“One day the Mouse finds an orphaned little chick in the thick grass in a nest.” “If a baby has no parents, he must have a friend. “I will be his friend,” he decisively says to his alarmed Mom. One morning, the Little Mouse, in search of food for the chick, went along the bank of the stream. And then he saw, between the stems of grass, a flat gray head on a long thin neck with yellow, unblinking eyes. “I’m lost,” thought the Mouse, crouched to the ground and closed his eyes in horror. Suddenly he heard the sound of a desperate struggle, and then everything became quiet, and he could hear the wind rustling the stems of meadow grass. The mouse carefully opened his eyes and saw a large, proud bird with a hooked beak and powerful clawed paws. These paws firmly held the body of the Swamp Viper intertwined with rings..."