Runaway Ralph - Beverly Cleary [12]
“Little Rabbit Fru-fru
Hopping through the forest
Scooping up the field mice
And banging them on the head.”
Ralph was stunned by the words Garf sang. What kind of boy would sing such a wicked song? Certainly not a boy a mouse could trust. Frightened and disappointed, he scuttled to the farthest corner of his cage and turned his back.
“Down came the Good Fairy and she said,
‘Little Rabbit Fru-fru, I don’t want you
Hopping through the forest
Scooping up the field mice
And banging them on the head.’”
As Ralph sat trembling in his corner, he listened and was puzzled. Garf, with obvious pleasure, was singing the same words the campers were singing in the dining hall, but the tune was different. When their voices went up, Garf’s went down. When their voices went down, Garf’s went up. Sometimes his voice did neither, but wavered someplace in the middle.
Ralph was bitterly disappointed by the whole turn of events. Garf was not interested in speed and motorcycles. He was interested in singing and in banging field mice on the head.
The hot summer days droned on. Ralph was supplied with more food than he could possibly eat, and his exercise wheel kept him in trim. Whenever Catso sneaked into the craft shop and showed an interest in Ralph’s cage, someone snatched him and shoved him out the door.
Life was safe, comfortable, and not unpleasant. From his cage near the window, Ralph had a good view of the camp. To the left through the bamboo he could see the boys’ lodges. To the right were the girls’ lodges. Before him lay the dining hall, the camp office, a trampoline, a swimming pool, and a circle of benches and old school desks in front of a platform that held a piano. Off to the right beyond the shade of the walnut trees, a pasture shimmered in the summer heat. Counselors, who were college students like the summer help at the Mountain View Inn, led the activities of the campers, and one counselor lived in each lodge with eight or ten campers.
Ralph always found something interesting to watch—campers spreading their sleeping bags out in the sun to air, counselors leading singing and directing skits around the campfire in the evening, boys racing to be first in line when the bell was rung to announce meals, boys and girls in cowboy boots or English riding boots going off toward the barn for riding lessons.
Boys and girls played and kittens romped under the walnut trees. Catso discovered a small hole in the craft shop’s rusty screen door, which he explored with a paw as if it were a mousehole, but faithful old Sam always arrived to tell him to move on.
Never once did Garf forget to care for Ralph, and when he was not singing in his strange voice, he sometimes spoke. “Hi, little fellow,” he would say, as he quickly detached the water bottle from the cage and refilled it at the sink. He even offered Ralph a sunflower seed with his fingers.
Ralph was so lonely he was tempted to accept the seed for the sake of companionship. Then he remembered the song about mice getting banged on the head and retreated to the corner of his cage.
One afternoon, when Ralph was particularly lonely, he decided that a boy who fed a mouse three times a day could not be so bad after all, and that the next time a sunflower seed was offered, he would venture out and accept it from the boy’s fingers.
However, when Garf finally came, he began to sing again. This time the song was different from the one the campers were singing over in the dining hall. It provoked Ralph’s curiosity, because he had heard others sing it but had been unable to catch the words. The campers never sang this song when Aunt Jill was around, which made Ralph even more curious about the words. He was under the impression that they were not fit for grown-up ears, which of course made the song all the more interesting.
Garf sang and Ralph listened.
“Great green