Muskrat watching him and tickling and laughing, he would not have
been so sure that next time he would catch Little Joe Otter.

All around the Smiling Pool and then up and down the Laughing Brook
Farmer Brown's boy tramped, and each trap he found sprung and buried
in the mud. He had stopped whistling by this time, and there was a
puzzled frown on his freckled face. What did it mean? Could some
other boy have found all his traps and played a trick by springing
all of them? The more he thought about it, the more puzzled he
became. You see, he did not know anything about the busy day the
Minks and the Otters and the Muskrats and the Coons had spent the
day before.

Old Grandfather Frog, sitting on his big green lily-pad, smoothed
down his white and yellow waistcoat and winked up at jolly, round,
red Mr. Sun as Farmer Brown's boy tramped off across the Green Meadows.

"Chugarum!" said Grandfather Frog, as he snapped up a foolish green fly.
"Much good it will do you to set those traps again!"

Then Grandfather Frog called to Billy Mink and sent him to tell all
the other little people of the Smiling Pool and the Laughing Brook
that they must hurry and spring all the traps again as they had before.

This time it was easy, because they knew just where the traps were,
so all day long they dropped sticks and stones into the traps and
once more sprung them. Then they prepared for a grand feast of the
good things to eat which Farmer Brown's boy had left, scattered
around the traps.