Now that was very nice of the quail because there were very few seeds left, and Nibble was eating the dried grasses that the Pickery Things kept from him and the delicate bark from the sunny side of the willows.
Snoof Woodchuck comes out of his hole.
Chaik, the Jay, perked his crest thoughtfully. “It must be horrid to live in big flocks like that where you can never find a full crop for everyone at once. The partridge are perching in some evergreens. They say it’s safer than sleeping in the snow where they might be frozen in again. Only they can’t find anything to eat but birch and poplar buds, and they’re awfully hungry. But not so hungry as Hooter the Owl and his wife. I wonder why they flew away right in the middle of the terrible storm.”
“Silvertip the Fox left then, too,” said Gimlet the Woodpecker, who had been working in the orchard back of Tommy Peele’s barn. “There must be something in that.”
“There is,” said Nibble. “I was the game Mrs. Hooter chased into the cornstalk tent, but Silvertip was the one who came out of it. He mussed their feathers and they tweaked his ears, and now they’re afraid to meet each other!”
Chaik laughed. “The owls are still quarrelling,” he told Nibble.
“Well, Silvertip has learned to get into the chicken-coop,” Gimlet reported, “and Chirp Sparrow says that’s climbing into a peck of trouble.”
“Who cares?” Nibble rejoiced. “Now that Slyfoot’s gone to find a better hunting ground we have no one to look out for.”
But Doctor Muskrat spoke up very thoughtfully. “Yes, Nibble. Sooner or later we’ll have to look out for Man.”