As soon as Ki-yi Coyote started after Doctor Rabbit, Chatty Squirrel began scolding as hard as he could. Ki-yi was running so fast he didn’t hear, but Chatty scolded anyway. It seemed to relieve his angry feelings.

My! How angry Chatty Squirrel was! He was angrier than he had ever been in all his life before.

“The idea,” Chatty Squirrel scolded, “of Ki-yi Coyote’s coming into the Big Green Woods to make a breakfast of Doctor Rabbit! And he would make a breakfast of me, too, or of Blue Jay, or of any of us, if he had a chance. I wish I were as big as the big brown bear for a minute. I’d show old Ki-yi Coyote!”

[Pg 54]And Chatty Squirrel scolded so fast and so loud that presently his neighbors heard him and came flocking around to see what the trouble was.

“What’s that you say?” asked Stubby Woodchuck, running up to the foot of the tree.

“What’s that? What’s that? What’s that?” cried Blue Jay, and Jim Crow, and ever so many others as they came up.

“You’d better say, ‘What’s that?’” Chatty Squirrel chattered. “I just now dropped a stone on Ki-yi Coyote, who was lying right down there in those bushes. He was all ready to pounce on Doctor Rabbit and gobble him up!”

“Indeed!” exclaimed Blue Jay in his shrill voice.

“Indeed!” Jim Crow called in his hoarse voice.

“Indeed!” said big Uncle Owl in his[Pg 55] deep bass voice. “Indeed! Indeed!” he exclaimed again seriously, as he straightened his spectacles. Now Uncle Owl hardly ever said more than one word, and when he said three words without stopping, it meant something very unusual had happened to him. He was almost excited.

All the little creatures of the Big Green Woods kept a respectful silence, even Chatty Squirrel, and listened respectfully for Uncle Owl to speak. So big Uncle Owl (he was more than twice as big as little Downy Owl) cleared his throat and looked straight at Chatty Squirrel. Then he said, “Well, well, why didn’t you kill him?”

“I wish I could have killed him,” Chatty Squirrel chattered angrily. “But anyway I hit him. And Doctor Rabbit fooled him ever so much, because, you[Pg 56............