CHAPTER X
TINY FOLK AND THEIR TROUBLES
ONE thing that always interested the little bear was the robin who used to bring her fat fledglings, nearly as big as herself, to the Ranger’s lawn.
She had made her big clay nest on a beam of the porch, where the young birds would be sheltered from wind and rain. The young robins would flop to the ground, when she urged them, then hop around after Mrs. Red-breast as she pulled grubs and worms from the ground for them. They soon learned to look for the crumbs the children threw them. Fuzzy would watch, and sometimes make a playful dash at them; but at such times they would suddenly find they could fly out of reach.
Another time a humming-bird flew inthrough the open window and began sipping nectar from the bunch of wild flowers the children had brought for the dining-table. Tiniest of birds, he made as much noise as any airplane that size could have made. The children held as still as mice while they watched.
One day Fuzzy was put on his leash just as some one left a bunch of grapes on the porch rail, for the Ranger had ridden down to the valley settlement for supplies the day before, and brought home a basket of the luscious fruit. My, how he wanted those grapes! But he could not reach them. There was nothing left to do but to watch the young robins flying, for their tails had grown longer, and so they could keep their balance better in the air.
When he looked back at the grapes again, an orange-breasted oriole was plunging his beak thirstily into a grape. He only ate one this time, and flew away. But soon he was back again, eating another grape. Fuzzy watched anxiously. Again the oriole came, and the little bear watched the grapes disappear, one by one. When the childrenfinally let him off his leash, there was nothing left of those grapes but the stems.
Never mind, there were lizards and field mice all about the place. This afternoon, while the reddening sun still shone warm on the bowlders, the tiny gray lizards with beady eyes on the alert for flies darted hither and thither among the gray rocks. The instant they saw Fuzzy watching, they would freeze motionless, or rise on their crooked legs till their orange breasts showed, watch him till he came too near, then race into a crack between two stones.
Fuzzy spent much time chasing field mice, or digging them out of their tunnels. One night the family was just sitting down to supper when a clawing at the door announced that Fuzzy wanted to come in. Coming proudly straight to the little girl, Fuzzy laid his catch in her lap. It was a fat field mouse!
The young mouse had not been hurt by Fuzzy’s jaws, and the instant he found himself free, he leaped to the table and raced across it and away, and not even Fuzzy could find him after that. But the nextmorning he was sitting trembling in the mouse trap in the pantry, which was one of these round wire affairs that has a hole on top that lets a mouse get in, but won’t let him out.
How he trembled when the little girl found him. Fuzzy watched to see if the prisoner would be given to him to dispose of. But no, the little girl took the trap out into the woods and there opened the door and let the mouse find a hiding-place in the woods where he belonged.