LITTLE JACK RABBIT
AN OLD CROW’S NEST
Now Featherhead had a much harder time finding a home than Brother Twinkle Tail. He traveled from the oaks to the beech trees, jumping from branch to branch, peeping first into this place and then into that, but every hole and hollow had a tenant.
By and by he ran down to the ground and along the winding paths through the leaves and brush, but even then he could find nothing. No, sir. There didn’t seem to be a single place in the whole big forest for this little squirrel.
“Goodness me!” he exclaimed, “what shall I do? I don’t want to go back to Nutcracker Lodge and tell them I can’t look out for myself. I’d feel like a baby.” So he sat down to think it over.
All of a sudden who should come by but Jimmy Crow.
“What’s the matter? You look dreadfully worried.”
“And so I am,” replied the little squirrel. “And so would you be if you couldn’t find a home for yourself.”
Jimmy Crow turned his head first to one side and then to the other, and winked his bright little eye. Then he winked the other several times. After that he wagged his feathered tail and opened both eyes.
“I know just the place for you.”
“You don’t mean it,” cried Featherhead.
“I certainly do,” replied Jimmy Crow, “if you’ll follow me I’ll take you there in a jiffy.” And Jimmie Crow knew what he was about, for he quickly led the little squirrel to a tall oak tree whose acorns lay in heaps all over the ground. Way up high on a branch was an old crow’s nest.
“There’s the place for you,” cried Jimmy Crow. “You can fix it up in no time.”
Featherhead thanked him and ran up the tree to look it over. It didn’t take him long to make up his mind what to do. Pressing the sticks more closely together, he covered them overhead and all around with leafy twigs, until it looked like a great big ball of leaves. In one side he made a little round hole for a doorway, and as the roof was nicely rounded, and this was the only opening, the rain couldn’t get inside.
“With a good supply of nuts,” he laughed, “I won’t have to go down to the ground for my meals, and can sleep for days at a time when it’s cold and stormy!”
My little house up in the tree
Is just the very thing for me.
It holds my food and keeps the rain
From off my comfy counterpane.
But sometimes it seems lonely quite
When fall the shadows of the night,
And I have no one but myself
To climb up to the pantry shelf.
