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"What are you?" asked Rita Rabbit. Peter Platypus squeaked and jumped in the air. He hadn't heard the rabbit hop up behind him.

"Don't do that!" he scolded the stranger. "What do you mean, what am I? Why I'm a platypus, Peter Platypus. Who and what are you?"

"Silly, I'm a rabbit. My name is Rita. I've never seen anybody who looks like you. Did you have to borrow parts from other animals?"

"I beg your pardon," sniffed Peter. "Every part belongs to me and always has belonged to me! Why would you say such a thing?"

Rita Rabbit laughed. "Because your head doesn't match your tail and your feet don't match your fur. You are a strange creature, indeed." With that, she turned to hop over the trail and through the marsh to her house.

"Strange creature, indeed, she said! Hmmphf! I am no stranger than she!" Peter dived into the pond. He was going to his house that was built underwater.

After he dried his fur, he turned to look at himself in his bedroom mirror. "No, that's not quite what I am." Looking behind his back at the flat, heavy tail, he shook his head. "No, that's not what I am either." Turning to peer down at his webbed feet and furry body, he sighed.

"I'm not a duck, though I have a bill. I'm not a beaver, though I wear a beaver tail. My feet, though webbed, don't make me a swan and my fur, so like the otter, doesn't make me one of them. What, oh what, am I? I am a pitiful platypus."

He thought of Bernice Badger, a wise lady who lived at the other end of the pond. "She'll know what I am! I'll visit her this very day!"

Splashing out his front door, he swam toward Bernice Badger's hole. Bernice always dug the neatest, nicest holes of any badger Peter had ever met. He enjoyed visiting her, although she lived quite far away. The pond was a very big pond.

"Where are you headed, Peter?" bubbled Tom Trout. "You seem to be in an awful hurry."

"I'm going to ask Bernice Badger what I am!" said Peter without slowing down for a moment.

"That's silly! You're a platypus."

"I know that," sighed Peter. "But I need to know why I look so strange. I have a duck's bill, a beaver's tail, swan feet and otter fur! No other creature looks so strange. Rita Rabbit said so."

"Well, I hope Bernice Badger can tell you what you want to know, but you look okay to me." Tom Trout waved a fin and swam away to find food for supper.

"Griddip, Peter, slow down. Where are you going so fast, young man?" Franklin Frog, the oldest of the pond frogs, huffed and puffed as he caught up with Peter.

"I have to see Bernice

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