Page:Little Joe Otter.djvu/174

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
156
Little Joe Otter

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