Chicken Little was slowly making her way in to the slough. “Jim found the mother pig near here, Ernest said, but the little scamps may be most anywhere. Let’s listen and see if we can hear any squeals or grunts.”
“Yes, I did–I’m most sure, but it didn’t sound very close by,” Gertie answered.
Chicken Little listened. “Which way did the sound come from?”
“Toward the creek, but I don’t hear it any more.”
They had a pretty chase.
131“We’d better search pretty carefully as we go along so we won’t have to come back over the same ground,” remarked Katy, who had a genius for organizing–even a pig hunt. “You are the tallest, Jane, so you take the tallest grass next the water, and I’ll come along half way up the bank and Gertie can walk through the meadow grass–that way we can’t miss them.”
“No, for they must be on this side of the slough: they’re too little to wade across it.”
Chicken Little made the first find, two discouraged little porkers, hopelessly mired and grunting feebly when disturbed. They had no trouble in catching these, but holding their wet, miry little bodies was a different matter. They were slippery as eels. Chicken Little and Katy, who each had one, found them a handful.
“Oh, mine most got away! And I’m all over mud–we’ll be a sight!” Katy giggled hysterically. “I wonder what mother would think if she could see me now.”