SHARP EYES MEETS CHUNKY
Sharp Eyes’ cage was being lifted down from the wagon, on which it had
been brought to the park from the train, when the silver fox called out
about the elephant. His cage was set down on the ground, near where
some of the big animals, with trunks and tails, were swaying to and fro
behind big, strong bars.
“Who did you say it was?” asked Chacko, as his cage was placed beside
that of Sharp Eyes.
“Tum Tum, the jolly elephant,” answered the silver fox. “I see him over
there.”
“My name is not Tum Tum,” said the elephant, for he had heard what
Sharp Eyes said.
“Not Tum Tum!” exclaimed the fox. “Then what is it?”
“My name is Bunga,” was the answer. “But I have heard of your friend
Tum Tum. He is in a circus, is he not?”
“Yes,” answered Sharp Eyes. “I met him not long ago. He had been on a
sort of vacation in the jungle, but now he is back in the circus. I
thought, at first, that you were he.”
“No, but all we elephants look pretty much alike,” said Bunga, “so I
don’t wonder you made a mistake. How is Tum Tum?”
“Very well and jolly,” answered Sharp Eyes.
“Oh, he always was that,” said another elephant. “Tum Tum never was
cross or unhappy.”
“I was unhappy when my paw was caught in a pinching trap,” said Sharp
Eyes. “I hope I shall be happy here.”
“We’ll try to make you so,” put in a long-necked giraffe, looking over
the tops of the walls of his cage, in which he was kept next to the
elephants. “We are always glad to see new animals come in,” went on the
giraffe. “We get sort of lonesome just among ourselves. Tell us, have
you had any adventures?”
“No, not any, I’m sorry to say.”
“Oh, yes you have!” chattered Chacko, the monkey, to whom the fox had
talked in the train. “You’ve had lots of adventures! You found a wild
turkey, and you got out of one trap and into another, and you were
chased by a dog.”
“Are those adventures?” asked Sharp Eyes, in surprise.
“Of course,” answered Bunga, the elephant. “Please tell us about them.”
So Sharp Eyes told the zoo animals all that had happened to him.
“And now you are here,” said Bunga, when the fox had finished.
“Yes, I am here,” agreed the fox. “And I expect the next thing they’ll
do will be to take off my silver skin and sell it,” he added sadly.
“Take off your skin and sell it? Well, I guess not!” growled a tiger in
the next cage. “They would no more skin you than they would me! They
keep us for people to look at. Make your mind easy. You will not be
hurt while you are in the zoo. You can not get away, it is true, but
you will have a good place to stay, and all you want to eat.
“I used to think, when I first came here, that I would like to go back
to the jungle, but there I had to sneak out at night to get something
to eat, or water to drink. Here they bring it to me. Of course I am
shut up in a cage, but it is not so bad.”
“Really won’t they take off my fur?”
“No indeed!” said the elephant.
“Then I’m glad,” went on the fox. “I’ll try to like it here in the
zoo, though I’ll miss the North Woods and my father, mother, my sister
Winkle and my brother Twinkle.”
“Oh, you’ll like it here after you get used to being stared at by the
crowd of boys and girls and the men and women who come in,” said a
lion, in a cage next the tiger.
So the animals talked among themselves, trying to make Sharp Eyes
feel at home, for an animal gets almost as lonesome and homesick in a
strange place as you boys and girls might do.
After a while some men came and lifted up the cage of the silver fox,
from where it had been placed when taken off the wagon, and carried it
to a large building. Along the walls were many other cages, and in one
end was a very large one.
The bars of the big cage were set very far apart, and when the fox saw
them he said to himself:
“Ha! if they put me in that cage, with such wide-apart bars in front,
I can easily slip out between them and go back to where my father and
mother live in the hollow log. I must try to run away.”
Sharp Eyes looked a little closer, and noticed that there was a big
pool of water――about a hundred bath tubs full I guess――at one end of
the big cage.
“Ha! I’d like to get a drink there,” thought the silver fox. “I am very
thirsty!”
Just then, all of a sudden, one of the men carrying the cage in which
the fox was still locked, let his end of the box fall. Then the other
man dropped his end, and down the fox cage crashed to the stone floor
in the animal house.
“Look out!” cried one of the men. “The cage will break and that silver
fox will get out!”
And that is just what happened. The cage crashed to the floor, one end
burst open, and the next minute Sharp Eyes found himself free.
“Oh, at last I can run away!” he thought to himself. “But first I’ll go
and get a drink of water in that pool inside the big-barred cage. Then
I’ll run away.”
Before any of the men could grab him, Sharp Eyes made a dash toward the
big pool. Down into it ran a sloping walk, or little hill of stone.
Down this Sharp Eyes walked until he could put his nose in the water.
Sharp Eyes was just going to take a drink when, all at once, he noticed
that the water in the pool was moving. Then, suddenly, something big
and dark brown rose up, as if from the bottom. Sharp Eyes saw a big
mouth open right in front of him. It was a mouth so big that it looked
like the front door of a real house, and inside it was lined with
something that seemed to be red flannel. And then, out of the mouth,
came a puffing sound, and the big animal who belonged to the big mouth,
made a grunting noise, as though gaping and stretching after a sleep.
“Oh, my!” cried Sharp Eyes, as he saw the big mouth. “Who are you, if
you please?”
“I might ask the same thing of you,” went on the big animal, as he
walked up the stone hill, water dripping off him.
“I am called Sharp Eyes, the silver fox,” was the answer, “and I have
had many adventures, but they have not been put into a book as yet.”
You see Sharp Eyes didn’t know about this book just then.
“I’ve had adventures also, and they _have_ been put into a book,” went
on the big creature.
“What is your name?” asked Sharp Eyes.
“I am Chunky, the happy hippo, and――”
“Oh, I’ve heard about you!” interrupted Sharp Eyes.
“You have?” asked Chunky. “Perhaps you read a copy of the book in which
I am spoken of?”
“No, I can’t read,” said Sharp Eyes. “But I heard Don, the dog, telling
about you. I liked to hear about you.”
“That’s very nice of you,” said Chunky. “Yes, Don and I were great
friends. Did Don tell you how I saved the little girl who fell into my
pool?”
“Yes,” answered Sharp Eyes, “he did. It was very nice of you to save
her.”
“Pooh! that was nothing,” said Chunky. “When I saw you standing on the
edge of my pool, I thought it was some one else who had fallen in, and
I came up to see about it. But I am glad to meet you.”
“And I’m glad to meet you,” said Sharp Eyes. “Very glad indeed to meet
you, Chunky. Now I wonder what I had better do――run away now that I am
out of my cage, or stay and let them put me in another? What would you
do, Chunky?”
“I’d stay here in the zoo,” said the happy hippo. “They will give you
nice things to eat and clean water to drink. It is better than the
jungle or the woods. Stay here and be happy.”
“I guess I will,” said Sharp Eyes.
By this time the menagerie men had run toward the hippo’s cage. They
saw Sharp Eyes standing by the big, squatty creature.
“Don’t let him get away!” cried a tall man with a long, sharp hook in
his hand. “Catch the silver fox! Don’t let him escape!”
So the men, with ropes and long poles, ran to catch Sharp Eyes before
he could get out of the hippo’s cage. But Sharp Eyes was not going to
run away.
“Get him! Get him!” cried the men, one to the other. “Get the silver
fox!”