For three days he was satisfied to cuddle close against his mother,
feeding when he was hungry, sleeping a great deal and preened and
laundered almost constantly by Gray Wolf's affectionate tongue. From the
fourth day he grew busier and more inquisitive with every hour. He found
his mother's blind face, with tremendous effort he tumbled over her
paws, and once he lost himself completely and sniffled for help when he
rolled fifteen or eighteen inches away from her. It was not long after
this that he began to recognize Kazan as a part of his mother, and he
was scarcely more than a week old when he rolled himself up contentedly
between Kazan's forelegs and went to sleep. Kazan was puzzled. Then
with a deep sigh Gray Wolf laid her head across one of her mate's
forelegs, with her nose touching her runaway baby, and seemed vastly
contented. For half an hour Kazan did not move.
When he was ten days old Ba-ree discovered there was great sport in
tussling with a bit of rabbit fur. It was a little later when he made
his second exciting discovery--light and sunshine. The sun had now
reached a point where in the middle of the afternoon a bright gleam of
it found its way through an overhead opening in the windfall. At first
Ba-ree would only stare at the golden streak. Then came the time when he
tried to play with it as he played with the rabbit fur. Each day
thereafter he went a little nearer the opening through which Kazan
passed from the windfall into the big world outside. Finally came the
time when he reached the opening and crouched there, blinking and
frightened at what he saw, and now Gray Wolf no longer tried to hold him
back but went out into the sunshine and tried to call him to her. It was
three days before his weak eyes had grown strong enough to permit his
following her, and very quickly after that Ba-ree learned to love the
sun, the warm air, and the sweetness of life, and to dread the darkness
of the closed-in den where he had been born.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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