“Maybe it’s that you don’t go along the same old paths any more?” enquired the owl.
“No ...,” Bambi spoke slowly, “I don’t go along the same old paths any more.”
“I’ve been seeing a lot more of the world too lately,” remarked the owl, puffing his chest out. He did not tell Bambi that he had been driven out of the old territory he had inherited from his ancestors by a young and reckless lad. “You can’t always stay on the same spot,” he added. Then he waited for Bambi’s reply.
But Bambi had gone. By now he had learned the art of disappearing in silence almost as well as the elder.
The owl was dismayed. “Shameless ...” he grumbled. He shook himself, buried his beak into his plumage and philosophized to himself; “You should never think you could make friends with these posh types. They might seem ever so likeable ... but one day they’ll shamelessly ... and then you sit there looking stupid, just like I am now ...”
Suddenly he fell vertically down to the ground like a stone. He had seen a mouse, which then, caught in his talons, had the time to squeal just once. He tore the mouse into pieces because he was so angry. He pulled the head off this mouthful quicker than he normally would. And then he flew away. “What does Bambi matter to me?” he thought. “What does any of those posh people matter to me? Nothing. They don’t matter at all!” He started to screech. So shrill, so long, that a pair of wood pigeons he passed by were woken up and, with much loud flapping of wings, they fell out of where they had been sleeping.
The storm blew through the woods for many days, tearing the last of the leaves from the twigs and branches. The trees now stood there naked.
In the grey of morning twilight Bambi was making his way home in order to sleep together with the elder in their chamber.
A thin voice called to him, two times, three times in quick succession. He stayed where he was. Then the squirrel swooped down from the tree like lightning and sat on the ground in front of him.
“It really is you, then!” he piped with respectful astonishment. “I recognized you straight away when you passed by me, I didn’t really want to believe it ...”