It was the loveliest of moonlight nights in the early autumn when word was carried from house to house that Mrs. Raccoon would give an oyster supper.
There was Mrs. Coon herself, the present Mr. Coon, and four little Coons. At the upper farm lived several branches of the family—uncles and aunts and their respective children. For the Coons, as a lot, lived mainly on the farmsteads, or near to them; for, as Mrs. Ringtail Coon, the oldest of them, always declared: "It is altogether wiser to keep in touch with civilization." By which she meant it was wise to live as near as possible to the orchards and the corn-fields, and the good things which farmers keep planting every year, apparently for the especial benefit of just such persons as Mr. Coon and Mr. Crow.
"And it is wonderful what a variety of good things you can find to eat if you can run and climb trees and dig in the ground," Mr. Coon would add, "especially if you live where they are very generous in the gathering, and you can have the best of apples and pears and the sweet corn to add to your table."
So it was altogether best to stick as close to the haunts of mankind as possible, if you could do so without foregoing the pleasures of the river and the woodland.
The great river, be it said, which was sluggish and muddy, contained a thousand things which the Coons declared in rather snobbish fashion were not to their taste. They wouldn't go fishing if they could. But the fat mussels which lived in the mud-banks were exactly to Mr. and Mrs. Coon's liking. And to open them is not difficult for a Coon who has once learned the trick.
"That's what your wonderful, black fingernails are for," Mr. Coon always told the children when he taught them to open oysters. "You need only give the joint of the thing a sharp bite, and pull out that tough bit of meat at the end, and then with your nails you can pry the shell right open."
The ability to do this was a matter of pride to the Coons, for they knew of no one else who could open oysters. Like many people who may excel in a particular art, they fancied that they were the only adepts in the world.
"But there's where they are mistaken," Mr. Fox would laugh, whenever he heard of the Coons and their oyster suppers. For he knew of some one else who could get the juicy meat out of those shells, although it was not himself.
"I really pity their ignorance," he would say. "If they ever went abroad in the daytime they'd see a thing or two, and maybe they'd learn that there are wiser folks in the world than themselves."
This was an unfair thrust at the Coons, for their habit of sleeping most of the day should not be laid against them. The world is wisely divided into day workers and night workers anyway, and Mr. Coon, for his part, always put down such criticism by asking what on earth would happen if everybody rushed to his meals at the same identical moment.