A SCARE THAT DIDN’T WORK
Take my advice and pray beware
Of how you try to scare a Bear.
_Mother Bear._
Chatterer the Red Squirrel was indignant. He was very indignant. In
fact Chatterer was angry. You know he is short-tempered and it doesn’t
take a great deal to make him lose his temper. He had watched Mrs.
Bear and the twins start out from the great windfall and had silently
followed, keeping in the tree tops as much as possible, and taking the
greatest care not to let Mrs. Bear or the twins know that he was about.
Inside he had chuckled to see the twins do exactly what Mother Bear
did. When she sat up and they sat up beside her, they looked so funny
that he had hard work to keep from laughing right out. He had seen many
funny things in the Green Forest, but nothing quite so funny as those
two little Bears, hardly bigger than Peter Rabbit, gravely doing just
exactly what their mother did.
So Chatterer followed, all the time hoping for a chance to give those
twins a scare. But he didn’t want to try it while Mother Bear was
around. So he waited, hoping that she would leave them alone for a few
minutes. Finally Mother Bear set the twins to climbing a tree. It was
then that Chatterer became so very indignant. His sharp eyes snapped as
he watched the twins scramble up that tree. He hoped they would fall.
Yes, sir, Chatterer really hoped those twin cubs would fall.
You see, the trouble was that Chatterer didn’t like the idea of those
little Bears learning to climb trees. He felt that the trees belonged
to the Squirrel family. It was bad enough to have Bobby Coon and
Unc’ Billy Possum climbing them. Now to have two lively little Bears
learning to climb was too much. It was altogether too much.
“They haven’t any business in trees,” sputtered Chatterer to himself,
taking care not to be heard. “They haven’t any business in trees. They
belong on the ground, not in trees. I won’t have them in the trees! I
won’t! I won’t!”
Now of course Chatterer knew, right down in his heart, that those cubs
had just as much right in the trees as had he.
The real truth of the matter was that so long as those little cubs
remained on the ground, Chatterer feared them not at all. He could
be as saucy and impudent to them as he pleased. He could tease them
and try to scare them and feel quite safe about it, so long as their
mother wasn’t about. But if those cubs were going to learn to climb,
and he had a feeling that they would make very good climbers, matters
might be altogether different.
Chatterer watched the twins and he watched Mother Bear. At last the
latter disappeared from sight. Unseen by the twins, Chatterer leaped
across to the very tree in which they were sitting, but above them.
“I’ll give them such a scare that they will either fall down or will
scramble down and never’ll want to climb another tree,” muttered
Chatterer.
Silently he crept up behind them; then he opened his mouth and yelled
at them. “Get down out of this tree!” he yelled. “Get down out of this
tree!”
He was so close to those little Bears that his voice seemed to be in
their very ears. They recognized it as a voice which had scared them
two or three times when they had first come out of the great windfall
to play. It was so close and so unexpected that it startled them so
that they almost let go their hold. Then Boxer turned and for the first
time had a good view of Chatterer. He was looking at a very angry Red
Squirrel. But instead of being afraid and starting to scramble down
from that tree, as Chatterer had expected him to do, Boxer suddenly
started straight for him, and it was plain to see that Boxer was an
angry small Bear.