CHAPTER IXLOUIE TAKES LESSONS OF THE WOODSFOLKIt was early in the morning when Louie woke up and began to rub his eyes. Where was he? What were those little cheepy sounds all around him and that rustling and pattering--yes, and splashing? He remembered that splashing; it was the last thing he heard the night before. Tad Coon had been splattering and scrubbing in Doctor Muskrat’s pond.That’s exactly where he was; down by Doctor Muskrat’s pond, with his head pillowed on the grass at the edge of Doctor Muskrat’s flat stone. The splashing wasn’t all Tad Coon’s; a little bit of it was the swish of Doctor Muskrat diving in head first when Louie stretched his arm. He dove in such a hurry that he left a nice newly dug sweetflag root behind him.Louie opened his eyes, and then he lay very, very quiet. For all the Woodsfolk were out getting their breakfasts; they weren’t paying the least attention to him. He never knew there were so many of them. Chatter Squirrel ran down a tree and nibbled the edge of a mushroom. Three little mice ran down to drink; one gnawed the head of a bulrush Doctor Muskrat had cut down, and another shinned up a leaning grass stem and ate its seeds. Bob White Quail’s whole family came strolling by, dear little bright-eyed, striped brown puffballs, just beginning to have wing feathers. One of Stripes Skunk’s children jumped right over his feet; he was chasing a grasshopper. Nibble Rabbit’s bunnies were mostly chasing each other. They kicked up their furry heels and flicked their tufty little tails at each other, playing hide and seek in and out of some burdock leaves. Fat Tad Coon was making a happy whiny little song through his nose while he scrubbed another frog before eating it. And all the little birds would perk up their heads, give a touch or two to their feathers, and fly down to spatter in the pond and wet their whistles, maybe snatch a bug or a worm, before they began their morning song. By the time they were all wide awake Louie’s head was ringing with the racket. But he didn’t want them to stop--no, indeed, he just wanted to sing with them.When Louie opened his eyes, all the woodsfolk were out getting their breakfasts.He was very careful about getting up because he didn’t want to scare any of them. He sneaked down to wash, because everybody else was doing it, you know. First thing he knew he felt so happy he was whistling. Chaik the Jay shouted “Hey!” at him. And he just shouted back, “Hey yourself!” Because by then he knew Chaik was just making fun of him. Why, he was one of them; couldn’t he just make as much noise and have as much fun?Yes, and have something to eat, too. He didn’t want a mushroom, like Chatter, because mushrooms sometimes give little boys worse pains inside them than the potato plants gave the foolish mice. He didn’t want a grasshopper, or a seed, like the quail, or a plantain leaf, like a bunny, or a frog or a bug or a worm. But there was that root of Doctor Muskrat’s. He smelled it--just like the wild things do. He tasted it. Then he ate it. Yum-m-m! It tasted like more.The rest of the Woodsfolk didn’t pay any attention to Louie, but old Doctor Muskrat kept swimming round, wondering what had become of the root; he never dreamed that little boy would eat it.Louie watched him for quite a while before he thought about it himself. Then he said: “You poor old rat. Never mind, I’ll pay you back.” And he waded right in among the cattails, scaring ’bout a dozen turtles who were sitting on a log, and grubbed up another root that had the same kind of leaves on it. He put that one on the stone where he’d found the one he ate.Doctor Muskrat just blinked in surprise. He came out and sniffed it. He tasted it. “Why, that boy’s awfully clever. He’s found the right one first thing,” said he to himself. “Wonder if he could do it again?” So this time he went after another kind of a root.Louie came up close and looked at it. Then he hunted and hunted until he found the kind of a plant it grew on. It was a big juicy mallow, the kind the doctor gave Nibble Rabbit that very first day when he found the little bunny in his cattails. You know how good that was! He laid it out on the flat stone and waited for Doctor Muskrat to taste it so he’d be sure it was the right one.Wasn’t Doctor Muskrat pleased? Just wasn’t he! He called: “Tad, Tad Coon. This is the smartest boy I ever saw. He’s learning faster than any youngster I ever taught. If he doesn’t take to hunting us, these woods and fields will be just like Mother Nature made the world in the First-Off Beginning of Things.”“O-ho!” said Tad, waddling over to see what was going on. “We’ll just have to show him what’s right and what isn’t--like we showed Stripes Skunk. I don’t believe he knows a bit more about it. I don’t guess he ever meant to be bad.”“Yes,” agreed Doctor Muskrat, “but we mustn’t show him all our secrets right away; he might get caught again. I don’t want him carrying any tales back to that man he lived with. He knows enough already.”Just then they pricked up their ears. Clump, clump, clump, came Louie’s father down the lane. Louie pricked up his ears, too. He knew his father would be angry because he had to drive up the cows himself. He knew what his father would do if he caught his little runaway son. Down he dropped on his hands and knees and crawled up the widest tunnel where Tad Coon creeps into Nibble Rabbit’s Pickery Things. He hid right in the very spot where Nibble hid the Red Cow’s bad baby. And his father couldn’t find hide nor hair of any one.Tad chuckled to Doctor Muskrat: “He isn’t going to get caught again.”And Louie didn’t, either. It was fun down by Doctor Muskrat’s pond, even if you were only a little boy instead of a furry wild thing--or a feathery one. When the sun grew warm, all the furry folk found themselves nice cool nests and went back to snooze again. Even the birds were quiet.Louie wasn’t quite as comfortable as the rest because he didn’t have any fur--his legs were bare, and the mosquitoes bothered him--and he didn’t have any dark hole where he could crawl in and hide from them. But he was pretty smart, all the same. He didn’t try to hide in the bushes because all the little bugs who were taking their naps on the under side of the leaves woke up and buzzed around him. He lay out under Tad Coon’s tree, where the wind blew them right past, and covered himself with some nice flat branches after he’d shaken the bugs out of them. That certainly amused Tad Coon.Miau the Catbird, who wears a gray coat and makes a noise like a week-old kitten, when he doesn’t sing, came and peeked at him. He raised that little black patch on his head, just as though he were lifting his hat to Louie. It looked as if he were a very polite little bird trying to say “Good morning.”My, but didn’t he flutter when Louie answered, “Good morning, yourself, Mr. Bird!” But the little boy said it in such a nice voice Miau couldn’t stay scared, so he chirped back.“Is that the way you say it?” giggled Louie, and he tried to talk exactly like him. He didn’t talk bird talk well at all. You ought to have heard Miau squawk, because he thought it was funny. And Louie squawked, too, so a couple of blackbirds with bright scarlet patches on their shoulders came over to see what was going on. So did Bobby Robin, and Chip Sparrow, who is one of Chirp Sparrow’s wild cousins, not nearly so big or dressed up, but with a lovely song, and a gorgeous black and orange oriole. A fine noise they were making.But right in the middle of all their fun Louie heard another noise. It was his mother calling him. Her voice wasn’t happy, like those noisy birds, but very sad and lonely. Louie jumped up and ran as fast as ever he could to answer her.“Oh, Louie, Louie! Your father said you weren’t here, but I sort of knew where I’d find you,” she cried when she had kissed him. “You mustn’t run away from me! I’ve been so afraid something would happen to you!”“It did,” laughed Louie; “lots of things.” And he told her all about how nice all the Woodsfolk had been, and how the birds were teaching him bird talk. And where he got his breakfast--just everything. But she said, “Come home, and I’ll give you a better breakfast than that muskrat has in his whole pond.”Do you know, Doctor Muskrat was really disappointed when he saw Louie Thomson go trotting up the lane beside his mother. “It’s too bad,” said he. “That boy of yours was learning very fast, Tad Coon. If he’d stayed down here by the pond just a little while longer he’d have been as wild as any of us.” You see the Woodsfolk wanted to have a nice wild boy to play with just as much as Louie ever wanted a nice tame coon.Tad Coon’s own ears were drooping. “Maybe he was hungry,” Tad guessed. “Maybe we didn’t have the right things to feed him.” He knew what that was, because he’d been so hungry himself when he was shut up in Louie’s cage.“Nonsense!” sniffed Doctor Muskrat. “If he’d only wait until Tommy Peele could teach him his way of fishing, he’d have had all he wanted.” You see, muskrats can eat their fish without taking the trouble to cook them.Tad sighed. He was really just as disappointed as the doctor. A little boy was such fun; he did such queer things--he was as much fun for Tad Coon as Tad was for him. “That was his mother,” he said at last. “Maybe he was too little to leave her, like Nibble Rabbit’s bunny. He isn’t anywhere near full grown. All the same, I don’t think she takes very good care of him.” He was thinking that when Louie’s father struck him with the broom, his mother never did anything to stop him.I guess Louie’s father would have been pretty s’prised to know Tad thought he was trying to kill his very own little son. He didn’t mean to hurt Louie--he just thought that Louie ought to obey him like Watch the Dog obeyed Tommy Peele. Watch wanted awfully to fight with Tad Coon because of what Tad did to Trailer the Hound, but Tommy just wouldn’t let him. Louie wanted to take some corn for his coon, and he just went ahead and took it anyway, even if his father forbade him. Watch knew you ought to obey, but even he couldn’t have explained to Tad Coon about it. Louie knew, deep down inside, but he didn’t want to believe it. He was still angry.Tad Coon thought and thought. By and by he said, “Maybe our boy’s mother knows what’s best for him. They mostly do. Maybe he couldn’t go wild. He hasn’t a lick of fur to his skin. What would he do in the winter time? Bury himself in the mud like a frog? Eh?”“Find himself one of those little trees of skin, like the red men Stripes Skunk told us about,” answered the doctor. “Stripes might remember where they got them.” He meant the skin tents the Indians used and he didn’t know that they had to kill great big buffaloes and tan their skins; he thought they just hunted for them like Tad hunts for a hollow tree to sleep in.“I’m afraid they’re all gone, like those red men,” said Tad. “None of us have ever seen one.” And he was sort of lonesome till the middle of the afternoon, when who should come trotting back to the pond but Louie! And Tad was just as glad to see him as Louie had been to find Tad had come back to his old cage again.
It was early in the morning when Louie woke up and began to rub his eyes. Where was he? What were those little cheepy sounds all around him and that rustling and pattering--yes, and splashing? He remembered that splashing; it was the last thing he heard the night before. Tad Coon had been splattering and scrubbing in Doctor Muskrat’s pond.
That’s exactly where he was; down by Doctor Muskrat’s pond, with his head pillowed on the grass at the edge of Doctor Muskrat’s flat stone. The splashing wasn’t all Tad Coon’s; a little bit of it was the swish of Doctor Muskrat diving in head first when Louie stretched his arm. He dove in such a hurry that he left a nice newly dug sweetflag root behind him.
Louie opened his eyes, and then he lay very, very quiet. For all the Woodsfolk were out getting their breakfasts; they weren’t paying the least attention to him. He never knew there were so many of them. Chatter Squirrel ran down a tree and nibbled the edge of a mushroom. Three little mice ran down to drink; one gnawed the head of a bulrush Doctor Muskrat had cut down, and another shinned up a leaning grass stem and ate its seeds. Bob White Quail’s whole family came strolling by, dear little bright-eyed, striped brown puffballs, just beginning to have wing feathers. One of Stripes Skunk’s children jumped right over his feet; he was chasing a grasshopper. Nibble Rabbit’s bunnies were mostly chasing each other. They kicked up their furry heels and flicked their tufty little tails at each other, playing hide and seek in and out of some burdock leaves. Fat Tad Coon was making a happy whiny little song through his nose while he scrubbed another frog before eating it. And all the little birds would perk up their heads, give a touch or two to their feathers, and fly down to spatter in the pond and wet their whistles, maybe snatch a bug or a worm, before they began their morning song. By the time they were all wide awake Louie’s head was ringing with the racket. But he didn’t want them to stop--no, indeed, he just wanted to sing with them.
When Louie opened his eyes, all the woodsfolk were out getting their breakfasts.
When Louie opened his eyes, all the woodsfolk were out getting their breakfasts.
He was very careful about getting up because he didn’t want to scare any of them. He sneaked down to wash, because everybody else was doing it, you know. First thing he knew he felt so happy he was whistling. Chaik the Jay shouted “Hey!” at him. And he just shouted back, “Hey yourself!” Because by then he knew Chaik was just making fun of him. Why, he was one of them; couldn’t he just make as much noise and have as much fun?
Yes, and have something to eat, too. He didn’t want a mushroom, like Chatter, because mushrooms sometimes give little boys worse pains inside them than the potato plants gave the foolish mice. He didn’t want a grasshopper, or a seed, like the quail, or a plantain leaf, like a bunny, or a frog or a bug or a worm. But there was that root of Doctor Muskrat’s. He smelled it--just like the wild things do. He tasted it. Then he ate it. Yum-m-m! It tasted like more.
The rest of the Woodsfolk didn’t pay any attention to Louie, but old Doctor Muskrat kept swimming round, wondering what had become of the root; he never dreamed that little boy would eat it.
Louie watched him for quite a while before he thought about it himself. Then he said: “You poor old rat. Never mind, I’ll pay you back.” And he waded right in among the cattails, scaring ’bout a dozen turtles who were sitting on a log, and grubbed up another root that had the same kind of leaves on it. He put that one on the stone where he’d found the one he ate.
Doctor Muskrat just blinked in surprise. He came out and sniffed it. He tasted it. “Why, that boy’s awfully clever. He’s found the right one first thing,” said he to himself. “Wonder if he could do it again?” So this time he went after another kind of a root.
Louie came up close and looked at it. Then he hunted and hunted until he found the kind of a plant it grew on. It was a big juicy mallow, the kind the doctor gave Nibble Rabbit that very first day when he found the little bunny in his cattails. You know how good that was! He laid it out on the flat stone and waited for Doctor Muskrat to taste it so he’d be sure it was the right one.
Wasn’t Doctor Muskrat pleased? Just wasn’t he! He called: “Tad, Tad Coon. This is the smartest boy I ever saw. He’s learning faster than any youngster I ever taught. If he doesn’t take to hunting us, these woods and fields will be just like Mother Nature made the world in the First-Off Beginning of Things.”
“O-ho!” said Tad, waddling over to see what was going on. “We’ll just have to show him what’s right and what isn’t--like we showed Stripes Skunk. I don’t believe he knows a bit more about it. I don’t guess he ever meant to be bad.”
“Yes,” agreed Doctor Muskrat, “but we mustn’t show him all our secrets right away; he might get caught again. I don’t want him carrying any tales back to that man he lived with. He knows enough already.”
Just then they pricked up their ears. Clump, clump, clump, came Louie’s father down the lane. Louie pricked up his ears, too. He knew his father would be angry because he had to drive up the cows himself. He knew what his father would do if he caught his little runaway son. Down he dropped on his hands and knees and crawled up the widest tunnel where Tad Coon creeps into Nibble Rabbit’s Pickery Things. He hid right in the very spot where Nibble hid the Red Cow’s bad baby. And his father couldn’t find hide nor hair of any one.
Tad chuckled to Doctor Muskrat: “He isn’t going to get caught again.”
And Louie didn’t, either. It was fun down by Doctor Muskrat’s pond, even if you were only a little boy instead of a furry wild thing--or a feathery one. When the sun grew warm, all the furry folk found themselves nice cool nests and went back to snooze again. Even the birds were quiet.
Louie wasn’t quite as comfortable as the rest because he didn’t have any fur--his legs were bare, and the mosquitoes bothered him--and he didn’t have any dark hole where he could crawl in and hide from them. But he was pretty smart, all the same. He didn’t try to hide in the bushes because all the little bugs who were taking their naps on the under side of the leaves woke up and buzzed around him. He lay out under Tad Coon’s tree, where the wind blew them right past, and covered himself with some nice flat branches after he’d shaken the bugs out of them. That certainly amused Tad Coon.
Miau the Catbird, who wears a gray coat and makes a noise like a week-old kitten, when he doesn’t sing, came and peeked at him. He raised that little black patch on his head, just as though he were lifting his hat to Louie. It looked as if he were a very polite little bird trying to say “Good morning.”
My, but didn’t he flutter when Louie answered, “Good morning, yourself, Mr. Bird!” But the little boy said it in such a nice voice Miau couldn’t stay scared, so he chirped back.
“Is that the way you say it?” giggled Louie, and he tried to talk exactly like him. He didn’t talk bird talk well at all. You ought to have heard Miau squawk, because he thought it was funny. And Louie squawked, too, so a couple of blackbirds with bright scarlet patches on their shoulders came over to see what was going on. So did Bobby Robin, and Chip Sparrow, who is one of Chirp Sparrow’s wild cousins, not nearly so big or dressed up, but with a lovely song, and a gorgeous black and orange oriole. A fine noise they were making.
But right in the middle of all their fun Louie heard another noise. It was his mother calling him. Her voice wasn’t happy, like those noisy birds, but very sad and lonely. Louie jumped up and ran as fast as ever he could to answer her.
“Oh, Louie, Louie! Your father said you weren’t here, but I sort of knew where I’d find you,” she cried when she had kissed him. “You mustn’t run away from me! I’ve been so afraid something would happen to you!”
“It did,” laughed Louie; “lots of things.” And he told her all about how nice all the Woodsfolk had been, and how the birds were teaching him bird talk. And where he got his breakfast--just everything. But she said, “Come home, and I’ll give you a better breakfast than that muskrat has in his whole pond.”
Do you know, Doctor Muskrat was really disappointed when he saw Louie Thomson go trotting up the lane beside his mother. “It’s too bad,” said he. “That boy of yours was learning very fast, Tad Coon. If he’d stayed down here by the pond just a little while longer he’d have been as wild as any of us.” You see the Woodsfolk wanted to have a nice wild boy to play with just as much as Louie ever wanted a nice tame coon.
Tad Coon’s own ears were drooping. “Maybe he was hungry,” Tad guessed. “Maybe we didn’t have the right things to feed him.” He knew what that was, because he’d been so hungry himself when he was shut up in Louie’s cage.
“Nonsense!” sniffed Doctor Muskrat. “If he’d only wait until Tommy Peele could teach him his way of fishing, he’d have had all he wanted.” You see, muskrats can eat their fish without taking the trouble to cook them.
Tad sighed. He was really just as disappointed as the doctor. A little boy was such fun; he did such queer things--he was as much fun for Tad Coon as Tad was for him. “That was his mother,” he said at last. “Maybe he was too little to leave her, like Nibble Rabbit’s bunny. He isn’t anywhere near full grown. All the same, I don’t think she takes very good care of him.” He was thinking that when Louie’s father struck him with the broom, his mother never did anything to stop him.
I guess Louie’s father would have been pretty s’prised to know Tad thought he was trying to kill his very own little son. He didn’t mean to hurt Louie--he just thought that Louie ought to obey him like Watch the Dog obeyed Tommy Peele. Watch wanted awfully to fight with Tad Coon because of what Tad did to Trailer the Hound, but Tommy just wouldn’t let him. Louie wanted to take some corn for his coon, and he just went ahead and took it anyway, even if his father forbade him. Watch knew you ought to obey, but even he couldn’t have explained to Tad Coon about it. Louie knew, deep down inside, but he didn’t want to believe it. He was still angry.
Tad Coon thought and thought. By and by he said, “Maybe our boy’s mother knows what’s best for him. They mostly do. Maybe he couldn’t go wild. He hasn’t a lick of fur to his skin. What would he do in the winter time? Bury himself in the mud like a frog? Eh?”
“Find himself one of those little trees of skin, like the red men Stripes Skunk told us about,” answered the doctor. “Stripes might remember where they got them.” He meant the skin tents the Indians used and he didn’t know that they had to kill great big buffaloes and tan their skins; he thought they just hunted for them like Tad hunts for a hollow tree to sleep in.
“I’m afraid they’re all gone, like those red men,” said Tad. “None of us have ever seen one.” And he was sort of lonesome till the middle of the afternoon, when who should come trotting back to the pond but Louie! And Tad was just as glad to see him as Louie had been to find Tad had come back to his old cage again.