“This is strange,” Solomon mused. “All my life I’ve been swallowing my food without chewing it. And it has never given me any trouble before.... What shall I do?”
“Don’t eat anything for a week,” she directed. “And fly against tree-trunks as hard as you can. Then come back here after seven days.”
Solomon Owl went off in a most doleful frame of mind. It seemed to him that he had never seen so many mice and frogs and chipmunks as he came across during the following week. But he didn’t dare catch a single one, on account of what Aunt Polly Woodchuck had said.
His pains, however, grew less from day to day—at least, the pains that had first troubled him. But he had others to take their place. Hunger pangs, these were! And they were almost as bad as those that had sent him hurrying to see Aunt Polly Woodchuck.
On the whole, Solomon passed a very unhappy week. Flying head foremost into tree-trunks (as Aunt Polly had instructed him to do) gave him many bumps and bruises. So he was glad when the time came for him to return to her house in the pasture.
Solomon’s neighbors had been so interested in watching him that they were all sorry when he ceased his strange actions. Indeed, there was a rumor that Solomon had become very angry with Farmer Green and that he was trying to knock down some of Farmer Green’s trees. Before the end of that unpleasant week Solomon had often noticed as many as twenty-four of the forest folk following him about, hoping to see a tree fall.
But they were all disappointed. However, they enjoyed the sight of Solomon hurling himself against tree-trunks. And the louder he groaned, the more people gathered around him.
XI
Cured At Last
“How do you feel now?” Aunt Polly Woodchuck asked Solomon Owl, when he had come back to her house after a week’s absence.
“No better!” he groaned. “I still have pains. But they seem to have moved and scattered all over me.”