"I'm not one bit sorry for him," muttered the Babe in spite of himself.
"He had no business there at all."
"The mother of the woodchuck family," went on Uncle Andy, "was not so cross as the father, but she was very careless. She would sit upon her fat haunches in the door of the burrow while the babies were nibbling around outside, pretending to keep an eye on them. But half the time she would be sound asleep, with her head dropped straight down on her stomach, between her little black paws. One day, as she was dozing thus comfortably, a marsh hawk came flapping low overhead, and pounced on one of the youngsters before it had time to more than squeak. At the sound of that despairing squeak, to be sure, she woke up and made a savage rush at the enemy. But the wary bird was already in the air, with the prize drooping from his talons. And the mother could do nothing but sit up and chatter after him abusively as he sailed away to his nest.
"You see, the mother was brave enough, as I said before, but very careless. She was different from the ordinary run of woodchucks, in that she had only three feet. She had lost her left hind paw."
"Was that because she was so careless?" asked the Babe.
Uncle Andy looked at him suspiciously. Like so many other story-tellers, he preferred to make all the jokes himself. He was suspicious of other people's jokes. But the Babe's round, attentive eyes were as innocent as the sky.
"No," said he gravely; "that was something she could not help. It was an accident. It has nothing to do with Young Grumpy, but since you've asked me about it I had better tell you at once and save interruptions.
"You see it was this way. Before she came to live on the Anderson Farm she used to have a burrow over on the other side of the Ridge, where the people went in for a good deal of trapping and snaring. One day someone set a steel trap just in front of her burrow. Of course she put her foot into it at the first chance. It was terrible. You know the grip of those steel jaws, for I've seen you trying to open them. She was game, however—they're always game, these woodchucks. Instead of squealing and hopping about and losing her wits and using up her strength, she just popped back into her hole and dragged the trap in with her as far as it would go. That was not very far, of course, because the man who set it had chained it to a stump outside. But she thought it better, in such a trouble, to be out of range of unsympathetic eyes. There in the hole she tugged and wrenched at the cruel biting thing till even her obstinacy had to acknowledge that it was impossible to pull herself free. Then she tried blocking up the hole behind her, thinking perhaps that the trap, on finding itself thus imprisoned in the burrow, would get frightened and let go its hold. Disappointed in this hope, she decided to adopt heroic measures. With magnificent nerve she calmly set to work and gnawed off the foot which had been so idiotic as to get itself caught. She would have nothing more to do with the fool thing. She just left it there in the trap, with her compliments, for the man—a poor little, crumpled, black-skinned paw, with a fringe of short brownish fur about the wrist, like a fur-lined gauntlet."
The Babe shuddered, but heroically refrained from interrupting.
"Of course the stump soon healed up," continued Uncle Andy, "but she always found the absence of that paw most inconvenient, especially when she was digging burrows. She used to find herself digging them on the bias, and coming out where she did not at all expect to.
"But to return to Young Grumpy. While he was yet very young his three-legged mother, who had seen him and his brothers and sisters eating grass quite comfortably, decided that they were big enough to look out for themselves. She refused to nurse them any more. Then she turned them all out of the burrow. When they came presently scurrying back again, hoping it was all an unhappy joke, she nipped them most unfeelingly. Their father snored. There was no help in that quarter. They scurried dejectedly forth again.