CHAPTER III

HOOTY THE OWL CHANGES HIS HUNTING GROUNDS


A full stomach makes a pleasant Day;
An empty stomach turns the whole world gray.
Peter Rabbit.

Hooty the owl sat on the tip-top of a tall dead tree in the Green Forest
while the Black Shadows crept swiftly among the trees. He was talking to
himself. It wouldn't have done for him to have spoken aloud what he was
saying to himself, for then the little people in feathers and fur on
whom he likes to make his dinner would have heard him and known just
where he was. So he said it to himself, and sat so still that he looked
for all the world like a part of the tree on which he was sitting. What
he was saying was this:

"Towhit, towhoo! Towhit, towhoo!
Will some one tell me what to do?
My children have an appetite
That keeps me hunting all the night,
And though their stomachs I may stuff
They never seem to have enough.
Towhit, towhoo! Towhit, towhoo!
Will some one tell me what to do?"

When it was dark enough he gave his fierce hunting call--"Whooo-hoo-
hoo, whoo-hoo!"