“Look, mother,” called Bambi, “there’s a flower flying away.”
“That’s not a flower,” his mother said. “That’s a butterfly.”
Bambi was delighted and watched the butterfly as it very gently freed itself from a stalk of grass and, in tumbling flight, floated away. Now Bambi saw that there were many such butterflies flying in the air over the meadow, they seemed to be in a hurry but they were slow, they tumbled up and down in a game that enchanted him. They really did look like flowers moving about, gay flowers that did not want to just keep still on their stalks and had got up to have a little dance. Or like flowers that had come down with the sun, still had not found a place for themselves and were carefully looking round for one, they would sink down and disappear as if they had already found a place but then they would fly straight up again, just a little way at first, and then higher in order to carry on with their search, always seeking because the best places were already occupied.
Bambi looked at all of them. He would have so liked to see one of them close up, would have so liked to examine just one of them, but he was not able to. They never stopped flitting about between each other. It made him quite dizzy.
When he once again looked down at the ground everything he saw brought him a thousand delights, nimble, living things that flew up when he stepped near them. All around him there was something jumping and sprinkling into the air, something that became visible in a tumultuous swarm and, the next second sank back into the green ground it had come from.
“What’s that, mother?” he asked.
“That’s the little ones,” she answered.
“Look,” called Bambi, “there’s a piece of grass that’s jumping up ... it’s jumping up so high!”
“That isn’t grass,” his mother explained, “that’s a nice grasshopper.”
“Why does it jump like that?” asked Bambi.