"Now, I'll play a trick on that elephant—I'll tickle his trunk for him, and he'll think it's a mosquito!" said Uncle Wiggily to himself.
He was just about to do this, when suddenly the crawly thing made a sort of jump toward him, and before the rabbit could move he found himself grasped by a big, ugly snake, who wrapped himself around the rabbit just as ladies wrap their fur around their necks in the winter. It wasn't the elephant's trunk at all, but a bad snake.
"Now, I have you!" hissed the snake like a steam radiator in Uncle Wiggily's left ear. "I'm going to squeeze you to death and then eat you," and he began to squeeze that poor rabbit just like the wash-lady squeezes clothes in the wringer.
"Oh, my breath! You are crushing all the breath out of me!" cried Uncle Wiggily. "Please let go of me!"
"No!" hissed the snake, and he squeezed harder than ever.
"Oh, this is the end of me!" gasped the rabbit, when all of a sudden he heard a great crashing in the bushes. Then a voice cried:
"Here, you bad snake, let go of Uncle Wiggily."
And bless my hat! If the elephant didn't rush up, just in time, and he grabbed hold of that snake's tail in his trunk, and unwound the snake from around the rabbit, and then the elephant with a long swing of his trunk threw the snake so high up in the air that I guess he hasn't yet come down.
"I was just in time to save you!" said the elephant to Uncle Wiggily. "Here, eat this ice cream cone and you'll feel better."
So the rabbit did this, and his breath came back and he was all right again, but he made up his mind never to try to tickle a crawly thing again until he was sure it wasn't a snake.