LITTLE JOE OTTER’S HOME
No matter how you love to roam
There comes a time you want a home.
_Little Joe Otter._
Now though Peter Rabbit didn’t know it, he had walked right straight
over the home of Little Joe Otter. Many other little forest people had
walked over that home without guessing it. You see, Little Joe is just
as smart in making a home as he is in everything else. Little Joe
believes that a home is just for those who live there, and therefore
that it is a secret which no one else should know. He had found Mrs. Joe
far away on the Big River and had brought her back with him up the
Laughing Brook to the Smiling Pool and through the Smiling Pool farther
up the Laughing Brook to the place he had picked out for a home. They
had come right through the Smiling Pool while Grandfather Frog was
sitting on his green lily pad and Jerry Muskrat was sitting on the Big
Rock talking to Peter Rabbit, who was sitting on the bank. Only once had
they shown their little brown heads above the water, and that was when
Peter and Jerry and Grandfather Frog had thought they saw double. You
see, Mrs. Joe was very, very shy, and so Little Joe wanted her to become
acquainted with the Laughing Brook and her new home before he introduced
her to his friends and neighbors.
The place he had chosen for a home was close beside one of the deepest
pools in the Laughing Brook. Growing close to the bank was a big tree
with spreading roots. The bank was steep and mossy. All about grew the
Green Forest. It was very lovely there. Also it was very quiet, and you
probably would have called it very lonely. But it was just such a place
as Otters love.
“Oh!” cried Mrs. Joe, when she saw it. “Is this where our home is to
be?”
“Yes, my dear,” replied Little Joe. “That is, it is if you like it. I
thought we could make our house with a back door between two of the
roots of that old tree, and with a front door deep down under water. By
and by, if we want, we can have a slippery slide down the bank. There
are plenty of fish in the Laughing Brook and we are far enough in the
Green Forest not to have visitors very often.”
Mrs. Joe dived into the little pool. She was gone a long time and Little
Joe waited on the bank anxiously. When she came up she looked very
happy. “It is perfectly lovely!” she cried. “It is the finest place for
a home I ever have seen. Let’s begin to make it right away, Little Joe!”
Little Joe didn’t wait for her to change her mind. He remembered how
many times Polly Chuck had changed her mind before Johnny Chuck
succeeded in getting her to let him dig their home under the old apple
tree in the far corner of the Old Orchard. “We’ll begin right off,” said
he. And that is just what they did do.
Now you know Little Joe Otter can stay under water a long time. Mrs. Joe
showed him just where she wanted the front door, deep down under water.
Then they took turns making a long, nice hallway, slanting up from that
under-water doorway. When it was high enough to be wholly above water
they made the nicest little room, and then began a doorway which would
lead out between two roots of the big tree. At first they didn’t open
this doorway, because you see they had no need of it. They just made the
hall and left the door closed, so there wasn’t a thing to show where
their home was. When they wanted to go out, they just slid down their
front hallway into the little pool and then swam clear across it before
they came up. This was so that if any sharp eyes happened to see them,
they never would guess where they had come from. When it was all done,
they had just the best time ever.