A SCHOOL IN THE GREEN FOREST
It is Old Mother Nature’s rule
For every one to go to school.
_Little Joe Otter._
Peter Rabbit could not keep away from the Green Forest. No, Sir, he
couldn’t. He just couldn’t do it. You see, having discovered those two
queer, brown babies under a big tree on the bank of the Laughing Brook,
he just had to go back there every chance he could get to watch them.
So, whenever he could, he slipped over there to watch. He kept as still
as still could be, and not once did those little brown babies suspect
that he was near. Every day they came out to play, but at the least
sound they would disappear in that snug home, the doorway of which was
between the roots of the big tree.
After a little Peter discovered that there was a school in the Green
Forest, just as there was a school at Johnny Chuck’s home in the Old
Orchard, and another where Danny Meadow Mouse had his home on the Green
Meadows. You see, wherever there are babies there has to be a school.
This is one of the laws of Old Mother Nature. Peter had been quite right
when he had guessed that these babies were the children of Little Joe
Otter. At first they seemed to do nothing but tumble over each other and
play; it was very rough play, the roughest play, that Peter ever had
seen. He didn’t guess that in that play those two brown babies were
learning something, but they were. They were learning how to use their
legs and teeth and bodies.
At first Peter had seen nothing of Little Joe Otter or Mrs. Joe, but he
noticed that at the least rustle of a leaf the two brown babies
disappeared in their home, and by this he knew that they had been taught
that great law of all the little wild people, which is that safety is
the first and most important lesson to be learned.
Then one morning he saw Mrs. Joe out with the two babies, and they were
having a grand frolic. Mrs. Joe would get hold of one end of a stick and
the two little Otters would get hold of the other end of the stick and
try to pull it away from her. In this way they were learning how to grow
strong and to take care of themselves.
Then Mrs. Joe took them a little way into the woods. It just happened
that Reddy Fox had been along that way the night before. She showed them
his tracks and made them smell of them, and when she did this she
growled, and thus they knew that Reddy was an enemy to be watched out
for.
Later, right in the midst of one of their grand frolics, Sammy Jay
suddenly began to scream. Peter knew perfectly well what that scream
meant. He knew by the noise that Sammy had discovered somebody in the
Green Forest. Of course Mrs. Otter knew, and right away she chased her
two brown babies into their home and followed them. Thus they learned
that a screaming Jay is a warning to watch out for danger.
One thing puzzled Peter very much. He knew that Little Joe Otter lives
in the water most of the time, and that of course Mrs. Joe does the same
thing. “I wonder why those youngsters are not taught to swim,” thought
Peter. “I should suppose that a swimming lesson would be one of the very
first things they would get.”
Peter puzzled over this a great deal as one day followed another and
still the Otter babies never once went near the water. They grew fast,
and had the very best times ever were, but always on the land. In fact,
Peter suspected by the way they acted that they didn’t like the water
any better than he did, and you know he doesn’t like it at all. Mrs.
Otter, and sometimes Little Joe, brought them fish to eat, and sometimes
their mother took them on little short hunting trips, but always on the
land. It was too much for Peter; it seemed to him that those Otter
children were being brought up altogether wrong.