“Who wants to dig?” teased the hawk. “You talk like a kingfisher. I chased one once and he hid in the end of a hole he was digging. Such a place for a bird!” Her red-brown eyes were sparkling.
“Well, I want to,” Stripes argued. “Digging is the quickest way in the world to catch a mess of fieldmice.”
“Do you eat them, too?” she exclaimed. “So do I. But that wasn’t what the kingfisher was after; he never touches fur.”
Stripes cocked his head, considering her. She was really very handsome. Her brown feathers gleamed with purple in the sun. They were beautifully marked with black and white when you saw them close by, and she had four narrow bands across her tail. Just now her face was pert and interested, but he knew it could look really wicked if she clicked that big curved beak at you. “Hm!” he answered, knowingly. “I think maybe that kingfisher was very sensible.”
This seemed to amuse her. She laughed again, in her noisy hawk way. Then she stepped over beside him. “I’ll tell you a joke,” she whispered. “They call me a hen hawk—and I don’t eat feathers! Very few of us wide-winged hawks who soar do it at all. It’s those sneaky round-winged fellows with tails too narrow for soaring who make a bad name for the family. They’re always hiding and pouncing out on some one. But birds are such fools, you know, lots of them never learn the difference.”
“Well, you wear such awful claws,” Stripes began.
“At your service,” said the hawk.
“Any time you need them. Just send word by a kingbird. But you don’t need me any longer just now.” And off she flew.
All the birds had been still as death while the hawk was talking to Stripes Skunk. Even the kingbirds and Coquillicot the Thrasher stayed hidden. But before the hawk was twenty wing-beats away, they came bursting from every bush and tree, calling and singing to him. And the meadowlarks, who had just been so sure he had robbed a nest of theirs, were so apologetic! But the voice he was listening for was that of Coquillicot’s slim little wife. Just wasn’t she grateful!
“I’m sorry I didn’t get here in time,” said Stripes sadly. “He had eggs in him. I felt them breaking when he choked me.”