STORY IV

UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE YELLOW BIRD

Once upon a time, when Johnnie Bushytail was going along the road to school, he met a fox—­oh, just listen to me, would you!  This story isn’t about the squirrel boy at all.  It’s about Uncle Wiggily Longears to be sure, and the yellow bird, so I must begin all over again.

The day after the old gentleman rabbit had helped Mrs. Wren feed her little birdies he found himself traveling along a lonely road through a big forest of tall trees.  Oh, it was a very lonesome place, and not even an automobile was to be seen, and there wasn’t the smell of gasoline, and no “honk-honks” to waken the baby from her sleep.

“Hum, I don’t believe I’ll find any fortune along here,” thought Uncle Wiggily as he tramped on.  “I haven’t met even so much as a red ant, or even a black one, or a grasshopper.  I wonder if I can be lost?”

So he looked all around to see if he might be lost in the woods.  But you know how it is, sometimes you’re lost when you least expect it, and again you think you are lost, but you’re right near home all the while.

That’s the way it was with Uncle Wiggily, he didn’t know whether or not he was lost, so he thought he’d sit down on a flat stone and eat his lunch.  The reason he sat on a flat stone instead of a round one was because he had some hard boiled eggs for his lunch, and you know if you put an egg on a round stone it’s bound to roll off and crack right in the middle.

“And I don’t like cracked eggs,” said the rabbit.  So he laid the eggs he had on the flat stone, and put little sticks in front of them and behind them, so they couldn’t even roll off the flat stone if they wanted to.  Then he ate his lunch.

“I guess it doesn’t much matter if I am lost,” said the traveling fortune-hunting rabbit a little later.  “I’ll go on and perhaps I may meet with an adventure.”  So on he hopped, and pretty soon he came to a place where the leaves and the dirt were all torn up, just as if some boys had been playing a baseball game, or leap-frog, or something like that.

“My, I must look out that I don’t tumble down any holes here,” thought Uncle Wiggily, “for maybe some bad men have been setting traps to catch us rabbits.”

Well, he turned to one side, to get out of the way of some sharp thorns, and, my goodness! if there weren’t more sharp thorns on the ground on the other side of the path.  “I guess I’ll have to keep straight ahead!” thought our Uncle Wiggily.  “I never saw so many thorns before in all my life.  I’ll have to look out or I’ll be stuck.”

So he kept straight on, and all of a sudden he felt himself going down into a big hole.

“Oh!  Oh dear!  Oh me!  Oh my!” cried Uncle Wiggily.  “I’ve fallen into a trap!  That’s what those thorns were for—­so I would have to walk toward the trap instead of going to one side.”