AMERICAN FORESTRY 



19 



MAMMY COTTONTAIL AND TROUBLE. 



BY ALLEN CHAFFEE 



AUTHOR OF 



I. "THE ADVENTURES OF TWINKLY EYES," THE LITTLE BLACK BEAR 

 (WITH ILLUSTRATION BY PETER DA RU) 



MAMMY Cottontail, the little brown hare, found 

 herself in a part of the woods she did not know. 

 Never before had she dared to venture so far 

 from her home in the Old Apple Orchard. 



But one snowy day the Red Fox Pup had seen a hump 

 of brown on the root of a beech tree, and the hump had 

 suddenly moved! And getting to wind-ward of the un- 

 canny thing, he had found that it was the brown bunny. 



The chase that followed had led to the icy bank of 

 the river, where Mammy, racing for her life, dared a 

 crossing on the thin ice, and where, light as she was, 

 she barely made the other shore. 



Then, sitting up straight, with her little brown paws 

 crossed on her furry chest, and her pink-lined ears point- 

 ing forward, she had watched as the Fox broke through 

 into the icy currant. 



For his part, the Fox Pup was glad enough to be able 

 to scramble back to the bank he had left, and trot off 

 home-ward, with his plume of a tail dragging water- 

 soaked and heavy behind him. 



So far, so good! But Mammy now found herself in 

 a strange new part of the woods. 



Hiding, trembling, under a juniper bush, she waited 

 till mid-afternoon, before her heart stopped hammering 

 at her ribs. Then, circling back to the river, she found 

 to her dismay that the ice had softened, till there was 

 nothing but a scum of floating mush to cross on. She 

 could never get back the way she had come ! 



Where could she hide from the many foes that might 

 want rabbit for supper? She cast bulging eyes down 

 the frosty aisles of trees. Mercy! What was that 

 strange scent on the wind? (A scent too faint for human 

 nose to tell, yet warning enough for a bunny). 



No time to explore! She must hide at once! And 

 with terrified leaps she was back under the juniper bush, 

 where at least nothing could come on her from above. 



For half an hour she crouched there. Then, so sud- 

 denly that she started in spite of herself, she heard a 

 loud thump-thump-thump right behind her! 



"Who are you?" the thumping heels of the new- 

 comer signalled. 



Then came a louder, angrier thump, three times repeat- 

 ed, which in rabbit code said as plainly as words: "Well, 

 I like your nerve." 



The Trail of the Weasel. 

 Mammy Cottontail stirred nervously. For again 

 came that warning thump, which said in rabbit code: 



"I have first right to that juniper bush. And if you 

 don't clear out in just three shakes of your left hind 

 foot, you are going to get in bad with Madame Wood 

 Hare." 



Mammy had, without a doubt, stumbled upon the home 

 of the other bunny. But where could she go? These 

 woods were full of enemies. Should another fox set 

 after her, where could she hide? 



Rolling her eyes around pleadingly at Madame Wood 

 Hare, she had just about decided that it was safer to 

 chance the wrath of her unwilling hostess, when the new- 

 comer gave her a surprise. Leaping straight at 

 Mammy's head, Madame Wood Hare gave her such a 

 blow across the nose with her long hind feet that Mammy 

 whimpered with the pain of it. Of course she had to 

 vacate. 



And before ever the owner of the form under the 

 juniper bush could give her a second blow, the little 

 brown hare was darting away in long, tired leaps 

 through the wind-swept woods. 



There was a patch of willow shrub by the river, and 

 Mammy would have liked to wait for night-fall and 

 make a dinner off the tender tips. But she was not long 

 in finding out why Madame Wood Hare had turned her 

 out. It was because she needed her own house to hide in. 



For not far back in the woods, Mammy came across 

 a trail that was new to her, a delicate, lacy trail with 

 the tiny, sharped-toed foot-prints of some long, slim 

 creature with nails that could climb a tree trunk. And 

 clinging fresh to those foot prints was the musky scent 

 of a flesh-eating animal. 



Mammy's teeth chattered with freight. It was un- 

 doubtedly the trail of a weasel, most dreaded of all her 

 enemies ! 



Yes, there could be no mistake about it. Here the tiny 

 trail ran straight up a tree-trunk, and a blood-stained 

 feather on the ground beneath told its own story of a 

 chickadee's nest left empty. 



And there, high in the tree tops, was the sudden 

 chattering of a terrified squirrel. Good! The squirrel 

 had reached his hole. He turned, presenting a mein of 

 such long fierce teeth that the weasel must have hesi- 

 tated as to whether it was quite worth while. 



What should Mammy do? For the weasel might at 

 any moment see her leaping through the snow, or cross 

 her trail, and then it would surely be all up with her. 

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