“Some traps are like that, and others are like a box that shut you up tight. Other traps have strong, sharp teeth that snap shut on your leg. That’s the kind of trap I was once in.”
“I hope nothing like that happens to me!” sighed Winkie, and Don hoped the same.
“Now I must go,” said the dog, when he found the little woodchuck girl was all right. “See you later! Good-bye!” And soon he was lost to sight among the trees.
Poor Winkie felt very lonely now, for, having talked to Toto, the beaver, and to Don, the dog, she began to have a very friendly feeling for these animals.
But she was a brave little thing, as well as wily and smart, and she began to feel that she must look after herself now, since it might be many days before she would find her family in the big woods.
Sitting down and crying about things never makes them any better, and Winkie was not going to do this. Instead she felt that she must find some place to stay during the night, which she knew would come when the sun went down.
“But first I am going to see if I can’t find my family,” thought Winkie. “There’s no sense in giving up so soon. I’ll make believe we have been playing hide-and-seek and I’ve got to find them so I won’t be it.”
She had often played this game, and it was not hard to imagine she was doing it again. On through the woods she wandered, now and then stopping to listen or to call. She cried the names of Blinkie and Blunk as loudly as she could, and also shouted for her father and mother.
But the only answers she heard were the sighing of the wind in the trees, the murmur of the brooks as they flowed over the green, mossy stones, and the songs of the birds. To the birds Winkie spoke, for she could talk their language, and she asked them if they had seen anything of her father, mother, Blinkie or Blunk.
“You birds fly high above the trees,” said Winkie, “and you can look down and see many things I can not see. Please help me look for my people.”