The Tale of Solomon Owl | Page 5

wider smile than ever.
He had suddenly decided not to let his shop, after all.

VI SOLOMON NEEDS A CHANGE
For some time Solomon Owl had known that a queer feeling was
coming over him. And he could not think what it meant. He noticed,
too, that his appetite was leaving him. Nothing seemed to taste good
any more.
So at last, one fine fall evening he went to see Aunt Polly Woodchuck,

who was an herb doctor; for he had begun to worry about his health.
"It's lucky you came to-day," said Aunt Polly. "Because to-night I'm
going to begin my winter's nap. And you couldn't have seen me again
till spring--unless you happened to come here on ground-hog day, next
February.... What appears 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