It was Saturday, so as soon as Tommy had finished his chores up at the barn, he whistled to his old dog, Watch, and came tramping down the fields with his tall rubber boots. He had a cap full of meal and an ear of corn in his pocket. Yes! And he had a nice lump of fat for Chewee the Chickadee and a string to tie it to a branch with.
But Nibble didn’t come running to meet him. He was crouching back in the reeds with Doctor Muskrat. And the Red Cow had lumbered off to her own hiding-place in the thicket that Nibble had showed her.
“Come, Bunny, Bunny,” called Tommy, in his nice voice that fairly made Nibble’s feet itch to run to him. He crept up softly near the warm spring so as not to scare his muskrat. Then he saw the footprints—the big ones of the Red Cow, and the little ones of Nibble Rabbit, and the paws of Doctor Muskrat with his toe gone, for now it was healed so he could step on it. And there was the trap, sticking right straight up where the cow’s clumsy foot had jerked it.
And wasn’t he angry! Just wasn’t he? He was the crossest little boy in all the woods and fields, and the houses, too. Because someone was trying to catch his very own wild things that he was trying to make friends with!
The trap was chained to a bulrush stalk and he yanked it right off, stalk and all, he was so angry. And then he did something that showed he was really learning to think quite like a wild thing. It was just what wise old Doctor Muskrat would have done if he hadn’t been so troubled, deep down inside, that he forgot about everything but Tommy. He trailed the footsteps of that other man and he found two other traps. Right in his own woods!
“Clang! clang!” He had given each of those cold steel jaws a stick to bite on. Then he rooted up their chains and tied them all together. “Crash!” They went plump down into the mud beside his own. “Yah! Yah! Hooray!” barked Watch. He thought that anything Tommy did was perfect. And he wagged his big wavy tail so very hard that at last his tail wagged him and he waltzed around and around.
And then Nibble came bouncing up with his ears in the air, and Doctor Muskrat waddled after him. But Doctor Muskrat stopped at the edge of the reeds because, you know, he and Watch hadn’t made friends. Still, he looked very kindly at Tommy and he came out in a great hurry to get his meal when Tommy moved away.
But Watch nearly scared him when he turned around to ask: “Nibble, do you know where I’ll find that Red Cow?”
Tommy finds a trap.