“‘Because I’m so small and so slow it’s terribly scary for me now that your own beasts have taken to killing,’ he whimpered. ‘I don’t know how to run away.’
“‘Oho!’ Mother Nature was very sarcastic, but he didn’t know enough to know it. ‘You Bad Ones taught them how. I should think you’d be proud over the way they’ve learned it. What else do you want, then?’
“‘Lots of things,’ answered the First Skunk more cheerfully. ‘Paws, for instance.’”
“Did they have feet?” Stripes Skunk interrupted again. “Snakes haven’t.”
“They had then,” replied Doctor Muskrat; “splay-footed, lizardy ones. The First Skunk wasn’t sure which he wanted, handy-paws like Tad Coon or paddy ones like the wolves, so he could run away from them. He left all that to Mother Nature. ‘Anyway you want to fix me,’ he said, ‘so I’m not always being chased and they can’t hold me if they do catch me.’
“Mother Nature just stared at that First Skunk. ‘Well, of all the impudence!’ she exclaimed. ‘Of all the impudence! There you are, then!’
“And there he was, indeed! Only he had paddy-paws on in front, where he wanted the handy-ones, and Tad Coon’s paws behind, where he couldn’t run on them, and a long, hairy tail no tooth could hang on to, and that terrible scent so no one could even want to try. You can imagine how that First Skunk felt!”
CHAPTER XIII
IN DEFENSE OF A LADY
“That poor First Skunk!” exclaimed Nibble Rabbit. “Mother Nature was mean to give him everything he asked for just the opposite to the way he wanted it. I’d have gone right off and been just as bad as ever I knew how to be.”
“Eh, Stripes Skunk?” asked Doctor Muskrat, “is that how you feel about it?”