Uncle Wiggily and Baby Bunty

“What are you going to do today, Uncle Wiggily?” asked Baby Bunty, as she saw the rabbit gentleman sitting in the sun on a bench at the side of his hollow stump bungalow one morning.

“Oh! I’m going to take a little hop through the woods, and perhaps call on Grandfather Goosey Gander, to see if he is well again, after having had a cold in his bill,” spoke Mr. Longears.

“Oh, dear!” sighed Baby Bunty, the little rabbit girl, who was hidden in a hollow stump until Uncle Wiggily found her.

“What’s the matter?” asked the rabbit gentleman. “Didn’t I hop around enough to suit you when I was looking for my glasses and they were on top of my head all the while!”

“Oh! you hopped enough, and you cured your stiffness,” said Baby Bunty. “But if you are going to the woods,” said the little tot, “can’t you take me for a picnic? I haven’t had a picnic in ever so long.”

“Oh, ho! So you want a picnic!” laughed Uncle Wiggily. “Well, I guess we might have one. Tell Nurse Jane to make some carrot sandwiches, and some turnip flopovers, and a few lettuce ice cream cones, and we’ll go in the woods and have a picnic.”

“Oh, goodie! Oh, joy!” cried Baby Bunty, and she clapped her paws together and tried to make her teeny weeny pink nose twinkle as Uncle Wiggily made his. But, of course, it wasn’t the same.

In a little while Nurse Jane had put up a nice lunch in a birch bark basket, and Uncle Wiggily and Baby Bunty started to hop through the woods.

“Oh! there goes Billie Bushytail, the squirrel boy, and his brother Johnnie is with him,” suddenly called the baby rabbit after a while. “May they come to our picnic?”

“Surely,” answered Uncle Wiggily. And after that he and Baby Bunty saw Lulu, Jimmie and Alice Wibblewobble, the ducks, and Jackie and Peetie Bow Wow, the puppy dog boys, and Nannie and Billie Wagtail, the goats.

“Bring them all to our picnic!” invited Uncle Wiggily. “We have lunch enough for all.” So all the animal children went to Baby Bunty’s picnic.

Under a tree, on a carpet of green moss, with a fringe of ferns about it, and using toadstools for seats, the rabbit gentleman and Baby Bunty and their friends started the picnic. They had carrot sandwiches, lettuce cakes, turnip jump-arounds and cabbage cookies.

“This is a jolly picnic!” said everybody.

“I’m glad you like it,” spoke Baby Bunty.

And then, all of a sudden, Jackie Bow Wow gave a soft little bark, and said to Baby Bunty:

“Look! Uncle Wiggily is going to sleep. We can’t have any fun at this picnic if he goes to sleep! He ought to play games with us, make whistles from the willow tree and all things like that.”

“Yes,” said Baby Bunty, “so he ought. Oh, dear! I wish Uncle Wiggily wouldn’t go to sleep after he eats! But he almost always does, of late, even at home. I guess he is getting old and stiff.”

“Can’t you make him wake up and be more lively?” asked Lulu Wibblewobble, as she helped a little ant lady lift some carrot bread crumbs over a fallen leaf.

“I’ll try,” said Baby Bunty. “A picnic isn’t any fun unless you play games. And if Uncle Wiggily is going to sleep all the while we can’t play games with him. Now just watch me!”

Baby Bunty slipped up behind Uncle Wiggily, and, taking a long green fern leaf, she softly tickled the bunny rabbit on one of his ears.

“A-ker-choo! Goo-zeesium!” suddenly sneezed the bunny.

“Oh! He’s waking up!” quacked Jimmie the duck.

“Hush!” whispered Baby Bunty. Then she tickled the rabbit gentleman on his other ear.

“Wa-hoo! Zoop! Zing!” gargled Uncle Wiggily.

“Oh, he’s getting real excited like!” barked Peetie Bow Wow.

“Wait a minute!” begged Baby Bunty, keeping out of sight.

Then she took a soft piece of grass and she let it flicker gently over Uncle Wiggily’s pink nose, which never twinkled when he was asleep. All of a sudden the bunny rabbit gentleman cried:

“Oh zip! Doodle-de-oodle! Gurr! Wafty-zup!” And he sneezed and opened his eyes and sat up and said: “Is anything the matter?”

“Oh, no!” answered Baby Bunty sweetly. “We just want you to play some games with us; that’s all.”

“Play games! Of course I’ll play games. I always do at a picnic,” laughed the rabbit gentleman. “I declare! I must have been asleep!” he said. “And I dreamed that a ladybug tickled me!”

“Oh, no! Nothing like that! Can you imagine!” laughed Baby Bunty. And all the other animal children laughed, too. Then Uncle Wiggily played “Hop Over the Stump” and all such fashion games with them, and they had a fine time at the picnic. And if the pumpkin pie doesn’t take the chocolate cake out in the dark and lose it, so there aren’t any cookies for the goldfish, I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and Bunty’s bouquet.