INQUISITIVE MR. POSSUM Inquisitive Mr. Possum It was Mr. Owl who gave the wood folk the warning by calling out one night, "To whom it may concern!" At least the wood people knew that was what he meant, but anyone else might have thought he just cried "To whoo! To whoo!" So when all the animals both great and small had gathered around his tree he told them that in his opinion it was to be a very, very hard winter. That of course meant that they must begin right away to lay up stores for the cold, snowed-in days, and everyone bestirred himself at once to do this. Even Mrs. Rabbit, who seldom made much preparation for the winter days, began to do up preserves; all the small bunnies were sent out with their baskets to gather corn and beans and beet tops and all sorts of good things. "If we cannot get them green," said Mrs. Rabbit to her neighbor, Mrs. Squirrel, "we can eat them stewed; but of course we much prefer them in their natural state." Mrs. Squirrel, to encourage her neighbor in laying up winter stores, gave her a big basketful of walnuts which Mrs. Rabbit pickled, and some say those were the first walnuts ever pickled. But this story is not about pickled walnuts; it is about the nice preserves that Mrs. Rabbit put up and the accident that befell Mr. Possum. Everybody that passed Mrs. Rabbit's home for many days found it hard to get by her door, for such spicy, nice-smelling odors as came through the open windows made everyone feel hungry. Mr. Possum was especially interested when he found that Mrs. Rabbit was, among other things, putting up a great deal of canned corn, and he decided that when it was dark he would just take a peek into her pantry window and see how many cans she had. Right in front of the window was a tree and one limb hung low enough so that Mr. Possum with a little care could easily swing himself from it and reach the pantry window. Now this might have been safe enough if the limb had been a good one, but it
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