“Mr. Fieldmouse,” he said, “we have been asked to meet and consider your reasons for barring Stripes Skunk from Tommy Peele’s woods and fields. Here we are, ready to listen.”
Great-Grandfather Fieldmouse’s crinkly ears began twitching. “We fieldmice have had many grievances in times past,” he sniffled in his high, squeaky voice. “But we have never spoken of them. As long as these woods and fields were run in the sensible way Mother Nature started them in the First-Off Beginning we took our chances like sensible mice. But things are changing. Some of you have made friends with Man—a thing we have never done. Man makes no difference to a fieldmouse, so even of that we will not complain. But when you make friends with the sworn enemy of the mice, a Thing-from-under-the-Earth, who has no proper place in the sun—I refer to this skunk,” he said as he waved his wriggly tail at Stripes—“it is high time we refused to let him remain. He must go!” And he sat back in a fat, shaking heap.
When the moon came up there wasn’t a single tail stirring
“Ah,” said Doctor Muskrat. “Then you mice will give up gnawing roots and spoiling plants and go back to the sensible way Mother Nature started you in the First-Off Beginning. In that case, I expect we will have to agree to your demand.”
“Give up eating roots? What do you mean?” gasped the fieldmouse.
“Yes, eat a nibble here and a nibble there, leaving the plants to be again as they were before. Are you willing to change?”
“Change! A fieldmouse never changes. Let me remind you, Doctor Muskrat, that we lived as we do to-day before any of you were made. This earth belongs to us fieldmice.”
“Perhaps,” said Nibble Rabbit, “but let me point out to you that if you fieldmice tried to run it there wouldn’t be a green thing left to grow out of the earth. We’d all starve, down to the very last mouse.”
“Impossible! Idiotic!” gasped the mice. “We will never change. Never!”