Who on a prickly porcupine¹

 

Makes up his mind that he will dine

 

Must overcome a thousand quills²

 

Before his stomach Porky fills.

 

And so it is with you and me;

 

With everybody whom we see;

 

With Reddy Fox and Billy Mink³,

 

And all the rest of whom we think

 

On Meadows Green, in Smiling Pool

 

Or hidden in the Forest cool:

 

The thing we've set our hearts upon

 

Must past a thousand spears be won.

 

 

NO one knows this better than did Old Man Coyote as he ran around and around Prickly Porky. He had never felt one of those little spears which Prickly Porky rattled⁴ so fiercely, and he had no mind to feel one. You see, he didn't like the look of them. When finally Prickly Porky lay down and curled up into a great prickly ball, like a huge chestnut⁵ burr, Old Man Coyote sat down just a little way off to study how he was going to get at Prickly Porky without getting hurt by some of those sharp, barbed little spears.

 

For a long time he sat and studied and studied, his tongue hanging out of one side of his mouth. Once he looked up at Sammy Jay and Blacky the Crow and winked⁷, but he didn't make a sound. Sammy and Blacky chuckled⁸ to themselves and winked back, and for a wonder they didn't make a sound. Somehow that wink⁶ made them have more of a friendly feeling for Old Man Coyote. You see, that wink told them that Old Man Coyote was just the same kind of a sly rogue

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