Hatch Up Your Troubles is a one-reel animated cartoon, made in 1948 and released in 1949. It is the 41st Tom and Jerry short.
Characters[]
- Jerry Mouse
- Baby Woodpecker
- Mama Woodpecker
- Tom Cat (Main antagonist)
Plot[]
The Mama Woodpecker is sitting on her egg and knitting a sweater, then she leaves her nest ten minutes for a brief lunch. The egg that she was nesting jumps up in her absence, falls down unharmed, rolls through the door (mouse hole) and ends up in Jerry's bed. Jerry, who is sleeping, rolls over and lies on the egg. Just then, the egg starts to hatch and Jerry wakes up. The little Baby Woodpecker comes out, and because Jerry was lying on the egg, the baby chick thinks Jerry is his mommy.
This baby woodpecker is hungry and starts eating Jerry's wooden furniture. Jerry tries to hand-feed the chick, but it accidentally bites Jerry's hand. Jerry forcefully removes his hand from the chick's beak, then it causes the chick to stick his beak into the ground in a handstand position. After that, Jerry helps the chick; and while he tries to sit on a chair, the chick pecks and eats it, causing Jerry fall on his buttocks and get anger. So, Jerry decides to bring the baby woodpecker back to the nest, but it follows Jerry back to his hole - not once, but twice (In the latter case, the chick bursts through the door after being placed outside the mouse hole). Eventually, Jerry gives up on him and furiously orders him out.
With nowhere to go, the despondent baby woodpecker wanders around the garden, and he comes across an unsuspecting Tom, who is sitting in a deckchair, drinking and reading a magazine (which shares the name of a future episode). The chick carelessly pecks a bit at the deckchair's leg. An irritated Tom pours his drink onto the woodpecker. The wet chick also gets mad then proceeds to peck through the entire leg of the deckchair, causing it to fold up with Tom still sitting on it.
Mayhem ensues. Tom begins to chase the baby woodpecker, who screeches "Mama! Mama! Mama! Mama!". Jerry emerges from his mousehole and decides to intervene, stopping Tom with a rake. However, Tom manages to grab hold of the rake, trapping Jerry in the process, who can't run away. The bird pecks off the end of the rake, allowing Jerry to run off, and sending Tom hurtling backwards into a mailbox. Tom hurls the long remainder of the rake handle at Jerry and the bird, but the bird quickly pecks it down to a stub. In the ensuing chase, Tom swallows the bird. The bird pecks deep inside Tom's stomach, which vibrates violently. Tom drinks from a bucket of water, only for the water to seep out through tiny holes in his body. Jerry knocked Tom's tail and the woodpecker eventually pecks his way out through Tom's teeth, and as Jerry runs off, he runs straight into an axe and is knocked out cold. As Tom attempts to disembowel Jerry, the woodpecker continually pecks at the cat's head. Tom grabs this bird in his hand and corks his beak, rendering it useless at attacking him. Tom then ties it to a telegraph pole. However, the woodpecker manages to free himself, and noticing that Jerry has very little time to escape, quickly performs a complicated calculation in order to stop Tom and rescue Jerry. He pecks the post and Tom almost gets Jerry, but the falling telegraph pole lands on Tom's head, bouncing repeatedly and hammering him into the ground.
Jerry is thankful for the woodpecker's help. However, the real mother flies into the scene. The baby woodpecker seems to figure out who his actual mother is after all, and gets whisked away by her. Jerry realizes that he will miss his avian companion more than he thought he would. Just then, the baby woodpecker flies back to Jerry, gives him a loving kiss and flies away again. Jerry waves him off happily, and the cartoon ends.
Notes[]
- Snippets of "The Worry Song" from the 1945 MGM film Anchors Aweigh plays in the title card and at the end of the cartoon. The movie is also well known for featuring superimposed animation of Jerry dancing with Gene Kelly's character Joe.
- This is the fourth Tom and Jerry short to be nominated.
- This film is loosely based on Pack Up Your Troubles.
- The name of the magazine that Tom is reading in this cartoon is Saturday Evening Puss, which is also the name of a 1950 short where Tom and his allies throw a party during Mammy Two Shoes' absence.
- This short is one of the few pre-1951 shorts to retain its original titles.
- In 1956, the cartoon was remade in CinemaScope under its original working title The Egg and Jerry.
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