see it clearly
Getting Ready For Summer
By Thornton W. Burgess
Everybody was getting ready for summer. Yes, Sir, that is just what everybody on the Green Meadows and in the Green Forest and along the Laughing Brook and around the Smiling Poll was doing. to be sure, it was only the beginning of spring, but the spring is moving time, you know, and it is building time, and to be nicely settled in a new home by the time summer comes one must begin to plan very early. So these were busy days for everybody, including Peter Rabbit. Not that Peter was planning a new home! Oh my, no! Peter couldn't see any use in doing that. But he was even busier than if he had been. You see if everybody moved and Peter didn't know where they moved to he couldn't go make the calls he so dearly likes to make, and if he couldn't make the calls why he couldn't gossip and that would be a terrible thing to Peter Rabbit.
So Peter was one of the busiest of all the little meadow and forest people. He hardly had time to eat. In the first place there were so many of his feathered friends returning from the South. There were new arrivals every day and Peter had taken it upon himself to welcome them back to the Green Meadows and the Green Forest. Just as he was the first one to greet Winsome the Bluebird so he was the first to hear the glad song of Little Friend of All, the Song Sparrow, and Redwing the Blackbird, and Bubbling Bob the Bobolink. Of course they all had news for him, and of course Peter had to hurry around and tell the news to Johnny Chuck and Jimmy Skink and Jerry Muskrat and Unc' Billy Possum and all his other friends, most of whom were too busy with their own affairs to go hunting for news themselves. Peter had never been so happy in his life.
Now with so much to think about Peter grew careless and heedless. He was hurrying through a dark and lonely part of the Green Forest early one morning when he noticed a queer little ball on the ground. Then he saw three or four more. They were very curious little balls. Peter had to stop and see what they were, for you know Peter is very, very curious. They were at the bottom of a tall pine tree. Peter hopped over to the first one. That little ball was made of fur and tiny pieces of bone. Peter felt a queer feeling creep up his backbone. Then he hopped over to another of the queer little balls. This was of feathers and bones. Peter felt still more queer. What could they mean and where had they come from? He looked up in the pine tree and then Peter almost fainted from fright! There sat Hooty the Owl beside a rough bundle of sticks. Peter had found Hooty's home.
Peter sat perfectly still and held his breath, but his heart went pitapat, pitapat, with fright. Of course sitting perfectly still was just the best thing he could have done. Hooty didn't move. Neither did Peter. After a while Peter stopped shaking inside. If Hooty had seen him Hooty would have tried to catch him before this. It must be -- yes, it was that Hooty was asleep. Peter held his breath and tiptoed away two or three steps. Hooty didn't move. Peter tried it again. Still Hooty didn't move. Then Peter crept a little farther. Hooty still slept. At last Peter was far enough to run. And how he did run! No frightened Rabbit ever ran faster!
Peter was so frightened that he kept watching behind him instead of looking to see where he was going. The result was he almost ran into Jimmy Skunk who was out looking for beetles for his breakfast.
"What's the matter with you now, Peter Rabbit?" asked Jimmy Skunk.
Peter shivered and his teeth chattered so with fright that he couldn't speak. He just pointed back in the direction from which he had come and then started on again for the Old Brier patch, lipperty, lipperty-lip!
"Peter Rabbit's afraid of his own shadow," grumbled Jimmy Skunk, who isn't afraid of much of anything. "Now I wonder what has frightened him this time. I believe I'll just have to see."
So Jimmy Skunk started off in the direction from which Peter Rabbit had just come.