“It’s a bug,” said Stripes after he’d sniffed his pointy nose against it and tried his teeth on it. “I never saw one just like it, but a bug it is. Lots of them make that sort of a ticky noise when they’re ready to bite open their hard cases and shake out their wings. This one must be just about ready by the noise he’s making.” And he scrooched down his ear to listen.
“I never heard them do that,” said Nibble Rabbit.
“Course not. They’re buried in the ground when they do it,” said Tad. “We dig ’em up and eat ’em.”
“Maybe Watch will remember where Tommy found it,” Nibble suggested.
“He wouldn’t pay any ’tention if he couldn’t eat it or chase it,” sniffed Tad. He was afraid Watch would take that shiny, noisy watch away from them and he wanted it to play with. “Tell you what, Stripes. Let’s bury it, and then when it comes out it’ll go right to laying its eggs, and we’ll have lots more just like it.”
“Sure,” agreed Stripes, and he went to digging. Nibble helped a little, too. He’d seen Tommy put a clam in his pocket—the one Tad Coon had given him, you know—so he didn’t think this was at all out of the way. Besides, if it was a bug and it did come out of its case in Tommy’s pocket it might bite him. And believe me, that watch was big enough to hold a mighty big bug.
They dug a nice hole and they buried Tommy Peele’s watch down in it and patted the earth smooth. Then Tad Coon lay down right on top of it so he’d be there when the thing that was making a noise inside of it came out.
By and by the fish stopped biting and the mosquitoes began. Tommy could hear Louie Thomson over in his own field calling his cows.
Well, Tommy thought he’d better look at his watch and see if it was time to go home. He’d left it in his pants pocket, tied to them with a jingly chain. His pants were on the ground beside Tad Coon, and Tad was asleep—he never opened his eyes, he just squinched them tighter shut than ever. When Tommy went to pick them up they wouldn’t come; because they were tied to his watch with that jingly chain. And the watch wasn’t in his pocket; it was buried right underneath Tad Coon.
When Tad saw Tommy was bound to have it he got up and looked around, as s’prised as could be. “’Scuse me,” said he; “was I in your way? Are you looking for something?” And when Tommy began to dig up the watch, Tad dug, too, quite politely, as though he were glad to help him find it.