Play time

"There's this really nice lawn, see, where me and my brothers and cousins can kick up our heels and chase each other around. There's not much to eat yet, but pretty soon the bushes will be blooming and some flowers coming up, and pretty soon after that, our favorite snacks will be there near the houses down by the shore. Spring is great! June is even better, when the hosta leaves are nice and tender."

"The lawn is right next to the woods so when Mama and Aunt Hilda snort at us, we can run back in. 'Course we're big now and know when to run in ourselves. All five of us grew up together around here so we know about the other animals, the nice ones like the dogs and the not-so-nice ones."

"Some of them run right at us, making funny noises out of their mouths, and we have to run away although we know they're not going to get us, we're faster and jump high and get away really well. A tall skinny animal on two legs usually makes loud and high-pitched sounds and the dogs go right back. Sometimes, though, a different kind of dog in the woods keeps on coming and chases us for a long time, and Mama tries to kick it away, but once it got a little friend of ours and we didn't look back to see what happened. Our Dad tells us to be careful near the houses, because the two-legged animals are dangerous, they got his brother last year with a smoking stick, but we don't care, it's so nice here. We just worry about the yellow dogs."

"We see shiny animals too, on the road, and they run really fast and are loud. Yesterday, a pretty blue one stopped on the road near the lawn where we were playing, and just looked at us. I mean, the animals inside the shiny animal looked at us, it was two of those skinny ones and a little black dog thing. One of the shiny eyes opened and we heard a little growling, like a miniature bear. Mama and Aunt Hilda froze for a second, and so we did too, but it was OK and we laughed and jumped around some more. The shiny animal just stayed there, like it was fascinated with us, maybe it wanted to play too. But then it left. We played some more and then after a while, we decided to go back into the woods and see if there was anything for dinner. See you next time!"