Little Joe Otter/Chapter 26
CHAPTER XXVI
THE FOOLISH YOUNG OTTER
Youth too often scorns advice
And in the end must pay the price.
Little Joe Otter took the two young Otters over to the log where he had found the trap and showed it to them. It looked so harmless that it was difficult for the young Otters to believe that it was such a terrible thing as their father said it was. Then he took them over to the foot of the slippery slide, and while they swam about at a safe distance he looked carefully until he found a trap right at the bottom of the slippery slide. He showed it to them.
"Now you see why I said you mustn't go down the slippery slide even once," said he. "I didn't know that this trap was here, but I suspected it. I suspect that there are traps in the other places I have warned you to keep away from. If you want to live long and be happy, don't once forget the warnings your mother and I have given you."
The young Otters promised they wouldn't forget, and then the whole family went fishing. Of course, they didn't go fishing together. They separated, each one fishing in a different place. All the time she was looking for a trout, the smallest Otter kept thinking about those traps. She made up her mind that nothing would tempt her to be heedless of the warnings she had been given. You see, she had not forgotten the lesson she had learned when Yowler the Bobcat had caught her because of her heedless wilfulness.
But her brother had had no such lesson, and as he hunted for trout he smiled to himself at what he thought were the foolish fears of his parents. "Father and mother are just trying to scare us," said he. "I don't believe there is anything to be afraid of as long as that dreadful two-legged creature isn't about. Those traps look perfectly harmless to me. I'm not afraid of them. I guess if I use my eyes and my nose I can find them without getting into one of them. I wonder where all the fish have gone to. My, I'm hungry! I believe I'll go farther up the brook. There is some swift, open water up there and it hasn't been fished much."
So the young Otter swam to the upper end of the open water where he then was, climbed out on the ice and traveled over this until he came to another stretch of open water. He swam along close to the bank on one side and presently came to a sort of little pen of sticks. He didn't remember having seen it before, and he looked at it suspiciously. He swam around it at a safe distance, and then he smelled fish. It didn't take him long to discover that inside of that little pen, at the back, was a fat trout. That trout wasn't alive. It seemed to be held by a stick at the back of that little pen.
The young Otter remembered the warning not to touch a dead fish. But he was hungry, very hungry, and here was a dinner he wouldn't have to take the trouble to catch. He swam back and forth in front of that little pen of sticks and examined them carefully. He went close to them and smelled of them. They seemed nothing but harmless sticks. His mouth began to water at the smell of the fish.
"There isn't a particle of danger," said the foolish young Otter. "There wouldn't be a trap way up here, anyway. I want that fish and I'm going to have it."