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Updated: June 10, 2025
So I suppose I shall have to obey him," Grunty muttered half under his breath. "Don't mumble! Speak up!" cried Jasper Jay. "If you have any excuses to make, let's hear them!" While Jasper Jay, in the beech tree, waited for Grunty Pig, on the ground, to speak up and make his excuses for taking beechnuts, a bur dropped from a twig and landed right in front of Grunty's nose. He fell upon it greedily.
And so, likewise, did that noisy rascal, Jasper Jay. They liked beechnuts all three. And somehow they got the notion that the beech tree belonged to them and to nobody else. One fine, crisp fall day when Johnnie Green was in school, a fourth nut-lover wandered down the road, stopped right between the wheel tracks, and sniffed. It was Grunty Pig. "I smell beechnuts!" he cried with a joyful squeal.
But Grunty Pig never showed the least sign of anger. He didn't even let Jasper Jay know that he had heard. When the wind died down he waddled off down the road. And Frisky Squirrel followed him through the tree tops. When they had travelled out of Jasper Jay's sight and hearing, Frisky asked Grunty Pig a question.
Now and then he peeped out to watch the procession of cows moving slowly towards the barn to be milked. And when the last one had entered the lane, hurrying to catch up with the rest and to avoid Spot's nips at her heels Grunty crept out into the open. Then, strange to say, he hurried towards the lane himself. All at once the pasture seemed a great, lonesome place.
And I hope there'll be a raging wind to-night that will rob it of every bur it has.... I'd uproot the beech," he added, "if I didn't like beechnuts so much." "Well, you are an odd one," said Frisky Squirrel. "If everybody was as odd as I am there'd be fewer Jasper Jays in the world," Grunty Pig declared.
Again the squeals grew louder. Again Grunty Pig burst through the hole in the fence and romped up to his mother. "He chased me another time!" he grunted. "The bear chased me almost as far as the fence." "Sakes alive!" his mother shrieked. "Somebody ought to tell Farmer Green! This farm is not a safe place to live, with a bear prowling about it." "Do you want me to go and tell Mr. Green?"
And crashing into the light underbrush along the roadside, he began to search among the fallen leaves with his long nose. Soon Grunty came upon a cluster of the three-sided nuts, clinging inside a bur that the frost had split open. He ate the sweet nuts, shells and all. And with many a grunt of delight he grubbed beneath the tree from which the nuts had fallen.
And he feared that any one of them would crowd him away from the good things that he meant to find beyond the walls of the pigsty. Little did Mrs. Pig dream what plans filled the head of her son Grunty. When she saw him sniffing around the walls of the pen she never once guessed that he could be looking for anything except something to eat.
With a grunt of delight Grunty Pig trotted out of the low building and found himself on the edge of Farmer Green's orchard. He noticed that there was a fragrant smell of apples in the air. It was the first time Grunty Pig had ever been outside his pen.
His keen nose led him to burs that Johnnie Green had trampled over that very morning, and missed. "I wonder " said Grunty Pig aloud "I wonder why nobody ever told me about this beech tree." "Perhaps it was because you are a pig," said a voice right over his head. He looked up. And there on a low branch sat Frisky Squirrel. Grunty knew him; he had sometimes seen him around Farmer Green's corncrib.
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