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Updated: June 1, 2025
Now and then some cunning lynx or weasel, wise from experience but desperate with hunger, throws himself flat on the ground, close by Unk Wunk, and works his nose cautiously under the terrible bur, searching for the neck or the underside of the body, where there are no quills.
That is usually a vain attempt; for the creature that sleeps sound and secure through a gale in the tree-tops has no concern for the ponderous shakings of a bear. In that case Mooween, if he can get near enough without risking a fall from too delicate branches, will wrench off the limb on which Unk Wunk is sleeping and throw it to the ground.
Indeed, if you have one question when you meet Unk Wunk for the first time, you will have twenty after you have studied him for a season or two. His paragraph in the woods' journal begins and ends with a question mark, and a dash for what is left unsaid.
One grip of the powerful jaws, one taste of blood in the famished throat of the prowler and that is the end of both animals. For Unk Wunk has a weapon that no prowler of the woods ever calculates upon. His broad, heavy tail is armed with hundreds of barbs, smaller but more deadly than those on his back; and he swings this weapon with the vicious sweep of a rattlesnake.
For a moment wonder held him as still as the stump beside him; then he bolted into the bush in a series of high, scared jumps, and I heard him scurrying crazily in a half circle around us. Unk Wunk gave no heed to the interruption, but yew-yawed hither and yon after his stupid nose.
This is the only suggestion thus far, from a purely utilitarian standpoint, that Unk Wunk is no mistake, but may have his uses. Once, to test the law and to provide for possible future contingencies, I added Unk Wunk to my bill of fare a vile, malodorous suffix that might delight a lover of strong cheese.
Though I was out for the mere joy of being out, I had really come with a hope of discovering this mousy mite of a wren, and of watching her ways. It was like hoping to watch the ways of the "wunk." Several times I have been near these little wrens; but what chance has a pair of human eyes with a skulking four inches of brownish streaks and bars in the middle of a marsh!
"Wall," says he, takin' his hand down, and winkin', a sort of a shrewd, knowin' wink, but a sad and dejected one, too, as I ever see wunk, "I didn't have no idee of stoppin' votin'." Says I coldly, as cold as Zero, or pretty nigh as coldblooded as the old man, "Did you write that article jest for the speech of people? Didn't you have no principle to back it up?"
Mooween the bear is the only one of the wood folk who has learned the trick of attacking Unk Wunk without injury to himself. If, when very hungry, he finds a porcupine, he never attacks him directly, he knows too well the deadly sting of the barbs for that, but bothers and irritates the porcupine by flipping earth at him, until at last Unk Wunk rolls all his quills outward and lies still.
There was nothing on the hill above, no rustle or suggestion of any hunting animal to answer the question; so I followed Unk Wunk on his aimless wanderings along the foot of the ridge. A slight movement far ahead caught my eye, and I saw a hare gliding and dodging among the brown ferns.
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