HOW THE FUNNY BUNNY SMELLED A JOKE
Lipity, lipity, lipity, Nibble Rabbit hopped down the long lane from
Tommy Peele’s red barn. He was in a dreadful hurry to get home to the
Woods and Fields.
Out in the Snowy Pasture the wind blew cold. The Red Cow stood with
her back to it, looking very sad and thoughtful, but she spoke to
Nibble politely, for she’d found her temper again. Pretty soon he was
passing the cornstalk tents in the Broad Field, but one of them
smelled so foxy that he didn’t wait there for Silvertip to come back.
Now he was in the Clover Patch. He stole past the oak that blew down
in the Terrible Storm, and around the Brush Pile. Then he went
straight for his own old hole.
How he had dreamed of it when Tommy had him in that cage! No one had
been there since the Terrible Storm, for the doorway was drifted shut.
So in he popped. And then he almost popped right out again, for there
was someone in it.
Yes, someone was in his very own home, and he couldn’t tell who. But
it was someone with a nice clovery breath, like White Cow’s, so Nibble
thought he couldn’t be dangerous. “Here!” he called. “Whoever you are,
wake up! This hole is mine!”
But Someone never answered.
He felt Someone’s warm fur, listened to Someone’s breathing. He
touched Someone’s fat side with his paw. Then he tried to shake
Someone by the scruff of his neck, but Someone was much too big for
him. And Someone wouldn’t wake.
Nibble cocked his head on one side and thought about it. Then he tried
a few experiments. At last he said: “Very well. There’s plenty of room
for both of us in here. I don’t know but we’ll both be more
comfortable. But you just remember when you do wake up that this hole
is really mine.” Someone just slept on. But Nibble didn’t care, for he
made a perfectly lovely foot-warmer.
The next morning Nibble brushed the sleep out of his eyes with his
furry paws and nudged Someone. “Come along,” he urged. “We’ll hunt
some breakfast.” For it was the dark of the moon when rabbits feed at
early dawn and dusk. They prefer moonlight at other times. “I’ll get
him out,” he thought, “and have a look at him.”
Someone only made a little sucking noise as though he were eating
something perfectly delicious in his dream, and went on sleeping.
“You’re a funny beast,” said Nibble, right out loud. “I’m going to ask
Doctor Muskrat about you.” Someone slept right on. So off Nibble set
for the pond among the cattails. And all the breakfast he found along
the way was some coarse grass, very dry and wind-whipped, and the dry
brown seed heads of yarrow. And that wasn’t much after the wonderful
breakfast Tommy had given him.
Everything was all changed. The cattails were drifted waist deep in
snow, and the pond was all ice, so he could walk right up to Doctor
Muskrat’s house in the middle of it. He thumped No answer. He thumped
again, and then he danced as hard as he could on top of it. He was
having a very busy time, all by himself, when he heard Doctor
Muskrat’s gruff voice calling, “Who’s that? What do you think you’re
trying to do, anyway?”
Nibble flashed about and saw the doctor’s tousled head poking from a
hole among the cattails. “Good morning,” he said politely, “I was just
looking for your front door.”
“Well, you’ll find it here, over this warm spring—the one spot in the
pond that doesn’t freeze shut, so I always have a place to come for a
breath of fresh air.” The old doctor was puffing as he made his way
through the crusty hillocks between the bulrush stems. “Duck me, but
it’s Nibble! Dear, dear! What did you want? You aren’t ill?” And he
was all ready to dive back after one of his famous roots.
“No, indeed, but you know everything,” Nibble began confidently.
“Won’t you please tell me who’s asleep in my home hole and won’t wake
up?” And he told all about it.
“Hm!” Doctor Muskrat wriggled his nose thoughtfully, much as any nice
old gentleman will when his spectacles are pulled too far down on it.
“It sounds to me—it most certainly sounds to me like that fat old
bluffer, Snoof Woodchuck.”
Nibble’s ears pricked. “Does he bite?” he asked anxiously.
“Oh, no,” Doctor Muskrat reassured him. “He’s a harmless old crank,
and a strict vegetarian, though the garter snakes say he’s a snappish
fellow before he completely wakes up in the spring. Who wouldn’t be,
with their perpetual whispering and squirming? He lets it out that
he’s a kind of hermit, and sits meditating in his hole, with his eye
on the weather, but I’ve always suspected he was snoozing. On the day
after the first February moon casts her shadow, he pretends to come
out and deliver his opinion. Though I never knew any one who really
saw him.”
Even People know the story. They call it Groundhog Day. And
“Groundhog” is just a rude nickname for the woodchuck. Though how any
one but the woodsfolk came to hear about it is a mystery.
“I’ll bet you a sassafras root,” went on the doctor contemptuously,
“that lazy old skeezicks never wakes up a day before Tad Coon.”
“But if everybody thinks he does,” Nibble objected, “there must be
something behind it.”
“There is,” Doctor Muskrat agreed. “There’s a lot of talk, and he’s
the one who starts it, too. It would make you sick to hear him
straddling around after the frost is out of the ground saying ‘I told
you so. I told you it would be bad weather, or good weather,’
whichever it has happened to be. But I never saw any one who had heard
him say it.”
[Illustration: The old doctor was puffing as he made his way through the
bulrush stems.]
“Well,” Nibble insisted, “why doesn’t someone keep watch and tell on
him?”
Doctor Muskrat shook his head. “If you didn’t keep watch so that
everyone would know they’d go right on believing him. And if you did
that, and he did wake up, the joke would be on you. And that’s never
any fun.”
Well, that certainly kept Nibble quiet for a little while. He was
thinking. Pretty soon his nose began to wrinkle and his eyes hid like
little pinpoints, deep in his fur. He was trying so hard not to laugh.
“Doctor Muskrat,” said he, “how soon is that February moon?”
Doctor Muskrat waddled up the bank and took a nip of willow stem.
“Grubs and clam shells!” he exclaimed in surprise. “Sap’s stirring.
Why, it’s only the hatching of an egg away. [That’s two weeks as the
woodsfolk count time.] Nibble,” he added curiously, “I believe you’re
smelling something.”
“I am,” Nibble chuckled. “I’m smelling a wonderful joke. Half of it
will be on that old snoozer in my hole and the other half will
be—who’ll the other half be on?”
“There aren’t many folks out,” answered the doctor, telling them off
on his paw. “There’s Chewee the Chickadee, Chaik the Jay, and Gimlet
the Woodpecker—you couldn’t possibly fool him —and the fieldmice. The
fieldmice! They do nothing but tattle and gossip and they’ll believe
anything!”
And Nibble was delighted. “Well, the other half of this joke will be
on the fieldmice. Doctor Muskrat, did you ever hear that the fur of a
woodchuck woven into a mouse’s nest is a sure charm against an owl’s
catching them? But it’s got to be plucked the day after the first
February moon.”
Doctor Muskrat thought a minute, and then he laughed. He laughed so
hard he slapped his tail on the ice, because he saw what Nibble Rabbit
was thinking about.