WHAT DOCTOR THOUGHT ABOUT TRAPS Quite a long while ago I promised to tell what Tommy Peele was doing in the Broad Field when he let Rabbit’s storm party out of the little cornstalk tent. Well, to begin with, he was looking for the tracks of the woodsfolk. But as long as the snow lay deep on the ground he didn’t find many.
 
For Doctor Muskrat and the fieldmice and Nibble Rabbit were about the only ones who stayed there. Doctor Muskrat was too clever to leave tracks where any one would see them. And the fieldmice had their tunnels far below the crust, so you never saw anything of them. And you’d have to creep around among the Pickery Things before you’d see many signs of Nibble Rabbit.
 
But the birds called very often to get a drink from the warm spring hidden among the bulrushes that was Doctor Muskrat’s front door. It was Chewee the Chickadee who brought news of the . “They have to go a long way in the deep woods every day to find enough seeds for so large a flock,” he said. “And they told me that I must leave every last weed head that up above the snow in their for Nibble Rabbit.”
 
Now that was very nice of the quail because there were very few seeds left, and Nibble was eating the dried grasses that the Pickery Things kept from him and the delicate bark from the sunny side of the .
 
Chaik, the Jay, his thoughtfully. “It must be to live in big flocks like that where you can never find a full crop for everyone at once. The partridge are perching in some . They say it’s safer than sleeping in the snow where they might be frozen in again. Only they can’t find anything to eat but birch and poplar buds, and they’re hungry. But not so hungry as Hooter the and his wife. I wonder why they flew away right in the middle of the terrible storm.”
 
“Silvertip the Fox left then, too,” said Gimlet the Woodpecker, who had been working in the back of Tommy Peele’s barn. “There must be something in that.”
 
“There is,” said Nibble. “I was the game Mrs. Hooter chased into the cornstalk tent, but Silvertip was the one who came out of it. He mussed their feathers and they tweaked his ears, and now they’re afraid to meet each other!”
 
Chaik laughed. “The are still quarrelling,” he told Nibble.
 
“Well, Silvertip has learned to get into the chicken-coop,” Gimlet reported, “and Sparrow says that’s climbing into a peck of trouble.”
 
“Who cares?” Nibble rejoiced. “Now that Slyfoot’s gone to find a better hunting ground we have no one to look out for.”
 
But Doctor Muskrat up very thoughtfully. “Yes, Nibble. Sooner or later we’ll have to look out for Man.”
 
“Shucks!” Nibble, carelessly his ears. “No Man ever comes here unless it’s Tommy Peele. And he’s such a little one, who’s afraid of him?”
 
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