All around the Smiling Pool and then up and down the Laughing Brook Farmer Brown’s boy tramped, and each trap he found sprung and buried in the mud.  He had stopped whistling by this time, and there was a puzzled frown on his freckled face.  What did it mean?  Could some other boy have found all his traps and played a trick by springing all of them?  The more he thought about it, the more puzzled he became.  You see, he did not know anything about the busy day the Minks and the Otters and the Muskrats and the Coons had spent the day before.

Old Grandfather Frog, sitting on his big green lily-pad, smoothed down his white and yellow waistcoat and winked up at jolly, round, red Mr. Sun as Farmer Brown’s boy tramped off across the Green Meadows.

“Chugarum!” said Grandfather Frog, as he snapped up a foolish green fly.  “Much good it will do you to set those traps again!”

Then Grandfather Frog called to Billy Mink and sent him to tell all the other little people of the Smiling Pool and the Laughing Brook that they must hurry and spring all the traps again as they had before.

This time it was easy, because they knew just where the traps were, so all day long they dropped sticks and stones into the traps and once more sprung them.  Then they prepared for a grand feast of the good things to eat which Farmer Brown’s boy had left, scattered around the traps.

CHAPTER VII:  Jerry Muskrat Makes A Discovery

The beautiful springtime had brought a great deal of happiness to the Smiling Pool, as it had to the Green Meadows and to the Green Forest.  Great-Grandfather Frog, who had slept the long winter away in his own special bed way down in the mud, had waked up with an appetite so great that for a while it seemed as if he could think of nothing but his stomach.  Jerry Muskrat had felt the spring fever in his bones and had gone up and down the Laughing Brook, poking into all kinds of places just for the fun of seeing new things.  Little Joe Otter had been more full of fun than ever, if that were possible.  Mr. and Mrs. Redwing had come back to the bulrushes from their winter home way down in the warm Southland.  Everybody was happy, just as happy as could be.

One sunny morning Jerry Muskrat sat on the Big Rock in the middle of the Smiling Pool, just thinking of how happy everybody was and laughing at Little Joe Otter, who was cutting up all sorts of capers in the water.  Suddenly Jerry’s sharp eyes saw something that made him wrinkle his forehead in a puzzled frown and look and look at the opposite bank.  Finally he called to Little Joe Otter.

“Hi, Little Joe!  Come over here!” shouted Jerry.

“What for?” asked Little Joe, turning a somersault in the water.

“I want you to see if there is anything wrong with my eyes,” replied Jerry.

Little Joe Otter stopped swimming and stared up at Jerry Muskrat.  “They look all right to me,” said he, as he started to climb up on the Big Rock.