The Burgess Animal Book for Children (Yesterday's Classics) by Burgess Thornton W

Author:Burgess, Thornton W. [Burgess, Thornton W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nature
ISBN: 9781599151717
Publisher: Yesterday's Classics
Published: 2010-11-08T14:45:46.288000+00:00

This shows how he uses his spade-like hands in digging.

At once everybody looked at Miner's hands. No one ever had seen such hands before. The arms were short but looked very strong. The hands also were rather short, but what they lacked in length they made up in width and they were armed with long, stout claws. But the queer thing about them was the way he held them. He held them turned out. His hind feet were not much different from the hind feet of the Mouse family.

Miner was plainly uncomfortable. He wriggled about uneasily and it was very clear that he was there only because Old Mother Nature had commanded him to be there, and that the one thing he wanted most was to get back into his beloved ground. Old Mother Nature saw this and took pity on him. She picked him up and placed him on the ground where there was no opening near.

"Now, Miner," said she, "your friends and neighbors have had a good look at you, and I know just how uncomfortable you feel. There is but one thing more I'll ask of you. It is that you will show us how you can dig. Johnny Chuck thinks he is a pretty good digger. Just show him what you can do in that line."

Miner didn't wait to be told twice. The instant Old Mother Nature stopped speaking he began to push and bore into the earth with his sharp nose. One of those great, spadelike hands was slipped up past his face and the claws driven in beside his nose. Then it was swept back and the loosened earth with it. The other hand was used in the same way. It was quite plain to everybody why they were turned out in the way they were. There was nothing slow about the way Miner used that boring nose and those shoveling hands. Peter Rabbit had hardly time for half a dozen long breaths before Miner the Mole had disappeared.

"Some digging!" exclaimed Peter.

"Never again as long as I live will I boast of my digging," declared Johnny Chuck admiringly.

From the point where Miner had entered the ground a little ridge was being pushed up, and they watched it grow surprisingly fast as the little worker under the sod pushed his tunnel along in the direction of his old tunnels. It was clear that he was in a hurry to get back where he could work in peace.

"What a queer life," exclaimed Happy Jack Squirrel. "He can't have much fun. I should think it would be awful living in the dark that way all the time."

"You forget that he cannot see as you can, and so prefers the dark," replied Old Mother Nature. "As for fun, he gets that in his work. He is called Miner because he lives in the ground and is always tunneling."

"What does he eat, the roots of plants?" asked Jumper the Hare.

Old Mother Nature shook her head. "A lot of people

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