Little Tricker the Squirrel Meets Big Double the Bear by Ken Kesey

Story originally published in ‘Demon Box,’ a collection of short fiction and essays by the author, in 1986, and attributed to the fictional narrator Grandma Whittier. The story was also published separately as a children’s book illustrated by Barry Moser in 1990.

By Grandma Whittier

Don't tell me you're the only youngsters never heard tell of the time the bear came to Topple's Bottom? He was a huge high-country bear and not only huge but horrible huge. And hairy, and hateful, and hungry! Why, he almost ate up the entire Bottom before Tricker finally cut him down to size, just you listen and see if he didn't…

It was a fine fall morning, early and cold and sweet as cider. Down in the Bottom the only one up and about was old Papa Sun, and him just barely. Hanging in the low limbs of the crabapple trees was still some of those strings of daybreak fog called "haint hair" by them that believes in such. The night shifts and the day shifts were shifting very slow. The crickets hadn't put away their fiddles. The spiders hadn't shook the dew out of their webs yet. The birds hadn't quite woke up and the bats hadn't quite gone to sleep. Nothing was a-move except one finger of sun slipping soft up the knobby trunk of the hazel. It was one of the prettiest times of day at one of the prettiest times of year, and all the Bottom folk were content to let it come about quiet and slow and savory.

Tricker the Squirrel was awake but he wasn't about. He was lazying in the highest hole in his cottonwood highrise with just his nose poking from his pillow of a tail, dreaming about flying. Every now and again he would twinkle one bright eye out through his dream and his puffy pillowhair to check the hazel tree way down below to see if any of the nuts was ready for reaping. He had to admit they were all pretty near prime. All day yesterday he had watched those nuts turning softly browner and browner and, come sundown, had judged them just one day short of perfect.

"And that means if I don't get them today, tomorrow they are very apt to be just one day past perfect."

So he was promising himself "Just as quick as that sunbeam touches the first hazelnut I get right on the job." Then, after a couple of winks, "Just as quick as that sunbeam touches the second hazelnut I'll zip right down with my tote sack and go to gathering." – and so forth, merely dozing and dallying, and savoring the still, sweet air. The hazelnuts get browner. The sunbeam inches silently on – the fifteenth! the twentieth! – but the morning was simply so pretty and the air hanging so dreamy and still he hated to break the peace.

Well then, the finger just about touches the twenty-seventh hazelnut, when a holy dadblamed goshalmighty roar came kabooming through the Bottom like a freight druv by the Devil himself, or at least his next hottest hollerer.

Oh, what a roar! Oh oh oh! Not just loud, and long, but high and low and chilling and fiery all to once. The haint hair and the spider webs all froze stiff – it was that chilling! – whilst the springs boiled dry and the crabapples burned black from the hellheat of it. Even way up in Tricker's tall, tall tree the cottonwood leaves turned brown and looked ready to fall still weeks before their time. Moreover, that roar had startled Tricker out of his snooze so sudden that he stuck startled halfway between ceiling and floor. And hung there, petrified, spraddle-eagled spellbound stiff in midair, with eyes big as biscuits and every hair stabbing straight out from him like quills on a puffed-up porcupine.

"What in the name of sixty cyclones was that?" he asks himself in a quakering voice. "A dream gone nightmare?"

He pinches his nose to check. The spellbind busts and Tricker drops hard to the floor: bump!

"Hmm," he puzzles, rubbing his nose and his knees, "it is like a dream with a little nightmare noise thrown in – like a plain old floating and flying dream dream… except when you get real bumps it must be a real floor."

And right then it cut loose again – "ROAWRRR!" shaking the cottonwood from root to crown till a critter could hardly stand. Tricker crawls cautious across the floor on his sore knees, and very cautious sticks his sore nose out, and very very cautious cranes over to look down into the clearing below.

"Again I say ROARR!"

The sound made Tricker's ears ring and his blood curdle, and the sight he saw made him wonder if he wasn't still dreaming, bumps or no.

"I'm BIG DOUBLE from the high ridges and I'm DOUBLE BIG and DOUBLE BAD and DOUBLE DOUBLE HONGRY a-ROARRR!"

It was a bear, a grizzerly bear, so big and hairy and horrible it looked like the two biggest baddest bears in the Ozarks had teamed up to make one.

"Again I say HONGRY! And I don't mean lunchtime snacktime littletime hongry, I mean grumpy grouchy bedtime bigtime hongry. I live big and I sleep big. When I hit the hay tonight I got six months before breakfast so I need a supper the size of my sleep. I need a big bellyfull of fuel and layby of fat to fire my fulltime furnace and stoke my sixmonths snore a-ROOAAHRRRR!"

When the bear opened his mouth his teeth looked like stalactites in a cavern. When he swung his head around his eyes looked like a doublebarrel shotgun going off at you.

"I ate the high hills bare as a bone and the foothills raw as a rock, and now I'm going to eat the WHOLE! BOTTOM! and everybody in it ALL UP!"

And with that gives another awful roar and raises his paws high above his head, stretching till his toenails strain out like so many shiny sharp hayhooks, then rams down! sinking them claws clean outta sight into the ground. And with a evil snarl tears the very earth wide open like it was so much wrapping paper on his birthday present.

In the sundered earth there was Charlie Charles the Woodchuck, his bedroom split half in two, his bedstead busted beneath him and his bedspread pulled up to his quivering chin.

"Hey you," Charlie demands, in the bravest voice the little fella can muster, "this is my hole! What are you doing breaking into my home and hole?"

"I'm BIG DOUBLE from the HIGH WILD HOLLERS," the bear snarls, "and I'm loading the old larder up for one of my DOUBLE LONG WINTER NAPS."

"Well just you go larding up someplace else, you high hills hollerer," Charlie snarls back. "This aint your neck of the woods…"

"Son, when I'm hongry it's ALLLL Big Double's neck of the woods!" says the bear. "And I AM HONNNGRY. I ate the HIGH HILLS RAW and the FOOTHILLS BARE and now I'm going to EAT! YOU! UP!"

"I'll run," says the woodchuck, glaring his most glittering glare.

"I can run too-oo," says the bear, glaring back with a grin that turns poor Charlie's glitter to gloom. Charlie meets the bear's blistering stare a couple ticks more, then out from under the covers he springs and out acrost the bottom he tears, ears laid low tail hoisted high and little feet hitting the ground sixty-six steps a second… fast!

But the big old bear with his big old feet merely takes one! two! three! double-big steps, and takes Charlie over, and snags him up, and swallers him down, hair hide and all.

High up in his hole Tricker blinks his eyes in amazement. "Yep," he has to allow, "that booger truly can run."

The bear then walks down the hill to the big granite boulder by the creek where Longrellers the Rabbit lived. He listens a moment, his ear to the stone, then lifts one of those size fifty feet as high as his double-big legs can hoist it, lifted like a huge hairy piledriver, and with one stomp turns poor Longrellers's granite fortress into a sandpile all over the rabbit's breakfast table.

"You Ozark clodhopper!" Longrellers squeals, trying to dig the sand out of one of his long ears with a wild parsnip. "This is my breakfast, not yours. You got a nerve, come stomping down here into our Bottom, busting up our property and privacy, when this aint even your stomping grounds!"

"I hate to tell you, cousin, but I'm BIG DOUBLE and ALLLL the ground I stomp is mine. I ate the high hills BARE and the foothills CLEAN. I ate the woodchuck that run and now I'm going to EAT! YOU! UP!"

"I'll run," says the rabbit.

"I can run too-oo," says the bear.

"I'll jump," says the rabbit.

"I can jump too-oo," says the bear, grinning and glaring and wiggling his whiskers wickedly at the rabbit. Longrellers wiggles his whiskers back a couple of ticks, then out across the territory rips the rabbit, a cloud of sand boiling up from his heels like dust from a motorscooter scooting up a steep dirt road. But right after him comes the bear, like a loaded logtruck coming down a steeper one. Longrellers is almost to the hedge at the edge of the Topple pasture when he gathers his long ears and elbows under him and jumps for the brambles, springing up into the air quick as a covey of quail flushing… fast, and far!

But the big old bear with the big old legs springs after him like a flock of rocketships roaring, and takes the rabbit over at the peak of his jump, and snags him up, and swallers him down, ears elbows and everything.

"Good as his word the big bum can certainly jump," admits Tricker, watching bug-eyed from his high bedroom window.

Next, the bear goes down to where Whittier Crick is dribbling drowsy by. He grabs the crick by its bank and, with one wicked snap, snaps it like a bedspread. This snaps Sally Snipsister the Martin clear out of her mudburrow boudoir and her toenail polish, summersetting her into the air, then lands her hard in the emptied creekbed along with stunned mudpuppies and minnows.

"You backwoods bully!" Sally hisses. "You ridgerunning rowdy! What are you doing down out of your ridges ripping up our rivers? This aint your play puddle!"

"Why, ma'am, I'm Big Double and ANY puddle I please to play in is mine. I ate the ridges raw and the backwoods bald. I ate the woodchuck and I ate the rabbit. And now I'm going to EAT! YOU! UP!"

"I'll run," says the martin.

"I can run, too-oo," says the bear.

"I'll jump," says the martin.

"I can jump too-oo," says the bear.

"I'll climb," says the martin.

"I can climb, too-oo," says the bear, and champs his big yellow choppers into a challenging chomp. Sally clicks back at him with her sharp little molars for a tick or two, then off! she shoots like the bullet out of a pistol. But right after her booms the bear like a meteor out of a cannon. Sally springs out of the creekbed like a silver salmon jumping. The bear jumps after her like a flying shark. She catches the trunk of the cottonwood and climbs like an electric yo-yo whizzing up a wire. But the bear climbs after her like a jet-propelled elevator up a greasy groove, and takes her over, and snags her up, and swallers her down, teeth toenails and teetotal.

And then, it so happens, while the big bear is hugging the tree and licking his lips, he sees! that he is eye-to-eye with a little hole, that is none other than the door, of the bedroom, of Tricker the Squirrel.

"Yessiree bob," Tricker has to concede. "You also can sure as shooting climb."

"WHO are YOU?" roars the bear.

"I'm Tricker the Squirrel, and I saw it all. And there's just no two ways about it: I'm impressed – you may have been a little shortchanged in the thinking department but when it comes to running, jumping and climbing you got double portions."

"And EAT!" roars the bear into the hole, "I'm BIG DOUBLE and I ate –"

"I know, I know," says Tricker, his fingers in his ears. "The ridges raw and the hills whole. I heard it all, too."

"NOW I'm going to EAT –"

"Gonna eat me up. I know," groans Tricker. "But first I'm gonna run, right?"

"And I'm gonna run too-oo," says the bear.

"Then I'm gonna jump," says Tricker.

"And I'm gonna jump, too-oo," says the bear.

"Then I'm gonna drink some buttermilk," says Tricker.

"And I'm gonna drink buttermilk, too-oo," says the bear.

"Then I'm gonna climb," says Tricker.

"And I'm gonna climb, too-oo," says the bear.

"And then," says Tricker, smiling and winking and plucking at one of his longest whiskers dainty as a riverboat gambler with a sleeve full of secrets, "I'm going to fly!"

This bamboozles the bear, and for a second he furrows his big brow. But everybody – even shortchanged grizzerly bears named Big Double – knows red squirrels can't fly – not even red squirrels named Tricker.

"Wellthen," says the bear, grinning and winking and plucking at one of his own longest whitest whiskers with a big clumsy claw, "when you fly, I'll fly too-oo."

"We'll see-ee about that," says Tricker and, without a word or wink more, reaches over to jerk the bear's whisker clean out. UhROAWRRR! roars the bear and makes a nab, but Tricker is out the hole and streaking down the treetrunk like a bolt of greased lightning with the bear thundering behind him, meaner and madder than ever. Tricker streaks across the Bottom toward the Topple farm with the bear storming right on his tail. When he reaches the milkhouse where Farmer Topple cools his dairy products he jumps right through the window. The bear jumps right through after him. Tricker hops up on the edge of a gallon crock and begins to guzzle up the cool, thick buttermilk like he hadn't had a sip of liquid for a month.

The bear knocks him aside and picks up the whole crock and sucks it down like he was a seven-year drought.

Tricker then hops up to the rim of the five-gallon crock and starts to lap up the buttermilk.

But the bear knocks him aside again, and hefts the crock and guzzles it down.

Tricker doesn't even bother hopping to the brim of the last crock, a ten-galloner. He just stands back dodging the drops while the bear heaves the vessel high, tips it up and gradually guzzles it empty.

The bear finally plunks down the last crock, wipes his chops and roars, "I'm BIG DOUBLE and I ate the HIGH HILLS –"

"I know, I know," says Tricker, wincing. "Let's skip the roaring and get right on to the last part. After I run, and jump, and drink buttermilk, then I climb."

"I climb too-erp," says the bear, belching.

"And I fly," says Tricker.

"And I fly too-up," says the bear, hiccupping.

So back out of the milkhouse jumps Tricker and off he goes, dusting back toward his cottonwood like a baby dust devil, with the bear huffing right at his heels like a fullblown tornado. And up the tree he scorches like a house a-fire, with the bear right on his tail like a volcano. Higher and higher climbs Tricker, with the bear's hot breath huffing hotter and hotter, and closer and closer, and higher and higher till there's barely any tree left… then out into the fine fall air Tricker springs, like a little red leaf light on the wind.

And – before the bear thinks better of it – out he springs hisself, like a ten-ton milk tanker over the edge of a straight-down cliff.

"I forgot to mention," Tricker sings out as he grabs the leafy top of that first suntouched hazelnut tree and hangs there, swinging and swaying: "I can also trick."

"ARGHH!" his pursuer answers, plummeting past, "AAARRG -" all the way till he splatters on the hillside like a ripe melon.

When the dust and debris clear back, Sally Snapsister wriggles up from the wrecked remains and says, "I'm out!"

Then Longrellers the Rabbit jumps up and says, "I'm out!"

Then Charlie Charles the Woodchuck pops up and says, "I'm out!"

"I," says Tricker, swinging high in the sunny branches where the hazelnuts are just about perfect, "was never in to get out."

And everybody laughed and the hazelnuts got more and more perfect and the buttermilk just rolled…

down…

the hill.