CHAPTER XXVI
CHUMS
IT was still damp on the forest floor, with here and there a patch of melting snow, when Fuzzy-Wuzz awoke from his winter sleep in the haymow.
But down on the rocks where the lake lapped over pebbly levels, the sun shone hot and still. Here the little bear was basking when the yellow pup first sighted him.
“How-wow?” exclaimed Wiggledy, the force of his bark raising him clear off his feet.
“Hoof?” asked the cub, rising on his fat hind legs inquiringly.
The children, who had been watching, arrived at that moment, and explained to the pair that they must be friends, though this would hardly have been necessary. The two young animals were soon romping delightedlytogether. Inside a week they were chums.
Lizards basked on the warm rocks, and the new-made comrades, tired of wrestling and playing tag, sprawled out side by side one day to watch them. By and by they began to notice that the rocks and sandy shallows all around them were alert with little goggle eyes that peered up at them with an unwinking stare.
The eyes were set in round bodies mottled brown and deeper brown, just the size of bantam’s eggs with long, fish-like tails attached. What could they be, asked Wiggledy with a soft rumble in his throat.—Fuzz, being near-sighted, did not see them till they moved. The eyes were set in heavy, protruding lids.
They were bull-frog babies, and the two watchers crept down over their bowlder, Fuzzy-Wuzz with paw outstretched ready to make a grab at them. The fat tad-poles would wait saucily till his claws were just above them, then with a sudden flirt of their fleshy tails, they would flip away, just barely out of reach. Then they wouldturn and ogle the little bear with their bulging eyes again. It was tantalizing.
Sometimes Fuzzy would feel a soft body slip past his paw, but before he could clutch it, the prize would be far away, and circling teasingly back again.
Finding a precarious footing on the tip of a rock just above one of the thickest colonies, Fuzzy made a sudden grab,—but quick as thought, they had slapped their way in a solid body just far enough to be out of reach,—and there they ogled him again, maliciously.
The fat cub now moved to another rock to try the trick. This time, splash! he slipped into the slimy water. My, how disgusted he was at that!
With one swift bat of his good right paw, he flipped through the water. This time he sent one flying out on shore. Clambering out himself, he examined his prize drippingly.
Soft and round as an egg without a shell, the tad-pole displayed the buds of feet, where later would sprout as plump a pair of frog’s legs as ever graced a frying pan.His brown back Mother Nature had tinted to look like the rocks to any creature hunting from above.
With cautious paw, the cub flopped him over on his back, displaying the shining nether side that would look so like water to any fish foe hunting from below him.
The pink gills were wide open and gasping, for he was drowning as surely on land as a cub would have drowned under water. With a snap of his jaws, Fuzzy finished the life story of that young frog-to-be.
The chums spent much of their time, the next few weeks, hunting bull-frog tad-poles and field mice together.