You must get up very early,
 
You must lie awake at night,
 
You must have your wits well sharpened
 
And your eyes must be so bright
 
That there's nothing can escape them,
 
Nothing that you do not see,
 
If ahead of Granny Fox you
 
Ever get, or hope to be.
 
 
Happy Jack¹ squirrel made up that verse one day after he had had oh, such a narrow escape from old Granny Fox. It had made Happy Jack very sober for a while, for Granny had so nearly caught him that she actually had pulled some hair from Happy Jack's tail. All the other little forest and meadow people agreed that Happy Jack was quite right.
 
Most of them had had just such narrow escapes from old Granny Fox.
 
You see, it is this way: Old Granny Fox is very, very cunning. To be cunning, you know, is to be sly and smart in doing things in such a way as no one else will think of doing them. Just now, the thing that Granny wanted most of anything in the world was to drive Old Man Coyote away from the Green Meadows and the Green Forest. She couldn't do it openly, because he was bigger and stronger than she, so she had thought and thought and thought, trying to find some plan which might get Old Man Coyote into trouble, so that he would go away and stay away.
 
Then Reddy Fox told her that he had found the place where Old Man Coyote took a sun-nap every day and a splendid plan came to Granny. At least, it seemed like a splendid plan. The more she thought about it, the better it seemed.
 
But Granny Fox never acts hastily. She is too wise for that. So she studied and studied this plan that she had thought of to make trouble for Old Man Coyote. Finally she was satisfied.
 
“I bel............