It was a lovely bright brown bird with rose-red eyes and a long tail, cuddled down in her nest among the grasses. “I’m Coquillicot’s mate,” she explained. “I heard you tell Chaik the Blue jay that you’d never eat another egg, so of course I knew you were that friend Bob White spoke for at the ground-birds’ meeting.”
She was as nice and sociable as you please. Then she demanded anxiously: “Who was Jenny Wren calling the guard for?”
“Those kingbirds?” asked Stripes. “Why, I kind of thought they were after me.”
“No, they weren’t,” said the pretty bird. “I told Coquillicot to tell them who you were as soon as I heard you. But there’s a rumor that Glider the Blacksnake’s hawk-bitten son—the one with the crooked tail—has been seen here. It’s put us all in a flutter. Do find out!”
At that Stripes Skunk stood up stiff and straight. “If it’s a snake,” said he, “I’ll promise you that he’ll never eat another bird.” And with that he marched right out into all the pecking and scratching and flapping and screeching that was going on in the potato patch. Wheu-whirr-r-r! went a cloud of wings about his ears, but he just growled, “Where is he? I’ll take care of him.”
There had been more noise than enough before, but when Stripes Skunk marched out of the hedgerow, with his whiskers bristling and his long hairy tail arched up behind him-! No body could even imagine the noise of that! Wow!
Stripes marched right up to Jenny Wren, growling, “Show me that snake. I’ll take care of him. Where is he gone?” He was so busy thinking about what he had to do that he forgot to be scary. And not even a fighting kingbird took a single peck at him!
No. They all stopped still, as still, to listen. Only their wings whispered like leaves in the trees, as they wheeled and circled—and listened! “Where is that snake?” said Stripes again.
“It isn’t a snake!” cheeped Jenny Wren. “It’s a dreadful great big creepy crawly monster with a stinger sticking out of its tail. It’s spitting poison! It’s—it’s—there, it’s doing it now! Che-e-ep!” She began to flutter and wail all over again. The kingbirds squawked their war-cry, but they didn’t go any nearer.
Stripes did, though. He crept up, his long wavy tail sticking straight out behind him and the tip of it just trembling. He raised his paddy-paw. Scritch! Off came the leaves where the horrid thing was hiding. Down rolled——