The Three Bears of Porcupine Ridge

by Jean M. Thompson

So there he lived all alone and in time he became known as a sort of a hermit. Ebenezer was really a fine, handsome fellow, with a black, pointed snout and stiffly bristling whiskers, deep, yellowish-brown fur, expressive, meditative green eyes, and small, alert, round ears, and when he moved about, or the wind blew across his fat back, his fur was so long and fine that it actually waved. But most remarkable of all Ebenezer’s many attractions was, perhaps, his fine, plume-like tail, of which he was inordinately vain.

Now Ebenezer Coon took what might be called “solid comfort.” The baying hounds never molested him, for just beneath and all around his home tree grew a perfect battlement of thorn bush, and often Ebenezer, from a safe retreat in some abandoned squirrel’s nest, would peek cautiously over its edge and with little rumbling grunts of satisfaction and fun he would watch the baffled hounds who had scented his retreat, while they gave up the chase in disgust, backing out with torn, bleeding ears and cruel spikes from the thorn bush piercing their inquisitive snouts.

One night, just as the big, yellow moon arose from behind the dark mountains, and its rays began to penetrate and filter through the thick dark pines, Ebenezer awoke from his customary, all-day sleep and began to pull himself up out of his nest. He dearly loved to go abroad on a moonlight night, enjoying the scenery while he leisurely foraged about for food. Having clawed his way up out of his hole he took up his position on a flat limb of the pine, gazing forth over the prospect with approval, and turning over in his mind just what he should do that night.

The owls were already out, hooting and calling soft answers back and forth to each other, and hermit thrushes were still singing their plaintive lullabies drowsily, in the thorn thickets, while down in the marshes the frogs and peepers had already begun their nightly serenade. Occasionally, from far off over the mountain, a whippoorwill called lonesomely. Even the bats were out foraging, for the soft night moths which they loved to hunt on the wing, and flapped, squeaking shrilly, close to Ebenezer’s head.

Ebenezer felt lazy, and began to stretch out first one black, claw-tipped foot, then the other, yawning and showing all his little sharp white teeth. At last he was quite awake and instantly began to realize that he was frightfully hungry. His pressing needs soon set his sluggish wits to work and he began to think longingly of a far-away field of ripening corn. True, the corn was a long distance from home, but Ebenezer never bothered about distances when he went hunting for sweet corn. It was the one dainty in all the world for which he cared most.

Now the more he thought about the milk-white, ripening kernels of corn, encased in their pale green, silken husks, the hungrier did Ebenezer become, until, unable to endure the situation longer, with sudden, desperate haste he began to slide and claw his way down the trunk of the oak tree. Ebenezer was now in fine spirits, for the night was simply perfect, and just suited his plans, so he frolicked along the forest path, often giving little ridiculous skips and bounds into the air for sheer joy. He skirted a deep ravine, then crossed the brook where he paused to dip his black snout into the bubbles, scattering a shoal of silvery minnows leaping and playing in the water.

Just before Ebenezer reached the corn-field he came across a queer, round bundle, or ball, lying directly in his path. Ebenezer never turned out for anything which happened to be in his road. He was far too indolent to do that—he always waited for others to make way for him. So he kept right on, and when he came close to the queer ball he playfully decided to see if it was alive, and have some fun with it. He reached forth, rather gingerly at first, and touched the thing with the tip of his paw. It did not move, so then he commenced to jostle it rudely about with his black snout. Just as he was beginning to rather enjoy the game, all of a sudden the supposed ball suddenly unrolled itself, stood upright and charged savagely at him. And then before Ebenezer knew it, he had been bowled over on his fat back, with his nose and cheeks stuck full of cruel sharp quills. The supposed ball had simply been a stray porcupine who had rolled himself up into a neat ball and gone to sleep.

Without stopping to even glance at poor Ebenezer, the porcupine, having revenged himself for being disturbed, turned and waddled back into the forest, grunting indignantly to himself as he traveled.

“Gar-r-r-r, gar-r-r-r,” snarled Ebenezer in a perfect frenzy of agony and rage, lifting his fore paws to his smarting cheeks and trying vainly to pull out the sharp, barbed quills which were penetrating his flesh. But he soon found out that the more he rubbed and scratched, the worse the cruel quills hurt him.

“Gar-r-r-r, gar-r-r-r,” howled Ebenezer again, more loudly and impatiently than before. Just then a white cottontail rabbit chanced to be passing that way, and heard the agonized cries of the poor raccoon and instantly saw what had happened, for once one of her own family had encountered a porcupine.