DANNY MEADOW¹ MOUSE often had sat watching Skimmer the Swallow sailing around up in the blue, blue sky. He had watched Ol' Mistah Buzzard go up, up, up, until he was nothing but a tiny speck², and Danny had wondered how it would seem to be way up above the Green Meadows³ and the Green Forest and look down. It had seemed to him that it must be very wonderful and beautiful. Sometimes he had wished that he had wings and could go up in the air and look down. And now here he was, he, Danny Meadow Mouse, actually doing that very thing!
 
But Danny could see nothing wonderful or beautiful now. No, indeed! Everything was terrible, for you see, Danny Meadow Mouse wasn't flying himself. He was being carried. Yes, Sir, Danny Meadow Mouse was being carried through the air in the cruel claws of Hooty the Owl⁴! And all because Danny had forgotten—forgotten to watch up in the sky for danger.
 
Poor, poor Danny Meadow Mouse! Hooty's great cruel claws hurt him dreadfully! But it wasn't the pain that was the worst. No, indeed! It wasn't the pain! It was the thought of what would happen when Hooty reached his home in the Green Forest, for he knew that there Hooty would gobble him up, bones and all. As he flew, Hooty kept chuckling⁵, and Danny Meadow Mouse knew just what those chuckles⁶ meant. They meant that Hooty was thinking of the good meal he was going to have.
 
Hanging there in Hooty's great cruel claws, Danny looked down on the snow-covered Green Meadows he loved so well. They seemed a frightfully long way below him, though really they were not far at all, for Hooty was flying very low. But Danny Meadow Mouse had never in all his life been so high up before, and so it seemed to him that he was way, way up in the sky, and he shut his eyes so as not to see. But he couldn't keep them shut. No, Sir, he couldn't keep them shut! He just had to keep opening them. There w............