ulb is one of
the very nicest things to eat that there is--so sweet, and juicy, and
crisp! The place was some distance from our home, and after that first
visit Kahwa and I kept begging to be taken there again. At last my
father yielded, and we set out early one morning just before day was
breaking.

We were not loitering on the way, but trotting steadily along all
together, and Kahwa and I, at least, were full of expectation of the
lily bulbs in store, when in a little open space among the trees, we
came upon an object unlike anything I had ever seen before. As we came
upon it, I could have declared that it was moving--then that it was an
animal which, at sight of us, had stopped stock still, and tucked its
head and toes in underneath it. But it certainly was not moving now, and
did not look as if it ever could move again, so finally I concluded that
it must be a large fungus or a strange new kind of hillock, with black
and white grass growing all over it. My father and mother had stopped
short when they saw it, and just sat up on their haunches and looked at
it; and Kahwa did the same, snuggling up close to my mother's side. Was
it an animal, or a fungus, or only a mound of earth? The way to find out
was to smell it. So, without any idea of hurting it, I trotted up and
reached out my nose. As I did so it shrank a little more into itself,
and became rounder and more like a fungus than ever; but the act of
shrinking also made the black and white grass stick out a little
farther, so that my nose met it sooner than I expected, and I found
that, if it was grass, it was very sharp grass, and pricked horribly. I
tried again, and again it shrank up and pricked me worse than ever. Then
I heard my father chuckling to himself.

That made me angry, for I always have detested being laughed at, and,
without stopping to think, I smacked the thing just as hard as I could.
A moment later I was hopping round on three legs howling with pain, for
a hunch of the quills had gone right into my paw, where they were still
sticking, one coming out on the other side.

My father laughed, but my mother drew out the quills with her teeth, and
that hurt worse than anything; and all day, whenever she found a
particularly fat lily bulb, she gave it to me. For my part, I could
only dig for the bulbs with my left paw, and it was ever so many days
before I could run on all four feet again.

All these things must have happened when I was very young--