"ZIP COON: he bites!" This is what I told you was printed in large red
letters on the door of Zip's house, after he had grown so cross and
snappish that he had to be chained up in the wood-shed.
A big countryman came one day with a load of potatoes. Zippy was inside
his house, pretending to take a nap. The man saw the printed letters on
the little door, and said to himself, "Zip Coon! where is he? I'd like
to see him." So he stooped down, and thrust his hand into the house.
You know you can never catch a coon asleep any more than you can a
weasel. Zippy's bright little eyes were wide open: so, when the
countryman's big hand came bouncing in at the door, Zip, quick as
lightning, seized it in his teeth, and gave it a terribly hard bite.
"Goodness, gracious sakes!" cried the man, pulling out his bleeding
hand. "What surprisin' chaps them coons be!" He hadn't seen Zippy; but
he felt enough of him: so he hurried down cellar with his potatoes, and
when he came back had the empty bag wound about his smarting hand.
Zip Coon was very fond of raw eggs. He would take one up in both his
hands, and pound it down hard on the wood-house floor. This would crack
the shell. Then he would turn the egg around, hold it to his mouth, and
suck the inside out, just as you would suck an orange. After he had
sucked the shell clean, he would put one little hand inside, scrape the
empty shell, and then lick his fingers so as to eat every bit of the
egg-meat.
One day, Isabella's sister Ellen gave Zippy a nice, large, fresh egg. He
was very glad to get it, you may be sure, and ate it as I have told you.
Then he wanted another, just as you sometimes want another orange. So
he took hold of Ellen's hand with one of his hands, and with the other
felt way up her sleeve and peeped up with his sharp eyes.
When he found no egg in the sleeve he was angry. He looked up in Ellen's
face in a very wicked way, then stooped down and buried his teeth in her
wrist. Then he turned and ran into the house, clanking his chain after
him.
[Illustration]
Zippy was not always so wicked as this, even after he had to be chained
up; but he was very mischievous. Once, the servants in the kitchen
heard a terrible racket in the wood-house. They went out there and found
Zippy on a high shelf where the blacking-brushes were kept. He was
throwing the blacking-boxes and brushes down, as fast as he could, and
there they lay scattered about the floor. His chain was so long, that he
had climbed up on the shelf and was having a good time.
But, after a while, Zip Coon became so fierce that Isabella didn't know
what to do with him. She was afraid he would do something terrible to
somebody: so she gave him to a man who carried him way off where
Isabella and her sisters never saw him any more. And this is all I have
to tell you about Zip Coon.