CHAPTER VII

A SCARE THAT DIDN’T WORK

Take my advice and pray beware

Of how you try to scare a Bear.

Mother Bear.

Chatterer the Red Squirrel was indignant. He was very indignant. In fact Chatterer was angry. You know he is short-tempered and it doesn’t take a great deal to make him lose his temper. He had watched Mrs. Bear and the twins start out from the great windfall and had silently followed, keeping in the tree tops as much as possible, and taking the greatest care not to let Mrs. Bear or the twins know that he was about.

[40]Inside he had chuckled¹ to see the twins do exactly what Mother Bear did. When she sat up and they sat up beside her, they looked so funny that he had hard work to keep from laughing right out. He had seen many funny things in the Green Forest, but nothing quite so funny as those two little Bears, hardly bigger than Peter Rabbit, gravely doing just exactly what their mother did.

So Chatterer followed, all the time hoping for a chance to give those twins a scare. But he didn’t want to try it while Mother Bear was around. So he waited, hoping that she would leave them alone for a few[41] minutes. Finally Mother Bear set the twins to climbing a tree. It was then that Chatterer became so very indignant. His sharp eyes snapped as he watched the twins scramble² up that tree. He hoped they would fall. Yes, sir, Chatterer really hoped those twin cubs³ would fall.

You see, the trouble was that Chatterer didn’t like the idea of those little Bears learning to climb trees. He felt that the trees belonged to the Squirrel family. It was bad enough to have Bobby Coon and Unc’ Billy Possum climbing them. Now to have two lively little Bears learning to climb was too much. It was altogether too much.

[42]“They haven’t any business in trees,” sputtered⁴ Chatterer to himself, taking care not to be heard. “They haven’t any business in trees. They belong on the ground, not in trees. I won’t have them in the trees! I won’t! I won’t!”

Now of course Chatterer knew, right down in his heart, that those cubs had just as much right in the trees as had he.

The real truth of the matter was that so long as those little cubs remained on the ground, Chatterer feared them not at all. He could be as saucy⁵ and impudent⁶ to them as he pleased. He could tease them and try to scare them and feel quite safe about it,[43] so long as their mother wasn’t about. But if those cubs were going to learn to climb, and he had a feeling that they would make very good climbers, matters might be altogether different.

Chatterer watched the twins and he watched Mother Bear. At last the latter disappeared from sight. Unseen by the twins, Chatterer leaped across to the very tree in which they were sitting, but above them. “I’ll give them such a scare that they will either fall down or will scramble down and never’ll want to climb another tree,” muttered Chatterer.

Silently he crept up behind them; then he opened his mouth[44] and yelled at them. “Get down out of this tree!” he yelled. “Get down out of this tree!”

He was so close to those little Bears that his voice seemed to be in their very ears. They recognized it as a voice which had scared them two or three times when they had first come out of the great windfall to play. It was so close and so unexpected that it startled them so that they almost let go their hold. Then Boxer⁷ turned and for the first time had a good view of Chatterer. He was looking at a very angry Red Squirrel. But instead of being afraid and starting to scramble down from that tree, as Chatterer had expected him to[45] do, Boxer suddenly started straight for him, and it was plain to see that Boxer was an angry small Bear.