“But if everybody thinks he does,” Nibble objected, “there must be something behind it.”
“There is,” Doctor Muskrat agreed. “There’s a lot of talk, and he’s the one who starts it, too. It would make you sick to hear him straddling around after the frost is out of the ground saying ‘I told you so. I told you it would be bad weather, or good weather,’ whichever it has happened to be. But I never saw any one who had heard him say it.”
The old doctor was puffing as he made his way through the bulrush stems.
“Well,” Nibble insisted, “why doesn’t someone keep watch and tell on him?”
Doctor Muskrat shook his head. “If you didn’t keep watch so that everyone would know they’d go right on believing him. And if you did that, and he did wake up, the joke would be on you. And that’s never any fun.”
Well, that certainly kept Nibble quiet for a little while. He was thinking. Pretty soon his nose began to wrinkle and his eyes hid like little pinpoints, deep in his fur. He was trying so hard not to laugh. “Doctor Muskrat,” said he, “how soon is that February moon?”
Doctor Muskrat waddled up the bank and took a nip of willow stem. “Grubs and clam shells!” he exclaimed in surprise. “Sap’s stirring. Why, it’s only the hatching of an egg away. [That’s two weeks as the woodsfolk count time.] Nibble,” he added curiously, “I believe you’re smelling something.”
“I am,” Nibble chuckled. “I’m smelling a wonderful joke. Half of it will be on that old snoozer in my hole and the other half will be—who’ll the other half be on?”
“There aren’t many folks out,” answered the doctor, telling them off on his paw. “There’s Chewee the Chickadee, Chaik the Jay, and Gimlet the Woodpecker—you couldn’t possibly fool him —and the fieldmice. The fieldmice! They do nothing but tattle and gossip and they’ll believe anything!”