The Tale of Solomon Owl | Page 8

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he's thinking of--going so near a fire! It makes me altogether too
nervous to stay here. And I'm going away at once."
Tommy Fox said that he felt the same way. And the moment Fatty
Coon, with his sharp claws, started to crawl down the tree on his way to
the cornfield, Tommy Fox hurried off without even stopping to say
good-bye.
"Haw-haw-haw-hoo!" laughed Solomon Owl. "Tommy Fox is afraid of
you!" he told Fatty Coon.
But Fatty didn't seem to hear him. He was thinking only of the supper
of corn that he was going to have.
"Better come away!" Solomon Owl called to Jimmy Rabbit, turning his
head toward the fence where Jimmy had been lingering near the
hot-headed stranger.
But Jimmy Rabbit didn't answer him, either. He was no longer there.
The moment he had seen Tommy Fox bounding off across the meadow
Jimmy had started at once for Farmer Green's vegetable garden.
So Solomon Owl was the last to leave.
"There's really nothing else I can do," he remarked to himself. "I don't
know what Aunt Polly Woodchuck would say if she knew that I didn't
follow her advice to-night and eat a pullet for my supper.... But I've
tried my best.... And that's all anybody can do."
Solomon Owl was upset all the rest of that night. And just before
daybreak he visited the farmyard again, to see whether the strange man
with the flaring head still watched the chicken house. And Solomon
found that he had vanished.
So Solomon Owl alighted on the fence. There was nothing there except
a hollowed-out pumpkin, with a few holes cut in it, which someone had
left on one of the fence-posts.

"Good!" said he. "Maybe I can get my pullet after all!" He turned to fly
to the chicken house. But just then the woodshed door opened again.
And Farmer Green stepped outside, with a lantern in his hand. He was
going to the barn to milk the cows. But Solomon Owl did not wait to
learn anything more.
He hurried away to his house among the hemlocks. And having quickly
settled himself for a good nap, he was soon fast asleep.
That was how Johnnie Green's jack-o'-lantern kept Tommy Fox and
Fatty Coon and Solomon Owl from taking any chickens on Hallowe'en.

X A TROUBLESOME WISHBONE
Solomon Owl had pains--sharp pains--underneath his waistcoat. And
not knowing what else to do, he set off at once for Aunt Polly
Woodchuck's house under the hill, in the pasture, which he had not
visited since the previous fall. Luckily, he found the old lady at home.
And quickly he told her of his trouble.
"What have you been eating?" she inquired.
"I've followed your advice. I've been eating chickens," said he--"very
small chickens, because they were all I could get."
Aunt Polly Woodchuck, who was an herb doctor--and a good
one--regarded him through her spectacles.
"I'm afraid," said she, "you don't chew your food properly. Bolting
one's food is very harmful. It's as bad as not eating anything at all,
almost."
Solomon Owl showed plainly that her remark surprised him.
"Why," he exclaimed, "I always swallow my food whole--when it isn't
too big!"

"Gracious me!" cried Aunt Polly, throwing up both her hands. "It's no
wonder you're ill. It's no wonder you have pains; and now I know
exactly what's the matter with you. You have a wishbone inside you. I
can feel it!" she told him, as she prodded him in the waistcoat.
"I wish you could get it out for me!" said Solomon with a look of
distress.
"All the wishing in the world won't help you," she answered, "unless
we can find some way of removing the wishbone so you can wish on
that. Then I'm sure you would feel better at once."
"This is strange," Solomon mused. "All my life I've been swallowing
my food without chewing it. And it has never given me any trouble
before.... What shall I do?"
"Don't eat anything for a week," she directed. "And fly against
tree-trunks as hard as you can. Then come back here after seven days."
Solomon Owl went off in a most doleful frame of mind. It seemed to
him that he had never seen so many mice and frogs and chipmunks as
he came across during the following week. But he didn't dare catch a
single one, on account of what Aunt Polly Woodchuck had said.
His pains, however, grew less from day to day--at least, the pains that
had first troubled him. But he had others to take their place. Hunger
pangs, these were! And they were almost as bad as those that had sent
him hurrying to see Aunt Polly Woodchuck.
On the whole, Solomon passed a very unhappy week. Flying head