Page:The red book of animal stories.djvu/143

 saw an extraordinary bundle of heads and legs and tails coming slowly along towards the grove of pawpaws. What in the world could it be? Suddenly the great body seemed to divide up into a host of little ones, and behold



WATCHING THE COMBAT

there was an old grey, woolly opossum, the size of a big cat, and her thirteen little white rats of babies! Opossums are ugly creatures, and this one was no better than the rest. Her nose was long and sharp, her legs