Children of the Wild

by Sir Charles G. D. Roberts

"Of course, the Little Sly One was lonely for the next few days, but she was kept so busy hunting breakfasts, and lunches, and dinners, and suppers that she hadn't time to fret much. She was something like a three-quarters-grown kitten now, except for her having no tail to speak of, and curious, fierce-looking tufts to her ears, and pale eyes so savage and bright that they seemed as if they could look through a log even if it wasn't hollow.

"Also, her feet were twice as big as a kitten's would have been, and her hindquarters were high and powerful, like a rabbit's. Her soft, bright fur was striped like a tiger's—though by the time she was grown up it would have changed to a light, shadowy, brownish gray, hard to detect in the dim thickets.

"The Little Sly One was so sly and so small that she had no difficulty in creeping up on birds and woodmice, to say nothing of grasshoppers, beetles and crickets. But one day she learned, to her great annoyance, that she was not the only thing in the woods that could do this creeping up. She had been watching a long time at the door of a woodmouse burrow, under a tree, when suddenly she seemed to feel danger behind her. Without waiting to look round, being so sly, she shot into the air and landed on the trunk of a tree. As she madly clawed up it, the jaws of a leaping fox came together with a snap just about three inches behind her, just, in fact, where an ordinary tail would have been. So, you see, her tail really saved her life, just by her not having any!

"Well, when she was safely up the tree, of course she couldn't help spitting and growling down at the hungry fox for a minute or two, while he looked up at her with his mouth watering. Then, however, she curled herself up in a crotch and pretended to go to sleep. And then the fox went away, because he didn't know when she would wake up, and he didn't want to wait! You see how sly she was!

"But once it happened she was not so sly as she might have been. You see, after all, in spite of her fierce eyes, she was still only a kitten of a lynx; and she had to play once in a while. At such times she would pounce on a leaf as if it were a mouse, or just tumble all over herself pretending she had a real tail and was trying to catch it. So, of course, when she happened to pass under a low, bushy branch and caught sight of a slim, smooth, black tip of a tail, no bigger than your little finger, hanging down from it, she naturally couldn't resist the temptation. She pranced up on her hind legs and clawed that black tip of a tail—clawed it hard!

"The next instant, before she could prance away again, the other end of that slim, black tip swung out of the branch and whipped itself round and round her body, and a black head, with sharp fangs in it, hit her biff, biff, biff! on the nose. It was the tail of a black snake she had tried to play with."

"Gee! But she wasn't sly that time!" exclaimed the Babe, shaking his head wisely.

"The black snake wasn't poisonous, of course," continued Uncle Andy, "but his fangs hurt the Little Sly One's nose, I can tell you. But the worst of it was, how he could squeeze! Those black coils tightened, tightened, till the Little Sly One, who in her first fright had set up a terrific spitting and yowling, found she had no breath to waste on noise. Her ribs felt as if they would crack. But, fortunately for her, her teeth and claws were available for business. She fell to biting, and ripping, and clawing, till the black snake realized it was no Teddy Bear he had got hold of. For a minute or two he stood it, squeezing harder and harder. Then he wanted to let go.

"And this, I think, was where he made a mistake. As he relaxed his deadly coils and swung his head round, the Little Sly One struck out with both forepaws at once, and succeeded in catching the hissing, darting head. She caught it fairly, and her long, knife-sharp claws sank in, holding it like a carpenter's vise. The next minute she had her teeth in the back of the snake's neck, chewing and tearing.

"Now, the snake's tail was still around the branch, so he tried furiously to swing the Little Sly One up and crush her against the branch. But she was too heavy and too strong. So he came down, instead, and thrashed wildly among the leaves, trying to get a new grip on her. It was no use, however. He had made too big a mistake. And the next minute he kind of straightened out. The Little Sly One had bitten through his backbone, just behind the head.