touched it when there was a sharp snapping noise. The
little raccoon felt a hard blow strike him in the face, while a stinging
pain caught him in his right forepaw.
"Mamma! Mamma!" he called, jumping wildly this way and that. But he
could not get his foot loose. He was caught in a trap! And just at that
moment a dog began to bark!
All that time when the little raccoon had been waiting in the woods for
night to come, so that he could go down to get his eggs in the hen coop,
the man who owned the farmhouse had been playing with his children on
the lawn in the yard. One of them was a little girl five years old; and
the other was a little boy six years old. Both had golden hair. They
were chasing their father about and falling down every so often on the
grass. Then they would get up again and run some more. The man would
also pretend to fall and the three of them were having a splendid time.
When it grew dark, the man said:
"Now let's go and set our trap in the hen coop, so that if the weasel
comes to-night to kill our chickens and eat our eggs, we will catch
him."
They went and set the trap. Then the family had dinner, and the little
boy and the little girl were put to bed.
But they were both very much excited about the trap and the weasel. They
could not sleep. Finally they sat up in their beds and began to throw
pillows at each other. Their father and mother were reading down in the
dining room. They heard what the children were doing; but they said
nothing.
Suddenly the pillow-throwing stopped; and after a moment the little boy
called:
"Papa! Papa! The weasel is in the trap. Don't you hear Tuké barking? Let
us go too, papa!"
Tuké, you see, was the name of the dog!
Their father said they might, provided they put their shoes on. He would
never let them go out at night, barefooted, for fear of coral or
rattlesnakes.
So they went in their pajamas, just as they were.
And what, if you please, did they find in the trap? Their father stooped
down in the doorway of the hen coop, holding Tuké back by the collar.
When he stood up, he was holding a little raccoon by the tail; and the
little raccoon was snapping and whistling and screaming "Mamma! Mamma!"
in a sharp, shrill voice like a cricket's.
"Oh, don't kill him, papa! He is such a pretty little 'coon!" said the
boy and the girl. "Give him to us, and we will tame him!"
"Very well," said the father. "You may have him. But don't forget that
raccoons drink water when they are thirsty, the same as little boys and
girls."
He said this because once he had caught a wildcat and given it to them
for a pet. They fed it plenty of meat from the pantry. But they didn't
dream that it needed water. And the poor wildcat died.
The cage where the wildcat had been kept was still standing near the hen
coop. They put the raccoon into the cage, and went back into the house.
This time, when they went to bed, they fell fast asleep at once.
About midnight, when everything was still, the little raccoon, who had a
very sore foot from the cuts made in it by the teeth of the trap, saw
three shadows come creeping up toward his cage; for the moon was now
shining faintly. They came closer and closer, moving softly and
noiselessly over the ground. His heart gave a great leap when he
discovered that it was his mother and his two brothers, who had been
looking for him everywhere.
"Mamma! Mamma!" he began to cry from his cage, but soft-like, so as not
to wake up the dog. "Here I am, here I am. Oh, get me out of here! I'm
afraid! I'm afraid! Mamma! Mamma! Mamma!" The little raccoon was choking
with tears!
The mother and the two brother raccoons were as happy as could be to
find him! They rubbed their noses against him through the wires in the
cage, and tried to stroke him with their paws. Then they set to work to
get him out, if they could. First they examined the wiring of the cage,
and one after another they worked at it with their teeth. But the wire
was thick and tough, and they could do nothing with it. Then an idea
came to the mother raccoon.
"People cut wires with files! Where can we get a file? A file is a long
piece of iron with three sides, like the rattle of a rattlesnake. You
push it away from you across the wire, and then you draw it toward you.
Finally the wire breaks. Let's hunt around in the blacksmith shop, and
we may find one."
They hurried off to the shop where the farmer kept his tools. Soon they
found the file and came back with it to the cage. Thinking it must be
very hard to file off a wire, they all took hold of the file and started
pushing it back and forth between two of the wires. They pushed so hard
that the cage began to shake all over and made a terrible noise. In
fact, it made such a loud noise that Tuké woke up and set to barking at
the top of his voice. The raccoons were frightened out of their wits;
and for fear the dog might ask them where they got that file, they
scampered off, with their tails in the air, toward the forest.
The little boy and the little girl woke up very early in the morning to
go to see their new pet, who had been brooding sadly in his cage all
night long.
"What shall we call him?" asked the little boy.
"Seventeen," answered the little girl. "I can count to seventeen!"
And what did "Seventeen" have for breakfast? One of those hen's eggs he
had tried so hard to get the night before. And after the hen's egg, a
grasshopper, and then a piece of meat, and then a bunch of grapes and
finally a lump of chocolate! By the end of the day, he was letting the
two children reach their finger through the cage to scratch his head;
and so pleased was he at all that was now happening to him that he liked
being a prisoner in a cage almost as much as being a free raccoon cub on
the mountain side. He was all taken up with the nice things that were
placed in his coop for him to eat; and he liked those two yellow-headed
children who kept coming to look at him!
That night and the following one, Tuké, the dog, slept so close to
"Seventeen's" cage that when his mother and his two brothers came back
to make another try at rescuing him, they did not dare approach. But on
the third night everything was as it should be. They went directly to
the shop, got the file, and hurried to the cage.
"But mamma," said the little raccoon, "I guess I'd rather stay where I
am. They feed me all the eggs I want, and they are very kind to me.
Today they told me that if I was good, they would soon let me go about
the yard loose. There are two of them, with yellow hair. And they are
man cubs, just as we are 'coon cubs. We shall have a fine time playing
together."
The three wild raccoons were very sad to hear all this; but they made
the best of it, and went away, just promising to come back and see
"Seventeen" every night.
And so they did. Each evening, as soon as it was dark and whether it was
fair or rainy, the mother raccoon came with her two cublets to see their
little brother. He gave them bread and chocolate, which he handed out
between the wires of his cage; and they ate it on the ground nearby.
In two weeks, he was let loose to run about the yard; and every night he
went back to his cage of his own accord to sleep. He had his ears
tweeked a number of times, when the farmer caught him too close to the
hen coop; otherwise he had no trouble at all. The two children became
much attached to him; and when the wild raccoons heard how kind those
man cubs were to their little brother, they began to be as fond of them
as he was.
But one night, when it was very dark and very hot and a thunderstorm was
gathering on the mountains, the wild raccoons called to "Seventeen" in
vain. "Seventeen! Seventeen! Seventeen!" But he did not answer. In great
alarm they crept up to the cage and looked in.
Pstt!
They drew back just in time. There in the door of the cage a big
rattlesnake lay coiled. They had almost touched him with their noses.
And now they knew why "Seventeen" failed to answer! The rattlesnake had
bitten him and probably he was already dead.
The three raccoons decided they must first punish the rattlesnake. They
rushed upon him from three directions and snipped his head off before he
knew what they were about. Then they hurried inside the cage.
"Seventeen" was lying there on the floor in a pool of blood, his feet up
in the air, and his sides shaking as he panted for breath. They caressed
him with their tongues and licked his body all over for more than a
quarter of an hour. But it did no good. "Seventeen" finally opened his
mouth and stopped breathing altogether. He was dead. Raccoons ordinarily
are not much harmed by rattlesnake poison. Some other animals are not
hurt at all. But this snake had bitten "Seventeen" right through an
artery; and he had died, not of the poison, but from loss of blood.
The mother raccoon and her two cublets wept over his body for a long
time; then, since they could do nothing further for him, they left the
cage where he had been so happy and went back to the woods. But they
kept thinking all the time: "What will the two man cubs say when they
find that their little playmate is dead? They will probably be very,
very sad and cry a long time!" They had grown to love the man cubs just
from what "Seventeen" had said of them; and one thought was in their
three heads--to relieve the sorrow of the two man cubs as best they
could.
They talked the matter over earnestly; and at last they agreed to the
following plan. The second youngest cublet looked almost like the
raccoon who was dead. He had the same markings, was about the same size,
and carried himself in much the same way. Why shouldn't he go and crawl
into the cage, taking the place of his brother? The man cubs would
probably be surprised; but nothing more. The four of them had talked
about everything that went on at the farm so much, that the new raccoon
could easily pretend he had been there all along. He might do it so well
even, that the man cubs would not notice anything at all.
So they ran back to the cage, and the little raccoon took the place of
his dead brother. The mother raccoon and her remaining cub took hold of
"Seventeen" with their teeth and dragged him away off to the woods,
where they buried him under the leaves.
The next day, the man cubs were surprised at a number of strange habits
"Seventeen" seemed to have learned during the night. But the new cub was
just as affectionate to them as the real "Seventeen" had been; and they
never guessed what had happened. The two man cubs played about with the
raccoon cub all day long as usual; and at night the two wild raccoons
came to pay their usual visit. The tame raccoon saved bits of his boiled
eggs for them each time; and they would sit down and eat them on the
ground in front of the cage. He told them all that happened at the farm;
and they told him all the news about doings in the woods.