Green Forest Stories, Thornton W. Burgess [ebook reader color screen .TXT] 📗

and certainly quite as much to be feared by the little people.

All this Blacky knows. No one knows it better. And Blacky is not one to poke his head into trouble with his eyes open. So he very wisely resolved to forget all about those eggs. Now it is one thing to make a resolution and quite another thing to live up to it, as you all know. It was easy enough to say that he would forget, but not at all easy to forget. It would have been different if it had been spring or early summer, when there were plenty of other eggs to be had by anyone smart enough to find them and steal them. But now, when it was still winter (such an unheard-of time for anyone to have eggs!), and it was hard work to find enough to keep a hungry Crow’s stomach filled, the thought of those eggs would keep popping into his head. He just couldn’t seem to forget them. After a little, he didn’t try.

Now Blacky the Crow is very, very cunning. He is one of the smartest of all the little people who fly. No one can get into more mischief and still keep out of trouble than can Blacky the Crow. That is because he uses the wits in that black head of his. In fact, some people are unkind enough to say that he spends all his spare time in planning mischief. The more he thought of those eggs, the more he wanted them, and it wasn’t long before he began to try to plan some way to get them without risking his own precious skin.

“I can’t do it alone,” thought he, “and yet if I take anyone into my secret, I’ll have to share those eggs. That won’t do at all, because I want them myself. I found them, and I ought to have them.” He quite forgot or overlooked the fact that those eggs really belonged to Hooty and Mrs. Hooty and to no one else. “Now let me see, what can I do?”

He thought and he thought and he thought and he thought, and little by little a plan worked out in his little black head. Then he chuckled. He chuckled right out loud, then hurriedly looked around to see if anyone had heard him. No one had, so he chuckled again. He cocked his head on one side and half closed his eyes, as if that plan was something he could see and he was looking at it very hard. Then he cocked his head on the other side and did the same thing.

“It’s all right,” said he at last. “It’ll give my relatives a lot of fun, and of course they will be very grateful to me for that. It won’t hurt Hooty or Mrs. Hooty a bit, but it will make them very angry. They have very short tempers, and people with short tempers usually forget everything else when they are angry. We’ll pay them a visit while the sun is bright, because then perhaps they cannot see well enough to catch us, and we’ll tease them until they lose their tempers and forget all about keeping guard over those eggs. Then I’ll slip in and get one and perhaps both of them. Without knowing that they are doing anything of the kind, my friends and relatives will help me to get a good meal. My, how good those eggs will taste!”

It was a very clever and cunning plan, for Blacky is a very clever and cunning rascal, but of course it didn’t deserve success because nothing that means needless worry and trouble for others deserves to succeed.

V Blacky Calls His Friends

When Blacky cries “Caw, caw, caw, caw!”
As if he’d dislocate his jaw,
His relatives all hasten where
He waits them with a crafty air.

They know that there is mischief afoot, and the Crow family is always ready for mischief. So on this particular morning when they heard Blacky cawing at the top of his lungs from the tallest pine-tree in the Green Forest, they hastened over there as fast as they could fly, calling to each other excitedly and sure that they were going to have a good time of some kind.

Blacky chuckled as he saw them coming. “Come on! Come on! Caw, caw, caw! Hurry up and flap your wings faster. I know where Hooty the Owl is, and we’ll have no end of fun with him,” he cried.

“Caw, caw, caw, caw, caw, caw!” shouted all his relatives in great glee. “Where is he? Lead us to him. We’ll drive him out of the Green Forest!”

So Blacky led the way over to the most lonesome corner of the Green Forest, straight to the tree in which Hooty the Owl was comfortably sleeping. Blacky had taken pains to slip over early that morning and make sure just where he was. He had discovered Hooty fast asleep, and he knew that he would remain right where he was until dark. You know Hooty’s eyes are not meant for much use in bright light, and the brighter the light, the more uncomfortable his eyes feel. Blacky knows this, too, and he had chosen the very brightest part of the morning to call his relatives over to torment poor Hooty. Jolly, round, bright Mr. Sun was shining his very brightest, and the white snow on the ground made it seem brighter still. Even Blacky had to blink, and he knew that poor Hooty would find it harder still.

But one thing Blacky was very careful not to even hint of, and that was that Mrs. Hooty was right close at hand. Mrs. Hooty is bigger and even more fierce than Hooty, and Blacky didn’t want to frighten any of the more timid of his relatives. What he hoped down deep in his crafty heart was that when they got to teasing and tormenting Hooty and making the great racket which he knew they would, Mrs. Hooty would lose