Cartoon forest animals and ribbon on upper arm

You will not believe what the meadow did this week. The first frost had barely left the grass when the young deer came down from the beech wood, all legs and nerves, with a blue ribbon snagged on one antler that nobody could account for. Mr Pollock swears it came off the fair stall in Cressford, but Mr Pollock also swears the fox owes him a hen, so I take his word with salt.

The rabbit, Tobias, has appointed himself the fawn's guide. He stamps when he is pleased and stamps when he is not, and this week he was not pleased at all, because a skunk had moved into the old hollow under the stile and claimed the flowers on the south bank as her own. You know how Tobias feels about flowers. He stamped the whole length of the lane to tell her so, and she, who the pig-keeper's boys call Mrs Ferrier and who has never once been introduced to anyone, simply lifted her tail and waited.

I went down with the milk pail at dusk to see how it would end. The fawn stood between them with his head low, pretending to be interested in clover, and I saw that he was the only one of the three who had thought of the ribbon. He nudged it free of the thorn, and it went up over the hedge like a kite. Both of them looked up at it for so long that nobody stamped at all. By morning the flowers had been shared out in neat pink and purple heaps, and Tobias wore a wreath of them on his ears, looking very pleased with himself.