Well, it didn’t take Nibble long to call Doctor Muskrat. And it didn’t take Doctor Muskrat long to stop the “squirming and stinging” Stripes thought was going on inside him. “You certainly prove that fighting those click-wings isn’t your regular job,” he said. “You can’t gorge on them. You must never eat more than three at a time without eating something else in between. Any meadowlark could tell you that.”
“They could, but they wouldn’t,” Stripes sniffed. He was feeling much better. “They flew away when they saw me coming.”
“They did?” cried Nibble. “Well, they’ve all come back again. You just ought to hear them. They’re——”
“Che-e-ep!” interrupted Bobby Robin, swooping down for a drink. “Ugh! I’m glad that’s over with!”
“What’s over with?” Doctor Muskrat was surprised to see how much he was drinking.
“Eating a potato bug!” chirped Bobby Robin. “I told that quail none of us thrushes could eat ’em, but he wouldn’t listen. He’s ruffling about like a kingbird, and he says he’ll peck the eyes out of any bird who refuses to try one. You just ought to see what’s going on and who he’s got to help him! But I must be flitting.”
“Where to?” asked Stripes. By now he was taking an interest in things.
“To send over everything I can find that has feathers in its wings,” said Bobby Robin. “Bob White needs ’em.”
And before he’d flown past Tad Coon’s tree, along came Miau the Catbird and told them exactly the same tale. And that cheered Stripes so much that he got up on his wobbly legs and staggered over to see what was going on.
He saw—oh, I can’t tell you everything he saw. For there were orange orioles and dark-red orioles and scarlet-red tanagers and blue-and-red bluebirds, and fawn-coloured cedarbirds, and black-and-white-and-tan bobolinks all eating and shouting, with the meadowlarks flying around as thick as gnats on a summer night, calling, “Catch ’em and e-e-eat ’em up!”