"Yap-Yap looked and looked, then he drew a long breath of pure joy and started out across the green grass. On and on he went, until when he sat up and looked this way or that way or the other way he could see nothing but grass and flowers, and over him was naught but the blue, blue sky. He had found the great open space of which he had dreamed, and he was happy. So he ate and slept and played with the Merry Little Breezes and grew fat.
"Then one day came Skimmer the Swallow and brought him news of the hard times which had come to the rest of the Great World and how as a result the big and the strong were hunting the small and the weak in order that they themselves might live. When Skimmer had gone, Yap-Yap grew uneasy. What if some of the big and strong people he had known should come out there in quest of food and should find him? There was no place in which to hide. There was no cave or hollow log.
"Yap-Yap looked at the strong claws Old Mother Nature had given him and an idea came to him. He would dig a hole in the ground. So he dug a hole on a long slant very much like the hole of Johnny Chuck; but when it was finished a little doubt crept into his head and grew and grew. What was to prevent some one who was very hungry from digging him out? So he moved on a little way and started another hole, and this time he made it almost straight down. Every day he made that hole deeper until it was many feet deep. Then he made a turn in it and dug a long tunnel, at the end of which he hollowed out a comfortable bedroom and lined it with grass. When it was finished he was quite satisfied.
"'I don't believe,' said he, 'that any one will have the patience to dig to the bottom of this.'
"So at night he slept in his bed at the end of his long hall far below the surface, but all day he spent above ground, for he dearly loved the sunshine. All went well until there came a time of heavy rains. Then Yap-Yap discovered that the water ran down his hole, and if he didn't do something, he was likely to be drowned out. Right away he set his sharp wits to work. He noticed that when the water on the surface reached the little piles of sand he had made, it ran around them. So he made a great mound of sand around his hole with the entrance in the middle and pressed it firm on the inside so that the rain would not wash it down in. Then, although the water stood all around, it no longer ran down in his house. In fair weather that mound was a splendid place on which to sit and watch for danger. So once more Yap-Yap was happy and care-free, all because he had used his wits.
"And from that day to this the Prairie Dogs have made their houses in just that way, and no one that I know cares to try to dig one out," concluded Old Man Coyote.