They swung their heads toward him, jaws moving in graceless discord as they continued to chew the grass with which they had filled them. Then they lowered their heads to crop more grass.
Frosty lay down to eat his prize, liking the taste of hot flesh in his mouth and the salty tang of fresh-caught prey. He ate all except the hairless tail, and the mouse whetted his appetite for more. Slipping out from beneath his root, he looked about for the deer.
Still cropping gustily, they were feeding toward the forest on the far side of the meadow. Frosty minced after them. They had driven one mouse from its covert; the chances were that they would drive more. Frosty edged up to a sleek doe that suddenly wheeled and pounded down on him.
Just in time, he saved himself by slipping behind a boulder. . . . When he could no longer hear the plunging doe, he peered over it. She had resumed feeding. More watchful now, Frosty slunk toward the deer. They saw him but paid no attention. Evidently they did not mind his trailing them. They did not want him on the place where they were feeding now or where they might feed a moment from now.
Another mouse panicked. Frosty caught and ate it. By the time he had a third mouse, his appetite was satisfied. In addition, he had learned a priceless lesson; large grazing beasts are apt to disturb small creatures that dwell in the grass. The deer, having grazed their fill, drifted to beds in the shady forest. Frosty curled up in a sunny spot and let this new world come to him.
When two more crows winged lazily over the meadow, cawing as they flew, he knew it as the same sound he had heard while a prisoner in the sack and satisfied his curiosity on that score. He was alert to every furtive rustling, every note in the multi-toned song the breeze sang, every motion in the grass and every flutter of every leaf on a grove of nearby sycamores.
The creatures that lived in the meadow were small ones; various insects; moles and mice; cottontail rabbits and harmless snakes. Frosty identified each in turn and after he'd done so, he stored each away in his brain. Having met and known anything at all, it was his forever. He'd never forget it and never fail to know it should he meet it again. But there was much that he did not know and the unknown roused his instant curiosity. When he saw a flicker of motion over near the sycamores, he concentrated his whole attention on it.
He did not know that he'd seen one of two gray squirrels that had chosen to abide for a couple of days in the sycamores, or that all he'd seen was a glimpse of its tail as it climbed a tree. It was strange and he could not rest until it was familiar. Frosty began to stalk the sycamores, and the stalk saved his life.
He saw nothing and heard nothing, but the same coyote that had ripped the sack open was suddenly upon him. Knowing of the gray squirrels, and hoping to catch one or the other on the ground, the coyote had been stalking the sycamores, too. Finding Frosty, the creature had accepted him instead.
Not stopping to see what threatened, but reacting instantly, Frosty sprang for a sycamore trunk and drew himself up less than two inches ahead of the coyote's snapping jaws. He climbed to the sycamore's crotch and turned to look down. Tongue lolling like a dog's, the coyote looked anxiously up and whined his disappointment. Then, realizing he'd get nothing among the sycamores, he turned away to hunt some rabbits with whose thicket he was acquainted.