CHAPTER VI: Hooty The Owl Doesn't Stay Still

    Now what's the good of being smart

   When others do not do their part?

If Blacky the Crow didn't say this to himself, he thought it. He knew that he had made a very cunning plan to get the eggs of Hooty the Owl¹, a plan so shrewd and cunning that no one else in the Green Forest or on the Green Meadows would have thought of it. There was only one weakness in it, and that was that it depended for success on having Hooty the Owl do as he usually did when tormented² by a crowd of noisy Crows,—stay where he was until they got tired and flew away.

 

Now Blacky sometimes makes a mistake that smart people are very apt to make; he thinks that because he is so smart, other people are stupid. That is where he proves that smart as he is, he isn't as smart as he thinks he is. He always thought of Hooty the Owl as stupid. That is, he always thought of him that way in daytime. At night, when he was waked out of a sound sleep by the fierce hunting cry of Hooty, he wasn't so sure about Hooty being stupid, and he always took care to sit perfectly³ still in the darkness, lest Hooty's great ears should hear him and Hooty's great eyes, made for seeing in the dark, should find him. No, in the night Blacky was not at all sure that Hooty was stupid.

 

But in the daytime he was sure. You see, he quite forgot the fact that the brightness of day is to Hooty what the blackness of night is to him. So, because Hooty would simply sit still and hiss⁴ and snap his bill, instead of trying to catch his tormentors or flying away, Blacky called him stupid. He felt sure that Hooty would stay right where he was now, and he hoped that Mrs. Hooty would lose her temper and leave the nest where she was sitting on those two eggs and join Hooty to help him try to drive away that noisy crew.

 

But Hooty isn't stupid. Not a bit of it. The minute he found out that Blacky and his friends had discovered him, he thought of Mrs. Hooty and the two precious eggs in the old nest of Redtail the Hawk⁵ close by.

 

“Mrs. Hooty mustn't be disturbed,” thought he. “That will never do at all. I must lead these black rascals⁶ away where they won't discover Mrs. Hooty. I certainly must.”

 

So he spread his broad wings and blundered away among the trees a little way. He didn't fly far because the instant he started to fly that whole noisy crew with the exception of Blacky were after him. Because he couldn't use his claws or bill while flying, they grew bold enough to pull a few feathers out of his back. So he flew only a little way to a thick hemlock-tree, where it wasn't easy for the Crows to get at him, and where the light didn't hurt his eyes so much. There he rested a few minutes and then did the same thing over again. He meant to lead those bothersome Crows into the darkest part of the Green Forest and there—well, he could see better there, and it might be that one of them would be careless enough to come within reach. No, Hooty wasn't stupid. Certainly not.

 

Blacky awoke to that fact as he sat in the top of a tall pine-tree silently watching. He could see Mrs. Hooty on the nest, and as the noise of Hooty's tormentors sounded from farther and farther away, she settled herself more comfortably and closed her eyes. Blacky could imagine that she was smiling to herself. It was clear that she had no intention of going to help Hooty. His splendid plan had failed just because stupid Hooty, who wasn't stupid at all, had flown away when he ought to have sat still. It was very provoking.

 

1 owl   

n.猫头鹰，枭

参考例句：

• Her new glasses make her look like an owl.她的新眼镜让她看上去像只猫头鹰。
• I'm a night owl and seldom go to bed until after midnight.我睡得很晚，经常半夜后才睡觉。

2 tormented   

饱受折磨的

参考例句：

• The knowledge of his guilt tormented him. 知道了自己的罪责使他非常痛苦。
• He had lain awake all night, tormented by jealousy. 他彻夜未眠，深受嫉妒的折磨。

3 perfectly   

adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地

参考例句：

• The witnesses were each perfectly certain of what they said.证人们个个对自己所说的话十分肯定。
• Everything that we're doing is all perfectly above board.我们做的每件事情都是光明正大的。

4 hiss   

v.发出嘶嘶声；发嘘声表示不满

参考例句：

• We can hear the hiss of air escaping from a tire.我们能听到一只轮胎的嘶嘶漏气声。
• Don't hiss at the speaker.不要嘘演讲人。

5 hawk   

n.鹰，骗子；鹰派成员

参考例句：

• The hawk swooped down on the rabbit and killed it.鹰猛地朝兔子扑下来,并把它杀死。
• The hawk snatched the chicken and flew away.老鹰叼了小鸡就飞走了。

6 rascals   

流氓( rascal的名词复数 )； 无赖； （开玩笑说法）淘气的人（尤指小孩）； 恶作剧的人

参考例句：

• "Oh, but I like rascals. "唔，不过我喜欢流氓。
• "They're all second-raters, black sheep, rascals. "他们都是二流人物，是流氓，是恶棍。