“Oh, ho! You’re going to be ugly, are you?” exclaimed the boy. “Well, I can’t blame you. It isn’t any fun to be caught in a trap. I wouldn’t like it myself, and I’ll take you out if you don’t bite me.” For Larry knew that woodchucks can bite very severely when they are caught and when they fear they are in danger.
“I’ll go and get a bag to carry you in,” said Larry, still speaking aloud, as though Winkie could understand him. “I’ll get a bag, and then take you home. My sister Alice will like you. We’ll teach you tricks after we tame you. Wait here while I go for a bag!”
There really wasn’t any need of telling Winkie to “wait there.” She couldn’t get loose. And of course she remained until Larry came back. He had gone to his father’s barn and gotten a strong bag in which feed came for the horses.
Dropping this bag over Winkie, who was now more frightened than ever, Larry reached in from the outside, the strong bag keeping Winkie from biting, though she tried to do this, and soon the boy had loosened the spring and taken the trap off the woodchuck’s leg.
“Oh, how good it feels not to be pinched any more!” thought Winkie. “Oh, how good it feels!”
And she curled up in the bottom of the bag, as Larry slung it over his shoulder, and closed her eyes, for she felt so much better than she had in the trap.
“I wonder what is going to happen to me?” thought Winkie.
She was going to have more adventures, though she did not know it just then.
Across the fields went Larry, carrying the wily woodchuck in the bag over his shoulder. Winkie did not mind the bouncing, for the pain in her leg, where the trap had pinched her, was growing less now.