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Only they never learned not to tease Doctor Muskrat. He would no more get to sleep in the sun on his nice flat stone than somebody’s bad baby would pounce on him. Both Nibble and Stripes were afraid maybe he’d get cross about it. But that was before they caught him playing with those teasing little ones. He’d dive under the water and swim up underneath the stone. Then he’d pop up and snap at their paws when they tried to grab him. And they weren’t the only ones who thought it was fun.

But if Doctor Muskrat liked them, you just ought to have heard Tommy Peele the first time he saw them. He came out with his father to see if it was time to go after those potato-bugs. And of course neither of them could find a single one.

“That’s funny,” said Tommy’s father. “Those potato-bugs have been here. You can see holes where they’ve eaten the leaves. I wonder who cleaned them all up?”

Stripes Skunk sat up and saw what they were looking at. “It was the birds,” he explained, only of course Tommy didn’t understand him. Pretty soon Tommy saw something else. “This plant looks wilty,” he said. “It looks as though a mouse had been gnawing it.”