Fatty looked about him. They stood in a field grown high with tall stalks of some sort, which turned to green, ribbon-like leaves half way up from the ground. Fatty grunted. He was very impolite, you see.
"Well—what is there to eat that's so fine?" he asked. "This stuff isn't good. It's like eating reeds." He had already bitten into one of the stalks.
"What do you call that?" Mrs. Coon asked. She showed Fatty a long roll of green that grew out of one of the stalks.
"That's something like a cattail," said Fatty. "It isn't good to eat."
"Have you ever tried one?" asked his mother.
"N—no," Patty said. "But Freddie Bluejay told me they weren't good."
"He did, did he?" Mrs. Coon said nothing more. She stood up on her hind legs and pulled one of the tall stalks down until she could reach that long, green thing that grew there. In a jiffy she had torn it from its stalk. And then she stripped the green covering off it. "Try that!" said Mrs. Coon with a smile.
Of course it was Fatty who tasted it first. He took a good mouthful of the white kernels, and he was overjoyed. Such sweetness! Such delicious, milky juice! It was a moment that Fatty never forgot.
Fatty began tearing down the stalks for himself and he never said another word until at last he simply had to stop eating just to catch his breath.
"What's its name, Mother?" he inquired.