CHAPTER V THE TIME TAD COON WAS TRICKIER THAN HE KNEW

 “Aough, aough!” barked Watch. “Yah!” he yapped breathlessly when he found Doctor Muskrat¹ sitting out on the flat stone, waiting to meet him. “You’re just who I was looking for. Trailer just stumbled up to the house with his eyes bunged shut and his nose as big as a soupbone, mumbling² something about a coon as near as I can understand him. But no coon ever did anything like that to him.”

 

The doctor cocked his ears. “Can’t talk, can’t he? Poor fellow. Did you try what blue clay will do for him? I’ll get you some.”

 

“Ok, he’ll be all right. His master Sandy’s working over him,” Watch answered. “But what did do it?”

 

“Those striped buzzers³ with hot spots in their tails. They’re over there guarding the nest that fell down on Trailer. The rest of them are building a new one up in that tree—and you just ought to have seen what they did to poor Tad Coon. He was up there hiding.”

 

“Well, you just tell him to stay hidden, too,” whined⁴ Watch, stretching his stiff legs thoughtfully. “I’ve had enough of hunting after Silvertip the Fox to last me awhile.”

 

“But what happened to Grandpop Snapping Turtle?” called Nibble⁵ from the Pickery Things.

 

“He’s in a pot on the fire right now,” answered Watch.

 

“What’s a pot? What’s a fire?” asked the two wild folks.

 

“Fire? You know fire. When men make that red spot that’s all hot—like a buzzer’s tail, you know—come out of the end of a stick—that’s fire,” he explained.

 

“They do it to the bulrushes,” nodded the doctor. “The red spot gets bigger and bigger until everything’s red and then the hot things disappear.”

 

“Exactly. But men don’t always let it make everything red. They keep it in one place and use it to cook with. They’re cooking Grandpop.”

 

“Cooking?” echoed Nibble and Doctor Muskrat.

 

“Bare bones and broken biscuits!” sniffed⁶ Watch. “I can’t explain that to you any more than I can explain about the buzzers to Tommy Peele. But I can show them to him—and I’d better.” So off he set with his tail drooping⁷ because he was puzzled.

 

“It isn’t so very queer that Tommy Peele’s own dog can’t tell him that Grandpop Snapping Turtle ate Silvertip, when you really come to think about it,” observed Nibble Rabbit thoughtfully. “Tommy can’t even talk to the tame beasts. That’s why Watch has to take him all the way down here to the pond to show him these striped buzzers before he’ll understand who bit Trailer. But I don’t see why Watch can’t tell us what Tommy did to Grandpop Snapping Turtle. They certainly didn’t put an ugly thing like that in any cage.”

 

“There!” exclaimed Doctor Muskrat. “He can’t make us understand what he’s talking about because we Woodsfolk haven’t the words for things we’ve never seen. Those man-words Watch uses don’t mean anything to us. You talk about a cage. I don’t know what you mean and you can’t even tell me.”

 

“Why, a cage,” Nibble began—“a cage is a sort of a cave, only it isn’t in the ground. It bites like wood, but it doesn’t look like any tree I ever saw, and it has something in front of it that you can see through and the wind can blow through, but you can’t jump through it.” Now we might guess that was a packing-box with a big open front of chicken-wire. But even Nibble couldn’t be sure of wood when its bark was off.

 

“Um-hm!” grinned Doctor Muskrat. “A cave that isn’t in the ground? Wood that isn’t in a tree? What does that mean?”

 

Nibble laughed at himself. To one of the Woodsfolk it did sound foolish.

 

“Now if a cage is like a barn, only little,” said the doctor, “I can think about it. I’ve seen a barn from the outside, and if it’s hollow like a tree I can guess what the inside is like.”

 

“It is! It is!” Nibble cried. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

 

“Then Grandpop Snapping Turtle can’t live in one. He can’t eat unless he’s under water. Watch says Tommy’s cooking him. I don’t know what that means, either, but I can guess. Tommy eats him. There isn’t anything that hasn’t someone who eats it and no one else can eat Grandpop unless Tommy Peele does.”

 

“Maybe,” Nibble agreed; “but the real question is what will Tommy do to Tad Coon. Tad can’t run away, and Watch knows he’s here. If Tommy is very angry because Tad made those striped buzzers bite Trailer he’ll make Watch find him.”

 

“If Tommy’s eaten Grandpop he won’t be a bit hungry,” began Doctor Muskrat hopefully. Then a bright idea struck him. “And Tommy’ll never know Tad’s to blame. No one can tell him!”

 

“That’s so!” Nibble exclaimed. “No one can!”

 

All the same, when Nibble heard Watch bringing Tommy to the woods to show him the paper wasps⁸’ nest so he’d know who bit Trailer, the rabbit couldn’t help feeling that something would go wrong. Tommy would find out and then wouldn’t he be angry with Tad Coon! And neither Nibble nor Doctor Muskrat could bear to have Tad hunted like Silvertip the Fox. Poor Tad couldn’t even run.

 

Watch galloped⁹ up to the wasps’ nest and barked. “There they are, Tommy. They did it. Those are the buzzers with hot tails I’ve been trying to tell you about.”

 

“That’s funny,” said Tommy, and he looked right up into the tree. The wasps up there were buzzing over which was the best twig¹⁰ to begin building another nest on. “I wonder how it came to fall down.”

 

Of course Nibble didn’t understand him—but Watch did! “Yow!” he barked. “That coon made it fall. Trailer was trying to tell me. Coon, coon, coon!” he sang, sniffing¹¹ around to find him.

 

“Lie still,” warned Doctor Muskrat, who was hiding with Tad in the Pickery Things.

 

“I can’t,” whimpered Tad. “This place is all right for a rabbit, but the pond is where I belong.” And with that he staggered to his feet and started for it. But right on the edge of the bank he stumbled. Down he rolled, paws over fur, with Nibble Rabbit and Doctor Muskrat scuttling¹² after him.

 

“Look out!” barked Watch. “Let me get at him. He’ll fight like anything! They always do.”

 

“Come here, Watch! Go lie down!” shouted Tommy Peele.

 

“Why?” whimpered Watch. But Tommy Peele never answered. He couldn’t! There was Tad Coon sniffling through his puffy nose, peering through his squinty¹³ eyes, snarling¹⁴ with his swollen¹⁵ lips, and all smeared¹⁶ with Doctor Muskrat’s mud plaster and chewed root poultice. He was making the awfullest faces you ever saw. Maybe you think Tommy Peele could help laughing at him. Well, you couldn’t your own self.

 

“You lucky coon!” squealed¹⁷ Nibble. “When he laughs he can’t stay angry.”

 

 

At the edge of Doctor Muskrat’s pond.

1 muskrat   

n.麝香鼠

参考例句：

• Muskrat fur almost equals beaver fur in quality.麝鼠皮在质量上几乎和海獭皮不相上下。
• I saw a muskrat come out of a hole in the ice.我看到一只麝鼠从冰里面钻出来。

2 mumbling   

含糊地说某事，叽咕，咕哝( mumble的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• I could hear him mumbling to himself. 我听到他在喃喃自语。
• He was still mumbling something about hospitals at the end of the party when he slipped on a piece of ice and broke his left leg. 宴会结束时，他仍在咕哝着医院里的事。说着说着，他在一块冰上滑倒，跌断了左腿。

3 buzzers   

n.门铃( buzzer的名词复数 )；蜂音器（的声音）；发嗡嗡声的东西或人；汽笛

参考例句：

• Scout in with Buzzers(Via The Swarm) or whatever fast unit you have. 用技能召唤的蜂群（或者任何你拥有的快速单位）探路。 来自互联网
• Buzzers have the ability to clear garrisoned structures. 蜂群拥有清除驻军建筑得能力。 来自互联网

4 whined   

v.哀号( whine的过去式和过去分词 )；哀诉，诉怨

参考例句：

• The dog whined at the door, asking to be let out. 狗在门前嚎叫着要出去。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• He whined and pouted when he did not get what he wanted. 他要是没得到想要的东西就会发牢骚、撅嘴。 来自辞典例句

5 nibble   

n.轻咬，啃；v.一点点地咬，慢慢啃，吹毛求疵

参考例句：

• Inflation began to nibble away at their savings.通货膨胀开始蚕食他们的存款。
• The birds cling to the wall and nibble at the brickwork.鸟儿们紧贴在墙上，啄着砖缝。

6 sniffed   

v.以鼻吸气，嗅，闻( sniff的过去式和过去分词 )；抽鼻子（尤指哭泣、患感冒等时出声地用鼻子吸气）；抱怨，不以为然地说

参考例句：

• When Jenney had stopped crying she sniffed and dried her eyes. 珍妮停止了哭泣，吸了吸鼻子，擦干了眼泪。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The dog sniffed suspiciously at the stranger. 狗疑惑地嗅着那个陌生人。 来自《简明英汉词典》

7 drooping   

adj. 下垂的，无力的 动词droop的现在分词

参考例句：

• The drooping willows are waving gently in the morning breeze. 晨风中垂柳袅袅。
• The branches of the drooping willows were swaying lightly. 垂柳轻飘飘地摆动。

8 wasps   

黄蜂( wasp的名词复数 )； 胡蜂； 易动怒的人； 刻毒的人

参考例句：

• There's a wasps' nest in that old tree. 那棵老树上有一个黄蜂巢。
• We live in dread not only of unpleasant insects like spiders or wasps, but of quite harmless ones like moths. 我们不仅生活在对象蜘蛛或黄蜂这样的小虫的惧怕中，而且生活在对诸如飞蛾这样无害昆虫的惧怕中

9 galloped   

（使马）飞奔，奔驰( gallop的过去式和过去分词 )； 快速做[说]某事

参考例句：

• Jo galloped across the field towards him. 乔骑马穿过田野向他奔去。
• The children galloped home as soon as the class was over. 孩子们一下课便飞奔回家了。

10 twig   

n.小树枝，嫩枝；v.理解

参考例句：

• He heard the sharp crack of a twig.他听到树枝清脆的断裂声。
• The sharp sound of a twig snapping scared the badger away.细枝突然折断的刺耳声把獾惊跑了。

11 sniffing   

n.探查法v.以鼻吸气，嗅，闻( sniff的现在分词 )；抽鼻子（尤指哭泣、患感冒等时出声地用鼻子吸气）；抱怨，不以为然地说

参考例句：

• We all had colds and couldn't stop sniffing and sneezing. 我们都感冒了，一个劲地抽鼻子，打喷嚏。
• They all had colds and were sniffing and sneezing. 他们都伤风了，呼呼喘气而且打喷嚏。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

12 scuttling   

n.船底穿孔，打开通海阀（沉船用）v.使船沉没( scuttle的现在分词 )；快跑，急走

参考例句：

• I could hear an animal scuttling about in the undergrowth. 我可以听到一只动物在矮树丛中跑来跑去。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• First of all, scuttling Yu Lung (this yuncheng Hejin) , flood discharge. 大禹首先凿开龙门（今运城河津市），分洪下泄。 来自互联网

13 squinty   

斜视眼的，斗鸡眼的

参考例句：

• He looked with squinty eyes. 他眼睛斜视。
• Her eyes were squinty andflaring, as though about to dispense tissues through the nose. 她被触怒了，七窍生烟，仿佛真的要从鼻子下分发纸巾一般。

14 snarling   

v.（指狗）吠，嗥叫， （人）咆哮( snarl的现在分词 )；咆哮着说，厉声地说

参考例句：

• "I didn't marry you," he said, in a snarling tone. “我没有娶你，"他咆哮着说。 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹
• So he got into the shoes snarling. 于是，汤姆一边大喊大叫，一边穿上了那双鞋。 来自英汉文学 - 汤姆历险

15 swollen   

adj.肿大的，水涨的；v.使变大，肿胀

参考例句：

• Her legs had got swollen from standing up all day.因为整天站着，她的双腿已经肿了。
• A mosquito had bitten her and her arm had swollen up.蚊子叮了她，她的手臂肿起来了。

16 smeared   

弄脏； 玷污； 涂抹； 擦上

参考例句：

• The children had smeared mud on the walls. 那几个孩子往墙上抹了泥巴。
• A few words were smeared. 有写字被涂模糊了。

17 squealed   

v.长声尖叫，用长而尖锐的声音说( squeal的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• He squealed the words out. 他吼叫着说出那些话。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The brakes of the car squealed. 汽车的刹车发出吱吱声。 来自《简明英汉词典》