Both coyotes sat down and the little cotton-tail spoke:
“Life is hard and dangerous for a rabbit at best. There are so many enemies to fear, and even our swift flight often fails to save us. I have fared well this year. I found a place where the farmer keeps no dogs and owns no gun. To be sure, he had woven-wire fences around his garden and his young orchard, but I found a cunning little hole in the fence behind one of the grapevines that was just made for a door for a poor little rabbit, and I tell you I have lived high. Such peas and lettuce and cabbage as that man did have! Enough for twenty rabbits like me. Then for a change I nibbled the tender shoots on the grapevines, and now am expecting to get my living this winter by gnawing the bark from several hundred young fruit trees which he has set out. I have already found a hole under the fence. So I have cause to be thankful to-day.”
The little prairie dog sat up stiffly and tried to look dignified as he addressed the assembly.
“Life has been full of ups and downs for me and for my friends, the rattlesnakes and owls. We had made a fine burrow in a broad pasture, and all last year we lived there in peace. This year the man who owned it concluded to plow it up for a cornfield; and the first thing he did, he turned the water from a slough right into our beautiful prairie dog town and flooded all our carefully dug homes. Many of my brothers and cousins were drowned or rushed out of their holes only to be slain by the dreadful dogs and men.
“I was more fortunate, because I had run one of my tunnels in an uphill direction for fear that water might some time trouble us. When the flood came I retreated to this high point and saved myself, altho the water almost reached me, and I was obliged to stay there for several days before I could make my way out.
“Now I have a pleasant home here among the sandhills, and I have been careful to dig a good upper story with an opening through which I can escape in time of need. The rattlesnake and the owl share my humble home, and we live in peace together.”
The owl nodded his wise head, and the snake shook his rattles in approval of this address which included themselves, and made it unnecessary for them to add their voices to the speechmaking.
A little green lizard roused himself from his warm place in the sun and added his squeaky voice to the general conference:
“I know nothing about dogs and men. My brothers and I live here upon the sandhills where insects are plenty and enemies are few. We spend hours in basking in the delightfully hot sun, and if any noise alarms us dart to our hiding places beneath the roots of the bushes or under some rotten log or tree. We are of several colors, gray, green, yellow or brown, and when we lie still upon the sand or on logs or under leaves it is hard for any beast or bird or man to see us. We may have few blessings, as the world goes, but we at least have nothing of which to complain.”
The prairie chickens were next called upon for an account of themselves, and answered: