Jumper the Hare was beginning to feel easier in his mind. He was no
longer shaking inside. In fact, he was beginning to feel quite safe.
There he was in plain sight of Whitey the Snowy Owl, sitting motionless
on a stump only a short distance away, yet Whitey hadn't seen him.
Whitey had looked straight at him many times, but because Jumper had
not moved so much as a hair Whitey had mistaken him for a little heap of
snow.
“All I have to do is to keep right on sitting perfectly still, and I'll
be as safe as if Whitey were nowhere about. Yes, sir, I will,” thought
Jumper. “By and by he will become tired and fly away. I do hope he'll do
that before Whitefoot comes out again. If Whitefoot should come out, I
couldn't warn him because that would draw Whitey's attention to me, and
he wouldn't look twice at a Wood Mouse when there was a chance to get a
Hare for his dinner.
“This is a queer world. It is so. Old Mother Nature does queer things.
Here she has given me a white coat in winter so that I may not be easily
seen when there is snow on the ground, and at the same time she has
given one of those I fear most a white coat so that he may not be easily
seen, either. It certainly is a queer world.”
Jumper forgot that Whitey was only a chance visitor from the Far North
and that it was only once in a great while that he came down there,
while up in the Far North where he belonged nearly everybody was dressed
in white.
Jumper hadn't moved once, but once in a while Whitey turned his great
round head for a look all about in every direction. But it was done in
such a way that only eyes watching him sharply would have noticed it.
Most of the time he kept his fierce yellow eyes fixed on the little hole
in the snow in which Whitefoot had disappeared. You know Whitey can see
by day quite as well as any other bird.
Jumper, having stopped worrying about himself, began to worry about
Whitefoot. He knew that Whitefoot had seen Whitey arrive on that stump
and that was why he had dodged back into his hole and since then had not
even poked his nose out. But that had been so long ago that by this time
Whitefoot must think that Whitey had gone on about his business, and
Jumper expected to see Whitefoot appear any moment. What Jumper didn't
know was that Whitefoot's bright little eyes had all the time been
watching Whitey from another little hole in the snow some distance away.
A tunnel led from this little hole to the first little hole.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account