Mean Margaret

by Tor Seidler

  The skunk was sweeping up the leaf bits from around Margaret’s bed when Margaret cornered her. “Funny,” she said, pointing at the skunk’s back.

  “Excuse me?” said the skunk.

  “Your stripe. Funny.”

  “Margaret,” Phoebe said, scurrying over. “That’s very inconsiderate.”

  “Funny, too,” Margaret said, laughing at her. “No skin, just fur.”

  “What are you saying, dear?” Phoebe asked.

  “Skin’s nice. Fur’s stupid.”

  Hearing this, the snake, who had about half his old skin off, couldn’t help thinking the child was less of a numbskull than he’d supposed. But Fred fumed. How could the beast insult Phoebe after all she’d done for her! He picked up a nutshell, determined to give the monster a taste of her own medicine.

  But in the middle of his windup Phoebe knocked the shell out of his paw. “She’s just teasing, dear.”

  Fred narrowed his eyes at Margaret. Glaring back at him, Margaret had an idea. “Mud!” she cried.

  “Mud?” said Phoebe. “What do you want mud for, Margaret?”

  “Bowl of mud!”

  For safety’s sake, Fred grabbed his bowl—his last earthly possession—and took it to the nook where he and Phoebe slept. But that night, after the bats flew out on one of their moonlight expeditions and all the other animals were asleep, Margaret crawled over and managed to nab the bowl without waking him or Phoebe. The rains had stopped, but the ground outside was still nice and muddy. Margaret went to the mouth of the cave, filled the bowl with mud, and dragged it back to the nook.

  At first Fred thought he was having a nightmare about being buried alive in his old burrow. But when he opened his eyes and saw Margaret caking his fur with mud, he let out a shrill whistle that woke everyone in the cave. The only one who couldn’t hear it was Margaret, the sound being too high-pitched for human ears. She just clapped her muddy hands merrily and cried:

  “Fun!”

  “Not fun!” Phoebe retorted.

  “Fun!” Margaret cried, dumping some mud on Phoebe for good measure.

  This strained even Phoebe’s sweet disposition, and for a moment she considered giving the child a good paddling. But it would have been impossible. Since all she did was eat and nap, Margaret had gotten quite huge. So in the end Phoebe and Fred simply dragged the bowl of mud out of the cave and off to the stream, knowing Margaret would be too lazy to follow.

  “Mean!” Margaret said, glowering after them.

  More Fun

  Food!”

  Fred and Phoebe sat up in their nook of the cave, blinking and sneezing. They’d both managed to catch cold while washing the bowl and themselves in the stream late last night. And now it was morning already, with Margaret clamoring to be fed.

  Out of the cave the sniffling woodchucks shuffled—one with the cleaned bowl on her head, the other with murderous fantasies in his.

  On their return, Margaret grabbed the honeycomb and washed it down with the milk. As soon as her appetite was satisfied, her thoughts veered back to fun. What would it be today? she mused, licking her goat-milk mustache. She’d bounced the puny ones off the walls. She’d used the squirrel and bats for target practice. She’d poked fun at the skunk’s stripes and the woodchucks’ fur. She peered around the cave. Fred and Phoebe were sharing some clover. The skunk was napping. Babette was in the back of the cave, engrossed in the final stage of the snake’s skin-shedding. The squirrel was entertaining the kids.

  “Goo-goo,” said one twin.

  “Goo-goo-goo-goo,” the squirrel said happily.

  While all this goo-gooing was going on, Matt was playing with the squirrel’s fluffy tail. Tails, Margaret thought with a gleam in her eye.

  She crawled to the other side of the cave, heaved herself to her feet, reached into a cleft in the rock, and pulled out some nuts. She’d seen the squirrel hide nuts there but had never bothered raiding the supply because she needed him as a nutcracker.

  “Er, excuse me, Margaret,” the squirrel said, scurrying over. “That’s my food for the winter.”

  “So?”

  “Um, it’s just that’s where I put them for safekeeping.”

  The squirrel’s tail was twitching nervously back and forth. Margaret lifted a foot and stomped on it.

  “Yeek!” cried the squirrel.

  “Fun!” cried Margaret.

  Phoebe rushed over to apologize to the squirrel.

  “Margaret, you mustn’t do that,” she said firmly. “It’s not nice.”

  Margaret stomped on Phoebe’s tail.

  “Ouch!” cried Phoebe.

  “How dare you!” cried Fred.

  “Fun!” cried Margaret.

  But not as much fun as the squirrel’s. Woodchucks’ tails are short and stubby. Margaret’s eyes darted around and settled on the snake, who’d finally finished scraping off the last of his old skin on the cave wall. He was all tail. Margaret marched over and stomped on him.

  “Fun!” she cried.

  The snake’s tender new skin was sensitive, and he hissed in pain. Then the hiss turned menacing and he coiled to strike. But, to Fred’s dismay, Phoebe raced over and threw herself in front of Margaret.

  “Move, woodchuck!” ordered the snake.

  “She doesn’t know any better, she’s just a child,” Phoebe said. “Margaret, you must stop this at once.”

  The snake didn’t really want to bite Phoebe, so he just gave Margaret a poisonous look and announced: “I’ve had it up to my neck around here.”

  “Oh, but you can’t go!” Babette cried.

  “Wanna bet?”

  “You can’t leave us, snake,” said the squirrel, coming up with a twin in each arm and Matt on his back. “We’re like a family.”

  “You’ve eaten one too many nuts, squirrel,” the snake hissed. “Look how that thing treats you. She’s a tyrant.”

  “She thinks we’re tennis balls,” Matt said.

  Margaret giggled away.

  “I’m so sorry, snake,” Phoebe said. “But you know she’s just going through a phase.”

  “Pffft,” said the snake.

  Snakes can move very quickly when they want, and in the stroke of a bat’s wing the striped snake vanished from the cave.

  “He can’t be gone for good,” Babette said, stunned. “I don’t think he ever even knew my name.”

  “I’m sure he’ll be back,” said Phoebe. “Don’t you think so, Fred? Fred? Sweetheart?”

  But Fred was lost in another reverie, staring longingly after the snake, dreaming that he, too, was escaping the messy cave and the monstrous child.

  The Snake’s Aches

  The snake whizzed up the hill until he felt something throb and stopped to check his sleek, new-skinned body. He gaped. There, in his mid-section, was a swelling the size of a goose egg. But whenever he’d actually swallowed a goose egg, he’d felt pleasantly full, whereas now he was starting to ache like the dickens. The thug would step on him just when he’d shed his old skin.

  The way to take down the swelling was to soak himself. He found a nice little spring and wriggled in, leaving only his head on shore so he could curse the vile child under his breath.

  “Miserable monstrosity . . . human demon . . .”

  But the cool water was very soothing, and as the ache subsided, so did his cursing. After a while he noticed a stone marker and remembered the skunk mentioning that Phoebe and what’s-her-name’s mother was buried by a spring on this hill. Could that be her gravestone?

  He remembered the evening they’d all told stories about themselves, and thought how odd it was that he’d joined in, telling them about his mother and the chicken hawk. “It must have been what’s-her-name pumping me. I don’t know which is worse, her following me around all the time or that monster’s stomping.”

  But even though it was a relief to get away from the cave, he couldn’t help thinking about the other creatures, and little by little the ache migrated toward his heart.<
br />
  “Weird,” he thought. “I couldn’t really miss them, could I?”

  He’d always considered them roommates, not friends. Figuring the water must be seeping into his brain, he wriggled up onto the shore. But the ache near his heart persisted.

  “I must need to eat,” he decided.

  He slipped down the hill and made his way into the field, where it didn’t take him long to catch and swallow four succulent grasshoppers. But not even this banquet got rid of the ache.

  “Must be because I just shed,” he said to himself. “It makes you thin-skinned and soppy.”

  Instead of stopping at his sunning rock, as he generally did after lunch, he weaved his way across the meadow, resolving to put as much distance between himself and the cave as possible. After a while he came to a road. He didn’t care for roads. A cousin of his had once been flattened by an eighteen-wheeler.

  Quite a few trucks were rumbling by this afternoon, and cars as well. While waiting for the traffic to clear, he noticed a sign on a telephone pole: a drawing of Margaret’s ugly mug, it looked like, with some writing underneath.

  “Bizarre,” he thought, wishing he could read what it said.

  Every time the vibrations of a passing car died out, his long, sensitive body picked up new ones, and sure enough, another car or truck would soon come barreling by. Finally the sun began to set. Now he could feel both aches: in his middle, and near his heart. One made him long to go home to the cave, the other made him want never to see it again.

  At nightfall, the ache near his heart won out. He even found himself trying to think of what’s-her-name’s name—Phoebe’s sister. But homesick as he was, it would be humiliating to go racing back to the cave. If he’d had legs, it would have been like going back with his tail between them. He resolved to wait till the others were all asleep. In the morning he would explain that deserting them had made him feel guilty.

  It was quite late when he got back. He stopped at the mouth of the cave and peered in, letting his eyes adjust to the moonless dark inside. The bats were out somewhere, but everyone else seemed to be asleep.

  “Ugh,” the snake muttered, making out Margaret in her leafy bed, berry juice drooling out one side of her mouth.

  He wanted to slip into his usual place and coil up for the night—but not when that devil might jump on him while he was unconscious. He heard a rustling. The skunk turning over in her sleep. As his yellow-green eyes shifted back and forth between the skunk and the dozing brute, a glint crept into them.

  He slid into the cave, right up to Margaret’s ear. “Stomp on skunk’s tail,” he whispered. “Stomp on skunk’s tail.”

  Margaret snored away. The snake hissed away in her ear, repeating his phrase forty times, fifty times, sixty. Finally he slipped out of the cave and found a vacant chipmunk hole to sleep in.

  A Direct Hit

  When Margaret woke up in the morning, she did what she always did: she sat up in her leafy bed and yelled “Food!” In spite of her sore tail, Phoebe took the bowl and set off in search of the goat. In spite of his sore tail, the squirrel shelled Margaret some nuts—though he kept his distance, tossing them to her one by one from across the cave.

  “I guess the snake didn’t come back,” Babette said, eyeing his discarded skin sadly.

  “We heard someone rustling around not far from here while we were out hunting last night,” Mr. Bat said. “It sounded like a snake.”

  “Probably that skinny old garter snake,” said the skunk. “I bet our friend’s five miles away.”

  “Ten,” Fred said enviously.

  “Honey!” Margaret cried.

  “Just let me grab a bite of clover first,” Fred mumbled.

  “Lazy!” Margaret complained.

  “Can I go to the bee tree with you, Uncle Fred?” asked Matt.

  “Not unless you want some stings on your snout.”

  “Skunk!” Margaret said.

  “What is it?” the skunk asked warily.

  Margaret didn’t have an answer. She had no idea why she’d called for the skunk. The word had just popped out of her mouth.

  But as she stared at the skunk’s bushy tail, the reason dawned on her. She waited till the skunk turned to help Babette feed the twins; then she heaved herself up, marched over; and gave the tail a good stomp.

  “Agh!” screamed the skunk.

  “Fun!” cried Margaret.

  But not for long. The instant Margaret’s foot was off her, the skunk twisted herself around and lifted her wounded tail. Like all skunks’ tails, hers covered two muscular glands capable of spraying musk as far as ten feet, a musk so potent and foul-smelling that animals ten times a skunk’s size won’t tangle with one.

  She fired from both barrels.

  “Yow!” cried Margaret.

  Margaret had been mad before: when her brothers and sister dumped her in the ditch in the dark, when the woodchucks fed her bugs and snails, when they’d moved her out of the burrow. But those times were nothing compared to now. Someone had filled the cave—her cave—with the most disgusting odor she’d ever smelled. She batted the air furiously, trying to fan the smell away. No effect. Shrieking, she stumbled out into the fresh air.

  But even outside the air wasn’t fresh. How could the smell be just as horrible here? She howled in frustration and set out to escape the stink, running as fast as her pudgy legs would carry her.

  The animals in the cave were in shock, too, but luckily for them, the skunk had scored a direct hit, so Margaret took quite a bit of the odor outside with her. Still, it wasn’t long before they followed Margaret’s example and evacuated the cave.

  “Who’d have thought she could move so fast?” the squirrel said, watching Margaret disappear into a grove of trees.

  “I suppose Phoebe’ll bump into her on her way back from the goat,” said Fred.

  “I’m so sorry,” stammered the skunk. “I’d never spray in the cave intentionally. It was just instinct.”

  “Perfectly understandable,” Fred said.

  “It was neat!” said Matt. “You’re a real sharpshooter.”

  “Smelly,” said one of the twins.

  “Stinky,” said the other.

  “Did you hear that?” the squirrel exclaimed. “Babette, the twins have started talking!”

  Babette was busy pulling a leaf off a nearby hobblebush. “We better air the cave out,” she said.

  This made Matt snicker.

  “What’s so funny?” Babette said.

  “When did you turn into the big housekeeper, Mom?”

  “A skunk never sprayed in our burrow,” Babette said—though in fact Matt had hit a nerve. The only reason she wanted to air out the cave was so the snake would stay if he happened to reappear.

  And at that very moment the snake did reappear, right in front of her. The chipmunk hole where he’d spent the night was under the hobblebush.

  “Snake!” Babette cried as the snake poked his head out.

  “We figured you’d be in the next county by now,” said Fred, surprised how glad he was to see him.

  “I felt guilty about deserting everybody,” the snake said gruffly.

  “The cave wasn’t the same without you,” said the squirrel.

  The snake did his best not to look pleased. “Did I get a whiff of skunk?” he asked.

  “Oh, snake, the worst thing happened,” the skunk said. “Margaret stepped on my tail and I sprayed her.”

  “Is that right?” the snake said, slipping Fred a sidelong look. “What a shame.”

  “A regular tragedy,” Fred said.

  They all picked leaves and went into the back of the cave and started fanning—all except Matt, who used the snake’s old skin to fan with, and the bats, who just hung from the ceiling and beat their wings. This was how Phoebe found them when she got back with the goat’s milk.

  “What on earth are you all doing?” she said, setting down the bowl. “And what’s that smell?”

  “Me, I’m afraid,�
� the skunk said. “We’re trying to air it out.”

  “Snake!” Phoebe said. “You’re back.”

  The snake, who had a leaf in his mouth, just grunted.

  “Where’s Margaret?” Phoebe asked.

  “You didn’t see her?” Fred said.

  “What do you mean? Where is she?”

  “I’m afraid I sprayed her,” the skunk confessed.

  “She stomped on skunk’s tail,” Matt said.

  “Stinky,” said one twin.

  “Smelly,” said the other.

  “Isn’t it amazing, Phoebe?” Babette said. “They’re suddenly talking.”

  Any other time the twins’ first words would have filled Phoebe with delight, but just now they barely registered. “You mean you let her go?” she cried, staring at Fred in disbelief.

  “I’m sure she just went to wash off in that stream. She’ll be back—” He wanted to say “all too soon” but, suddenly feeling a twinge of conscience, chose “soon enough.”

  “But what if she takes a tumble? Or crosses paths with that bear? I can’t believe you just let her leave!”

  “To tell you the truth, honey, she took off so fast I couldn’t have caught up with her if I’d wanted to.”

  “Margaret—fast? You expect me to believe that?”

  “It’s true,” the squirrel said, coming to Fred’s defense. “She was moving at an amazing speed.”

  “A truly remarkable clip,” the skunk confirmed.

  “Which way?” Phoebe asked.

  The squirrel pointed, and without another word Phoebe dashed off in that direction.

  “Phoebe, wait!” Fred cried.

  But she didn’t even look back. So Fred had no choice but to scamper after her.