The Tale of Solomon Owl | Page 5

to be your trouble?" she inquired.
"It's my appetite, partly," Solomon Owl said. "Nothing tastes as it did when I was a youngster. And I keep longing for something, though what it is I can't just tell."
Aunt Polly Woodchuck nodded her head wisely.
"What have you been eating lately?" she asked.
Solomon Owl replied that he hadn't eaten anything but mice since the leaves began to turn.
"H-m--the leaves are nearly all off the trees now," the old lady remarked. "How many mice have you eaten in that time?"
Solomon said that as nearly as he could remember he had eaten twenty-seven--or a hundred and twenty-seven. He couldn't say which--but one of those numbers was correct.
Aunt Polly Woodchuck threw up her hands.
"Sakes alive!" she cried. "It's no wonder you don't feel well! What you need is a change of food. And it's lucky you came to me now. If you'd gone on like that much longer I'd hate to say what might have happened to you. You'd have had dyspepsia, or some other sort of misery in your stomach."
"What shall I do?" asked Solomon Owl. "Insects are scarce at this season of the year. Of course, there are frogs--but I don't seem to care for them. And there are fish--but they're not easy to get, for they don't come out of the water and sit on the bank, as the frogs do."
"How about pullets?" Aunt Polly inquired.
At that Solomon Owl let out a long row of hoots, because he was pleased.
"The very thing!" he cried. "That's what I've been wanting all this time. And I never guessed it.... I'll pay you for your advice the next time I see you," he told Aunt Polly. And Solomon Owl hurried away before she could stop him. Since he had no intention of visiting her on ground-hog day, he knew it would be spring before he saw Aunt Polly Woodchuck again.
The old lady scolded a bit. And it did not make her feel any pleasanter to hear Solomon's mocking laughter, which grew fainter and fainter as he left the pasture behind him. Then she went inside her house, for she was fast growing sleepy. And she wanted to set things to rights before she began her long winter's nap.
Meanwhile, Solomon Owl roamed restlessly through the woods. There was only one place in the neighborhood where he could get a pullet. That was at Farmer Green's chicken house. And for some reason he did not care to visit the farm buildings until it grew darker.
So he amused himself by making the woods echo with his strange cry, "Whoo-whoo-whoo, whoo-whoo, to-whoo-ah!" And now and then he threw in a few "wha-whas," just for extra measure.
Many of the forest folk who heard him remarked that Solomon Owl seemed to be in extra fine spirits.
"Probably it's the hunter's moon that pleases him!" Jimmy Rabbit remarked to a friend of his. "I've always noticed that old Solomon makes more noise on moonlight nights than at any other time."
The hunter's moon, big and yellow and round, was just rising over Blue Mountain. But for once it was not the moon that made Solomon Owl so talkative. He was in fine feather, so to speak, because he was hoping to have a fat pullet for his supper. And as for the moon, he would have been just as pleased had there been none at all that night. For Solomon Owl never cared to be seen when he visited Farmer Green's chicken house.

VII THE BLAZING EYES
It was some three hours after sunset when Solomon Owl at last reached Farmer Green's place. All was quiet in the chicken house because the hens and roosters and their families had long since gone to roost. And except for a light that shone through a window, the farmhouse showed not a sign of life.
Everything was as Solomon Owl wished it--or so he thought, at least, as he alighted in a tree in the yard to look about him. He wanted no one to interrupt him when he should go nosing around the chicken house, to find an opening.
To his annoyance, he had not sat long in the tree when the wood-shed door opened. And Solomon stared in amazement at the strange sight he saw.
A great head appeared, with eyes and mouth--yes! and nose, too--all a glaring flame color. Solomon had never seen such a horrible face on man or bird or beast. But he was sure it was a man, for he heard a laugh that was not to be mistaken for either a beast's or a bird's. And the worst of it was, those blazing eyes were turned squarely toward Farmer Green's chicken house!
Solomon Owl was too wary to go for his fat pullet just then. He decided that he would wait quietly in the tree for a time,