Once upon a time animal stories

by Carolyn Sherwin Bailey

“Oh, Mammy, I wish I had a pair of red rubbers like Miss Puddle-Duck’s.”

So he went on and on wishing until his Mammy was all tired out with his wishing and Old Mr. Ground Hog heard him one day.

Old Mr. Ground Hog is very wise indeed, so he said to the little white Rabbit:

“Why don’t you go down to the Wishing Pond? If you look in the water at yourself and turn around three times in a circle you will get your wish.”

So the little white Rabbit went off, all alone by himself, through the woods until he came to a little pool of green water lying in a low tree stump. That was the Wishing Pond. There was a little, little bird, all red, sitting on the edge of the Wishing Pond to get a drink, and as soon as the little white Rabbit saw him he began to wish again.

“Oh, I wish I had a pair of little red wings!” he said. Just then he looked in the Wishing Pond and he saw his little white face. Then he turned around three times and something happened. He began to have a queer feeling in his shoulders, like the feeling in his mouth when he was cutting his teeth. It was his wings coming through. So he sat all day in the woods by the Wishing Pond waiting for them to grow, and by and by, when it was almost sundown, he started home to see his Mammy and show her. He had a beautiful pair of long, trailing red wings.

But by the time he reached home it was getting dark. When he went in the hole at the foot of the big tree where he lived, his Mammy didn’t know him. No, she really and truly did not know him, because she had never seen a rabbit with red wings in all her life. And so the little white Rabbit had to go out again, because his Mammy wouldn’t let him get into his own bed. He had to go out and look for some place to sleep all night.

He went and went until he came to Mr. Bushy Tail’s house, and he rapped on the door and said:

“Please, kind Mr. Bushy Tail, may I sleep in your house all night?”

But Mr. Bushy Tail opened his door a crack and then he slammed it tight shut again. You see he had never seen a rabbit with red wings in all his life.