So off they started, the bunny rabbit gentleman and Wonderland Alice who had a day's vacation from the book with her name on it. Now and then she could slip out of the book covers and go off to have a real adventure with Uncle Wiggily.
The bunny uncle and the little girl with the pretty, flaxen hair had not gone very far over the fields and through the woods before, all of a sudden, as they were walking under some trees, something long and twisty and rubbery, like a big fire hose, reached out and grabbed them.
"Oh, my!" cried Alice, trying to get loose, which she could not do. "A big snake has us!"
"No," said Uncle Wiggily, looking around as best he could, for he, too, was held fast as was Alice. "This isn't a snake."
"What is it?" asked Alice.
"It's a bad circus elephant," said the bunny, "and he has caught us in his trunk. Oh, dear! Please let us go!" he begged the big animal.
"No," sadly answered the circus elephant, for it was indeed he. "I can't let you go, for if I do they will all sit on my back and bite me."
"Who will?" asked Uncle Wiggily, curious like.
"The mosquitoes," was the answer. "You see they have tried in so many ways to catch you, and haven't done it, Uncle Wiggily, that they finally came to me. About a million billion of them swarmed around me, and they said they'd bite me until I had the shiv-ivers if I did not help them catch you. So I had to promise that I would, though I did not want to, for I like you, Uncle Wiggily.
"If I hadn't promised, though, the mosquitoes would have bitten me, and though I seem to have a very thick skin I am very tender, not to say ticklish, when it comes to mosquito bites. So I hid here to catch you, and I'll have to hold you until the mosquitoes come to get you. I'm very sorry!" and the elephant wound his rubbery nose of a trunk still more tightly around Uncle Wiggily and Alice.