“But that Man took my honey,” said Stripes in his scary, whiney voice. “And Tad says that’s the way he makes friends.”
“Wah! What if he did? He didn’t know that.” Watch was snarling, snapping angry. “Do you ’spose for a minute I’d have let him if I’d known it was yours? We thought it was Tad Coon’s.”
Tommy fished and fished, but at first he did not get a single bite
Poor Stripes was shaking to the very end of his long wavy tail. He looked hopefully at Tommy Peele, but Tommy hadn’t even looked up. He was too busy digging for something. So there was nothing for Stripes to do but slink back into his bushes again and cock his eye through a little opening in the leaves to see what he was doing. And Watch didn’t try to follow because he had to dig, too.
Tommy was so interested in his digging, that all the beasts started to help him. Tommy grubbed a bit with his fingers and then he took a stick to get on faster. That’s because his hands aren’t any better for burrowing than Tad Coon’s handy-paws. Watch was making fine scratchy holes every here and there and snorting into them, trying to see what Tommy wanted to find.
Doctor Muskrat dug up a sweet flag root, and Nibble Rabbit unearthed a butterfly weed, but those weren’t what Tommy wanted. Tad Coon found a fine fat grub, but Tommy didn’t want that either, so Tad ate it himself. Then Tommy shook the earth off of a long, squirmy worm.
“Oh, oh,” laughed Nibble Rabbit. “Everybody’s here to help except the one we need. We must have Tommy make friends with Bobby Robin. He eats those all the time.”
But Tommy didn’t eat it. He put it on something on the end of a string and threw it into Doctor Muskrat’s pond. He was going to go fishing. He didn’t bother about a fishpole because he’d rather perch on the trunk of a tree that was leaning over the water and watch the fish come up to nibble. And the tree was right on the edge of the very bushes which were hiding Stripes Skunk.
Tommy fished and fished, but at first he didn’t get a single bite. By and by who should guess what he was trying to do but that smarty coon? “Watch,” he said to the dog, “he’s trying to snare something, isn’t he? Is it shellbacks or flicker-tails?” That’s woods slang for turtles or fish.