John Breck

“ NIBBLE RABBIT TO THE RESCUE!
“Go up on the bank and find the quail,” Doctor Muskrat had advised. So Nibble Rabbit set out as obediently as possible, because he meant to do exactly what the nice old gentleman told him to, though he didn’t know something that had happened while he was taking his nap on the snug little raft among the reeds.
You see, Doctor Muskrat had heard the quail come fluttering down to the pond for their evening drink, and he remembered that Bob White has the kindest heart in the world. So he squealed, very softly. And Bob flew right out to see what he wanted. ”

“ You see everything has something to be afraid of.”
They weren’t going very fast, Stripes was eating snails and licking little clusters of insect eggs from the under sides of leaves and digging grubs among the roots, while Nibble took a bite here and a bite there as is the way with rabbits. “Everything has something to be afraid of—and yet it’s terrible to be afraid,” he said.
“But if you’re not afraid, the others are afraid of you,” answered Stripes. “You’re the only rabbit who ever scared me. When you got so cross because I stole those quail eggs, I didn’t know what you’d do to me. ”

“ And Bobby had to catch his breath before he could talk. “You’re safe,” he gasped. “You lost Glider way back there. I asked you if you could fly. You can. You fly faster than a thistledown in a north wind.” And Nibble twitched his nose into a pleased smile, while Bobby stopped to fan himself with his wings. “Glider couldn’t see you bounce oft on the other side of the Brush Pile,” he explained when he got his breath, “because his head is so near the ground.”
Nibble’s ears flew up in surprise. ”

“ Doctor Muskrat was right; no one, not even Tommy Peele, had appointed him executioner of the woods and fields, and he’d been pretty quick about wanting to kill every one who did any harm, instead of letting them learn better—if they would. You see, a dog is so big and strong he has to be careful not to bully the other beasts. No decent dog can be happy if he does that. But he couldn’t make up his mind that Stripes Skunk deserved to be trusted.
Neither did Nibble Rabbit. He wanted to know what every other one of the Woodsfolk thought about it. ”

“ You asked Stripes Skunk if he dared to risk the same fate at your paws as happened to Tad Coon. What was it?”
“I won’t tell,” sniffed the old mouse. “A fieldmouse never changes. I said I wouldn’t tell you and I won’t. So there!”
“Dried Stalks and Wormy Acorns!” exploded the doctor. “You won’t, won’t you? Well, you’re a long way from being popular with all the mice who’ve been sick to-night over this foolish way you made war on Stripes Skunk. How will they fancy having the Woods and Fields make war on the mice? Eh? And we’ll do it, too!” ”

“ For the first thing every mother rabbit teaches the fluffy bunny babies, as soon as they open their eyes, is to run from anything that has the strange and scary scent of the Things-from-under-the-Earth, whether they wear scales or fur. Snakes have it just the same as Stripes the Skunk, or Slyfoot the Mink, or the weasel whom the Woodsfolk usually mean when they speak of the Killer. ”

“ Softly he crept through the Clover Patch for fear Glider might be lurking in the long grass, ready to pounce on him. But long before he reached the Brush Pile itself he knew exactly where the wicked snake was. He was right on top of it.
He was right on top of it, and what is more, Bobby Robin was circling about his ugly head to jeer at him. “Yah!” Bobby was shouting, “Heap big hunter, beaten by a bunny! Better go catch frogs in a marsh!”
Now Nibble knew that was a most insulting thing to say. For a frog is so stupid that almost anything can catch him—especially a snake. ”

“ A fieldmouse never changes. Let me remind you, Doctor Muskrat, that we lived as we do to-day before any of you were made. This earth belongs to us fieldmice.”
“Perhaps,” said Nibble Rabbit, “but let me point out to you that if you fieldmice tried to run it there wouldn’t be a green thing left to grow out of the earth. We’d all starve, down to the very last mouse.”
“Impossible! Idiotic!” gasped the mice. “We will never change. Never!”
“If that is your answer, I shall put the matter to a vote. Does Stripes Skunk go or stay?” asked Doctor Muskrat. ”

“ We’re Mallards. We fly faster than the wind. Now I’ll tell you something. This wind is carrying more than ducks. Can’t you smell it?”
Nibble sat up and sniffed very carefully. “It’s queer and dry,” he said, “and it seems to make my fur want to stand on end.”
“Go make yourself a nest, Bunny,” said the duck good-naturedly. “What you smell is a Terrible Storm coming, and it’s coming mighty fast.” He turned back his shining green head to fix the little curly feathers that quirked up over his tail. ”

“ And as soon as he sniffed that scent in the air he said, “Is that you, Tad Coon?”
“No,” said a meek, whiny voice; “it’s me, Stripes Skunk. I’ve been talking with the little owls. Please, won’t you make a compact with me?”
“Compact!” Nibble exclaimed. “Of course I won’t! And no one else will!” At that Stripes began to cry. “Won’t you even try me?” he sobbed. “I’d not want to be friends. I just want to be let alone as long as I’m good. Won’t you give me a chance to show you how very good I can be?”
So Nibble finally promised to talk things over with Watch and Doctor Muskrat. ”

“ On the third day after Great-Grandfather Fieldmouse declared war, the mice began to fight. They felt sure they would have an easy victory. How do you suppose they meant to do it? They were going to spoil Tommy Peele’s potato patch!
This was really a bright idea. I don’t believe for a minute that they thought of it themselves—they must have heard it from somebody. I don’t mean that any one was a traitor to Stripes Skunk, but the fieldmice are always creeping about and listening to what people say when nobody imagines they’re near. ”

“ You see the mushrooms make little dance halls for the Fairies to use on Midsummer Eve. They have smooth, velvety grass on the inside with a circle of little cushiony stools around them. And the mice use them after the Fairies are through. Only they use the seats to hide under when Hooter the Owl flits past. They nibble them, too, for refreshments. You can see their toothmarks on every Fairy Ring you find after midsummer.
“I can’t dance,” murmured Nibble. He felt a bit embarrassed. Rabbits do try sometimes out in the brush where they think no one can see them, but they are very clumsy about it. ”

“ You remember, Nibble, how the sun and the wind and the rain didn’t take care of things the way she’d ordered them to, so winter came, and the plants hid in the earth and wouldn’t be eaten, and her very own new creatures got so terrible starvation hungry that some of them took to eating each other—like the wolves ate the cows. ”

“ When the Woodsfolk see a man they don’t stop to look at him; they run and hide. And Nibble had never even got a glimpse of one yet. Neither had the bats. But the sleepy bat just kept on insisting, “He’s neither Fish, Bird, nor Beast, if he hasn’t a tail.”
“Then what is he?” demanded Chatter. He thought he had asked something the bat couldn’t answer.
“What does he wear?” said the bat.
And now it was Chatter who didn’t know what to say. For a Man doesn’t wear scales or feathers or fur. ”

“ He’s very fat and old; so fat that his tummy drags on the earth like Miner the Mole’s; so old that his ears are all crinkled. He makes as much fuss getting over the ground as a mud turtle and lots more noise with his grunting and sniffling. And of course he had a bodyguard of his family. He has a tremendous one, you know—a great big stump simply alive with them. Watch escorted him to the flat stone where Doctor Muskrat was sitting.
Doctor Muskrat greeted him. “We ’re all ready to listen,” he said, “except Tad Coon. ”

“ When men make that red spot that’s all hot—like a buzzer’s tail, you know—come out of the end of a stick—that’s fire,” he explained.
“They do it to the bulrushes,” nodded the doctor. “The red spot gets bigger and bigger until everything’s red and then the hot things disappear.”
“Exactly. But men don’t always let it make everything red. They keep it in one place and use it to cook with. They’re cooking Grandpop.”
“Cooking?” echoed Nibble and Doctor Muskrat.
“Bare bones and broken biscuits!” sniffed Watch. “I can’t explain that to you any more than I can explain about the buzzers to Tommy Peele. ”

“ For three days and three nights Nibble Rabbit’s storm party stayed in the little Cornstalk tent in the middle of the Broad Field. The Terrible Storm might behave as badly as it pleased but they were having too good a time to care. And it might yowl as loudly as it could but they were making too much noise to listen. For they knew that no one was going to interrupt them.
When nobody could eat any more they began to amuse themselves. First of all they had a dance. The three partridges could drum with their wings and Nibble with his feet, for they learned it from the Indians. ”

“ But the potato bug isn’t pretty and he isn’t nice. He’s mustard-yellow, with three stripes, which mean that some folks can eat him, and a pair of dots which mean that most folks can’t. Just before the first frost in the fall he burrows down under the Earth-that-is common-to-all and makes himself a little house, snugly waterproofed with varnish against the rains. There he learns all sorts of tricks from the Bad Ones who are always making Mother Nature so much trouble. ”

“ Stripes answered slowly. “Being good is something even Mother Nature couldn’t give the First Skunk; he’d have to get it for himself. For the other things, I like being just the way we are. When I had to climb the tree to help Bob White Quail I’d have liked the handy-paws the First Skunk wanted. But that’s just because I’ve never practised climbing, like my little cousin Spotty. And handy-paws are no earthly good to dig with—you just ought to see these paddy-paws of mine make the dirt fly. ”

“ Nibble’s feet just bounced of themselves, and Bobby’s wings beat, and Glider’s ugly head landed right between them. For Glider hears everything that goes on along the ground. He had heard Nibble stamping to call his mother. If Mammy Rabbit had answered Glider would never have come. But she didn’t—so Glider did. And now lonely little Nibble Rabbit was racing off and Glider was after him, simply boiling over with rage, as fast as he could put tail to the ground. He didn’t think Nibble could run so very far. ”

“ And half of the hives don’t even know them. They come to my waterlily patch for the same thing the wasps do. A wasp once told me that the yellow dust you got on your nose when you went to smell for the honey was the best food in the world for growing youngsters.”
“That’s so,” agreed Stripes Skunk with his funny little three-cornered ears pricked right straight up. “I find it on their legs most every time I catch them. Just the same, I do taste honey in most every bee I eat.”
“Eat bees!” sniffed Doctor Muskrat, turning up his whiskery nose. “Eat bees? You’re as poor a story teller as Tad Coon.” ”

“ If Watch the Dog isn’t executioner of these woods and fields, neither are you their hen, to brood over them. You’re getting as bad as Jenny Wren in nesting season.” He said that because Jenny Wren is the fussiest thing in feathers, and she’s always scolding other people for not doing what she thinks is the proper way to do things. She nearly drives the meadowlarks wild by saying, “I told you so” every time someone finds their eggs that they hide in the long grass, just because she can’t make them take to nesting in her little squinchy dark knotholes. ”

“ Don’t you know better than to tell Killer Weasel and Silvertip the Fox, and Hooter the Owl, and any one else who wants to know where they’ll find a nice young rabbit for breakfast.”
But the tears ran faster than ever down Nibble’s whiskers. “It’s Hooter,” he sniffed. “He caught her when she went down to the brook for a drink. I know he did. She’d never leave me.”
“Nonsense,” said Bobby, and he said it peckishly, for no one likes to hear a little rabbit cry. “I know your mother, and she knows the law of the woods. You can fly—run, I mean—can’t you. And feed yourself?” ”

“ Trailer was trying to tell me. Coon, coon, coon!” he sang, sniffing around to find him.
“Lie still,” warned Doctor Muskrat, who was hiding with Tad in the Pickery Things.
“I can’t,” whimpered Tad. “This place is all right for a rabbit, but the pond is where I belong.” And with that he staggered to his feet and started for it. But right on the edge of the bank he stumbled. Down he rolled, paws over fur, with Nibble Rabbit and Doctor Muskrat scuttling after him.
“Look out!” barked Watch. “Let me get at him. He’ll fight like anything! They always do.” ”

“ If Glider ever makes any one look him straight in the eye they never get away from him.” He said it in a scared voice and Nibble could see that was exactly what Glider was trying to do.
Suddenly he felt himself crouch back against the log again, ears tucked between his shoulders, whiskers twitching with the smell of fox in his nostrils. His muscles did these things of themselves before he really knew that Silvertip was standing at his very elbow. He had followed Nibble’s footsteps to the end of the trail right past the perch to where Nibble had jumped back. ”

“ He caught in the lower branches, and then he began—well, Tad Coon or Chatter Squirrel would never have called it climbing! It was scratch and scramble and grunt and whine, but he kept right on. And the higher he went the lower the sapling leaned. Down, down came Bob White till he lay on the ground. Nibble had hardly touched his teeth to that wicked wire when it let go its hold and Bob White was free. And just about then Stripes Skunk let go, too, and came tumbling down on top of them.
There lay Bob White, too weak to fly, his eyes closed, and his poor little thirsty beak half open. ”

“ And by this time their furry skins were feeling pretty tight. “There’s this about honey,” Stripes drawled, “you never know when you’ve had enough until you’ve had too much. Seems like we’d better stop off awhile.”
“Uh-huh,” mumbled Tad Coon, just a little bit doubtfully, because he’d never had enough to find out. The most he ever dares to do is to snoop out a mouthful and run. But he followed Stripes down to Doctor Muskrat’s pond, and they took a good drink and cleaned up their paws and their whiskers. ”

“ We’ve always been as good as good, no matter how much trouble we have with the hawks and the owls. We eat some seeds, but not all, and the bugs. Bugs come from under the earth, you know, and the plants hate them. But we didn’t have to ask for horns or claws to take care of ourselves—that’s because we’re so clever.” And he spread his lively little wings, with brown edges to every feather, and squinted conceitedly at them over his shoulder.
“And the mice?” added Nibble. He didn’t want birds to have all the credit.
“Mice, indeed!” chirped the sparrow, quite sharply. “Mice! ”

“ They’re always hiding and pouncing out on some one. But birds are such fools, you know, lots of them never learn the difference.”
“Well, you wear such awful claws,” Stripes began.
“At your service,” said the hawk.
“Any time you need them. Just send word by a kingbird. But you don’t need me any longer just now.” And off she flew.
All the birds had been still as death while the hawk was talking to Stripes Skunk. Even the kingbirds and Coquillicot the Thrasher stayed hidden. But before the hawk was twenty wing-beats away, they came bursting from every bush and tree, calling and singing to him. ”

“ But the cows didn’t make much use of their horns after they did get them, because they are so stupid.
“They say Mother Nature was sorrier over the wickedness of the wolves than over any of the rest because she trusted them more than most,” he went on. “You see, they were her own beasts, not like the weasel who came up from under the earth and was wicked from the very first.”
“Were lots of others bad, too?” demanded Nibble. “Bad things are always interesting, you know.
“Oh, yes. Even some of the birds.” Chirp said this as though it were the most wicked thing in the world for a bird to be bad. ”

“ Next thing they’ll be saying they made it themselves, instead of Mother Nature.”
“But there are a great many fieldmice,” argued Stripes. “They may do a lot of harm.”
“They can’t do much more than they always have,” the angry old muskrat snorted harder than ever. “If they haven’t enough sense to see that, what more can you expect of them? The whole tail-and-whiskers of them, taken together, hasn’t the brains of a bullfrog.”
Nibble Rabbit didn’t say much. He had friends among them so, of course, they came to him. “I know they kill you,” he said, “but you treat the plants just the same. ”

“ Chatter retorted in a rage. “You and your ducks! You’ll stand there trying to mind my business for me until Silvertip catches you.” But there’s no way of knowing how much angrier Chatter might have been because right then something did happen. He gave one shriek—“Hooter!”—and made a flying leap for that hollow Oak Tree. And Mrs. Hooter clapped her beak at the hole.
“Stickly Prickles!” said Nibble to himself—that really isn’t swearing. “What are those owls doing out this time of the day?” For he could see Hooter flapping sleepily along behind his mate. It was too early in the day for him. ”

“ She couldn’t sit comfortably on a tree-trunk without it.”
“A tail,” squeaked the bats who hadn’t been heard from since they hung themselves up from the roof, “a tail is the handiest pocket in the world. You use it for flies in summer and to warm your paws in winter. Do have one.”
“I do use mine,” said Nibble laughing, “but not for any of the reasons you give. I flash mine so any rabbit behind me can tell whether it’s safe to follow me. Why, my mother never bothered to talk as long as she knew I could see her tail.” ”

“ And he began to scrub his face and polish off his ears with his little soft forepaws.
“Going to look where?” asked Bobby Robin.
“Oh, lots of places—the Clover Patch, and the Brush Pile, and the Broad Field. But first I’m going to see if there’s any fur under Hooter’s tree.”
“What?” squawked Bobby. He came tumbling down to the ground where he could make Nibble look him straight in the eye and listen to an awful lecture.
“You’ll do nothing of the sort,” he said. “Now that you have to see and hear and smell and feel for yourself you will have to be twice as careful as you ever were before. ”

“ Somebody might have noticed easily enough for Bobby and Glider were making such a terrible racket that every one was coming to listen to them. The grasses were full of mice and the bushes were full of sparrows who all hated the snake. Even Chatter Squirrel, who doesn’t get on with Bobby any too well himself, came leaping across his pathway among the branches.
Bobby and Glider were making such a racket that everyone was coming to listen to them
“Snail eater, snail eater!” ”

“ That tail sent Nibble spinning. Luckily he landed right side up and went bouncing off faster than when Glider was chasing him. But Silvertip didn’t see him. Silvertip was too busy on his own account.
For that cow wasn’t the sleepy and serious kind. She was young and active. But Silvertip, coming along with his nose to the ground, didn’t see her.
She lowered her horns and rolled her eyes around, pawing footfuls of snow about her shoulders. “Wolf!” she suddenly bellowed and ran at him.
Nibble Rabbit thought his end had come. But his feet didn’t think at all; they just ran. ”

“ And we’ll keep on going until it stops.”
“What will it do if it catches you?” demanded Nibble, opening his eyes very wide.
“It’ll throw snow all over us so we can’t see our way to fly,” answered the lady duck. “It’ll cover up all the water with ice so we can’t feed. When it’s very had we can’t even find a hole big enough to thaw our feet in. Ugh! I hate to fly so fast. We ought to have come three days ago. I knew what it was the first day when it snarled at the wind. It wasn’t afraid!”
“Afraid?” Nibble sat up and wiggled his ears at the idea. “Are storms ever afraid.” ”

“ And the bat nodded as though he knew it all the time.
“All right,” agreed Chatter cheerfully. “But how about Man?”
“Man?” shouted Nibble and the mice and the partridge all together. For this was news! ”

“ Is this the end of the world?”
“No,” said Nibble, and he nearly laughed because Chatter was so funny when he was afraid. “It’s only the end of the Big Oak. I have a place to sleep and plenty of food. Come along.”
“Me too,” called Gimlet the Little Downy Woodpecker who lived in a branch of the tree. “Us too,” chorused all the little field-mice who had burrowed in its roots. And “Us, too,” piped three partridges who had been snuggled in the bushes beside it. ”

“ If you lay back your ears and shorten your tail we’ll never stop you. We’ll shelter you from the summer sun and the winter wind. We’ll warn you of your enemies and bar your path behind you. We’ll serve you as long as you let us.’
“And just then my great-grandfather thought he could hear the Weasel very close, so he cried despairingly. ‘I’ll choose the Pickery Things.’ Down dropped his ears, up shrunk his tail, and away he ran. But we’ve never been sorry. The Pickery Things have kept their word.”
“Dear me, how interesting!” said the lady mouse when Nibble Rabbit had finished. ”