THE STORY OF TWO RACCOON CUBS AND TWO MAN CUBS
Once there was a mother raccoon who had three cubs; they all lived inthe woods eating fruits and berries and birds' eggs. Whenever they wereon a tree top and heard a noise, they would jump head foremost to theground and scamper off with their tails in the air.
One day when the cubs had grown to be quite large sized raccoons, theirmother took them up all together to the top of an orange tree--you mustknow that in South America orange trees, which came originally fromSpain, now grow wild in the forest--and spoke to them as follows:
"Cublets, you are almost big enough to be called raccoons; and it istime you began to hunt for your meals by yourselves. It is veryimportant for you to know how to do this, because, when you get to beold, you will go around all alone in the world, as all raccoons do. Theoldest of you likes snails and cockroaches. He must hunt aroundwoodpiles and under trunks of rotting trees, where there are alwaysplenty of snails and cockroaches. The next to the oldest of you seems tolike oranges. Up to the month of December there will be plenty oforanges right here in this grove. The youngest of you is always askingfor birds' eggs. Well, there are birds' nests everywhere. All he willhave to do is hunt. But one thing, however: he must never go down to thefarm looking for eggs. It is very bad for raccoons to go near farms.
"Cublets, there is one thing more you must all be afraid of: dogs! dogs!Never go near a dog! Once I had a fight with a dog. Do you see thisbroken tooth? Well, I broke it in a fight with a dog! And so I know whatI am talking about! And behind dogs come people, with guns, and the gunsmake a great noise, and kill raccoons. Whenever you hear a dog, or aman, or a gun, jump for your lives no matter how high the tree is, andrun, run, run! If you don't they will kill you as sure as preaching!"
That is what the mother raccoon said to her cublets. Whereupon, they allgot down from the tree top, and went each his own way, nosing about inthe leaves from right to left and from left to right, as though theywere looking for something they had lost. For that is the way raccoonshunt.
The biggest of the cubs, who liked snails and cockroaches, looked underevery piece of dead wood he came to and overturned the piles of deadleaves. Soon he had eaten such a fine meal that he grew sleepy and laydown in a nice cozy bed of leaves and went to sleep. The second one, wholiked oranges, did not move from that very grove. He just went from onetree to another eating the best oranges; and he did not have to jumpfrom a tree top once; for neither men, nor dogs, nor guns, came anywherenear him.
But the youngest, who would have nothing but birds' eggs, had a hardertime of it. He hunted and hunted over the hillsides all day long andfound only two birds' nests--one belonging to a toucan, with three eggsin it, and the other belonging to a wood dove, with two eggs in it. Fivetiny little eggs! That was not very much to eat for a raccoon almost bigenough to go to school. When evening came the little cub was as hungryas he had been that morning; and he sat down, all cold and tired andlonesome, on the very edge of the forest.
From the place where he was sitting he could look down on the greenfields of the farm, and he thought of what his mother had said aboutsuch places.
"Now, why did mamma say that? Why shouldn't I go looking for eggs downalong those fences on the farm?"
And just as he was saying this all to himself, what should he hear butthe song of a strange bird: "Cock-a-doodle-doo-oo-oo"; coming from far,far away and from the direction of the farmhouse.
"My, did you ever hear a bird sing so loud?" said the cublet to himself."What a big bird it must be! And its eggs must be the size of acocoanut!"
"Cock-a-doodle-doo-oo-oo," came the bird's song again. The hungry littleraccoon just couldn't do without one of those eggs the size of acocoanut. The bird was singing somewhere off to the right. So he made ashort cut through the woods toward the field on the other side.
The sun was setting, but the raccoon cub ran with his tail in the air.At last he came to the edge of the woods, and looked down again into thefields.
"Cock-a-doodle-doo-oo-oo!"
Not far away now he could see the farmhouse. There was a man in theyard. The man was wearing long boots, and leading a horse by the bridleinto a barn. On the fence in the barnyard, the little raccoon saw hisbird.
"What a silly little 'coon I am," he said to himself. "That isn't abird! That's a rooster! Mamma showed him to me one day, when we were ontop of a big tree up in the woods. Roosters have a fine song; and theyhave a great many hens that lay sweet eggs. I think I could eat a dozenof those eggs, right now!"
For some time the little raccoon sat looking at the rooster and the barnand the farmhouse, and thinking of what his mother had said. But at lasthe thought: "Mamma is far away! She will never know"; and he made up hismind that as soon as it was dark he would run down to that hen coop andsee what he could find.
Before long the sun had gone completely and it was so dark you couldhardly see your hand before your face. Walking on tiptoe, the littleraccoon came out from the shadow of the woods, and began making his waytoward the farmhouse.
When he got into the yard, he stopped and listened carefully. Not asound! The little raccoon was as happy as could be: he was going to eata hundred, a thousand, two thousand of those eggs! He looked around forthe hen coop. There it was! He stole up to the door and peered in.
On the ground, and right in front of the door, what should he see but anegg? And such a large egg! If it was not as big as a cocoanut, it was atleast as big as an orange! And how brightly it shone in the dark! "GuessI'll keep that egg for dessert," thought the cub for a moment. But hismouth began to water and water, and he simply couldn't wait. He steppedup and put his front teeth into that egg. But--
Trac-c-c!
He had hardly touched it when there was a sharp snapping noise. Thelittle raccoon felt a hard blow strike him in the face, while a stingingpain caught him in his right forepaw.
"Mamma! Mamma!" he called, jumping wildly this way and that. But hecould not get his foot loose. He was caught in a trap! And just at thatmoment a dog began to bark!
All that time when the little raccoon had been waiting in the woods fornight to come, so that he could go down to get his eggs in the hen coop,the man who owned the farmhouse had been playing with his children onthe lawn in the yard. One of them was a little girl five years old; andthe other was a little boy six years old. Both had golden hair. Theywere chasing their father about and falling down every so often on thegrass. Then they would get up again and run some more. The man wouldalso pretend to fall and the three of them were having a splendid time.
When it grew dark, the man said:
"Now let's go and set our trap in the hen coop, so that if the weaselcomes to-night to kill our chickens and eat our eggs, we will catchhim."
They went and set the trap. Then the family had dinner, and the littleboy and the little girl were put to bed.
But they were both very much excited about the trap and the weasel. Theycould not sleep. Finally they sat up in their beds and began to throwpillows at each other. Their father and mother were reading down in thedining room. They heard what the children were doing; but they saidnothing.
Suddenly the pillow-throwing stopped; and after a moment the little boycalled:
"Papa! Papa! The weasel is in the trap. Don't you hear Tuke barking? Letus go too, papa!"
Tuke, you see, was the name of the dog!
Their father said they might, provided they put their shoes on. He wouldnever let them go out at night, barefooted, for fear of coral orrattlesnakes.
So they went in their pajamas, just as they were.
And what, if you please, did they find in the trap? Their father stoopeddown in the doorway of the hen coop, holding Tuke back by the collar.When he stood up, he was holding a little raccoon by the tail; and thelittle raccoon was snapping and whistling and screaming "Mamma! Mamma!"in a sharp, shrill voice like a cricket's.
"Oh, don't kill him, papa! He is such a pretty little 'coon!" said theboy and the girl. "Gi
ve him to us, and we will tame him!"
"Very well," said the father. "You may have him. But don't forget thatraccoons drink water when they are thirsty, the same as little boys andgirls."
He said this because once he had caught a wildcat and given it to themfor a pet. They fed it plenty of meat from the pantry. But they didn'tdream that it needed water. And the poor wildcat died.
The cage where the wildcat had been kept was still standing near the hencoop. They put the raccoon into the cage, and went back into the house.This time, when they went to bed, they fell fast asleep at once.
About midnight, when everything was still, the little raccoon, who had avery sore foot from the cuts made in it by the teeth of the trap, sawthree shadows come creeping up toward his cage; for the moon was nowshining faintly. They came closer and closer, moving softly andnoiselessly over the ground. His heart gave a great leap when hediscovered that it was his mother and his two brothers, who had beenlooking for him everywhere.
"Mamma! Mamma!" he began to cry from his cage, but soft-like, so as notto wake up the dog. "Here I am, here I am. Oh, get me out of here! I'mafraid! I'm afraid! Mamma! Mamma! Mamma!" The little raccoon was chokingwith tears!
The mother and the two brother raccoons were as happy as could be tofind him! They rubbed their noses against him through the wires in thecage, and tried to stroke him with their paws. Then they set to work toget him out, if they could. First they examined the wiring of the cage,and one after another they worked at it with their teeth. But the wirewas thick and tough, and they could do nothing with it. Then an ideacame to the mother raccoon.
"People cut wires with files! Where can we get a file? A file is a longpiece of iron with three sides, like the rattle of a rattlesnake. Youpush it away from you across the wire, and then you draw it toward you.Finally the wire breaks. Let's hunt around in the blacksmith shop, andwe may find one."
They hurried off to the shop where the farmer kept his tools. Soon theyfound the file and came back with it to the cage. Thinking it must bevery hard to file off a wire, they all took hold of the file and startedpushing it back and forth between two of the wires. They pushed so hardthat the cage began to shake all over and made a terrible noise. Infact, it made such a loud noise that Tuke woke up and set to barking atthe top of his voice. The raccoons were frightened out of their wits;and for fear the dog might ask them where they got that file, theyscampered off, with their tails in the air, toward the forest.
The little boy and the little girl woke up very early in the morning togo to see their new pet, who had been brooding sadly in his cage allnight long.
"What shall we call him?" asked the little boy.
"Seventeen," answered the little girl. "I can count to seventeen!"
And what did "Seventeen" have for breakfast? One of those hen's eggs hehad tried so hard to get the night before. And after the hen's egg, agrasshopper, and then a piece of meat, and then a bunch of grapes andfinally a lump of chocolate! By the end of the day, he was letting thetwo children reach their finger through the cage to scratch his head;and so pleased was he at all that was now happening to him that he likedbeing a prisoner in a cage almost as much as being a free raccoon cub onthe mountain side. He was all taken up with the nice things that wereplaced in his coop for him to eat; and he liked those two yellow-headedchildren who kept coming to look at him!
That night and the following one, Tuke, the dog, slept so close to"Seventeen's" cage that when his mother and his two brothers came backto make another try at rescuing him, they did not dare approach. But onthe third night everything was as it should be. They went directly tothe shop, got the file, and hurried to the cage.
"But mamma," said the little raccoon, "I guess I'd rather stay where Iam. They feed me all the eggs I want, and they are very kind to me.Today they told me that if I was good, they would soon let me go aboutthe yard loose. There are two of them, with yellow hair. And they areman cubs, just as we are 'coon cubs. We shall have a fine time playingtogether."
The three wild raccoons were very sad to hear all this; but they madethe best of it, and went away, just promising to come back and see"Seventeen" every night.
And so they did. Each evening, as soon as it was dark and whether it wasfair or rainy, the mother raccoon came with her two cublets to see theirlittle brother. He gave them bread and chocolate, which he handed outbetween the wires of his cage; and they ate it on the ground nearby.
In two weeks, he was let loose to run about the yard; and every night hewent back to his cage of his own accord to sleep. He had his earstweeked a number of times, when the farmer caught him too close to thehen coop; otherwise he had no trouble at all. The two children becamemuch attached to him; and when the wild raccoons heard how kind thoseman cubs were to their little brother, they began to be as fond of themas he was.
But one night, when it was very dark and very hot and a thunderstorm wasgathering on the mountains, the wild raccoons called to "Seventeen" invain. "Seventeen! Seventeen! Seventeen!" But he did not answer. In greatalarm they crept up to the cage and looked in.
Pstt!
They drew back just in time. There in the door of the cage a bigrattlesnake lay coiled. They had almost touched him with their noses.And now they knew why "Seventeen" failed to answer! The rattlesnake hadbitten him and probably he was already dead.
The three raccoons decided they must first punish the rattlesnake. Theyrushed upon him from three directions and snipped his head off before heknew what they were about. Then they hurried inside the cage."Seventeen" was lying there on the floor in a pool of blood, his feet upin the air, and his sides shaking as he panted for breath. They caressedhim with their tongues and licked his body all over for more than aquarter of an hour. But it did no good. "Seventeen" finally opened hismouth and stopped breathing altogether. He was dead. Raccoons ordinarilyare not much harmed by rattlesnake poison. Some other animals are nothurt at all. But this snake had bitten "Seventeen" right through anartery; and he had died, not of the poison, but from loss of blood.
The mother raccoon and her two cublets wept over his body for a longtime; then, since they could do nothing further for him, they left thecage where he had been so happy and went back to the woods. But theykept thinking all the time: "What will the two man cubs say when theyfind that their little playmate is dead? They will probably be very,very sad and cry a long time!" They had grown to love the man cubs justfrom what "Seventeen" had said of them; and one thought was in theirthree heads--to relieve the sorrow of the two man cubs as best theycould.
They talked the matter over earnestly; and at last they agreed to thefollowing plan. The second youngest cublet looked almost like theraccoon who was dead. He had the same markings, was about the same size,and carried himself in much the same way. Why shouldn't he go and crawlinto the cage, taking the place of his brother? The man cubs wouldprobably be surprised; but nothing more. The four of them had talkedabout everything that went on at the farm so much, that the new raccooncould easily pretend he had been there all along. He might do it so welleven, that the man cubs would not notice anything at all.
So they ran back to the cage, and the little raccoon took the place ofhis dead brother. The mother raccoon and her remaining cub took hold of"Seventeen" with their teeth and dragged him away off to the woods,where they buried him under the leaves.
The next day, the man cubs were surprised at a number of strange habits"Seventeen" seemed to have learned during the night. But the new cub wasjust as affectionate to them as the real "Seventeen" had been; and theynever guessed what had happened. The two man cubs played about with theraccoon cub all day long as usual; and at night the two wild raccoonscame to pay their usual visit. The tame raccoon saved bits of his boiledeggs for them each time; and they would sit down and eat them on theground in front of the cage. He told them all that happened at the farm;and they told him all the news about doings in the woods.