Everyday Adventures

mb with snow. No blue jays squalled, nor white-skirted juncos clicked; neither were there any nuthatches running gruntingly up and down the tree-tru

and made by some animal that walked flat-footed. I recognized the trail of the unhasting skunk. Other animals may jump and run and skurry through life, but the motto of the skunk is, "Don't hurry, others will." The tracks of the fore-paw, when examined closely, showed long claw-marks which were absent from the print of the hind feet. Occasionally the trail changed into

He was a young fox, or he would not have followed them at all. At the edge of the clearing he had sighted the skunk and stopped, for the prints were melted deep into the snow. Sometimes an old and hungry fox will kill a skunk. In order to do this safely, the spine of the skunk must be broken instantly by a single pounce, thus paralyzing the muscles on which the skunk depends for his defense; for the skunk invented the gas-attack a million years before the Boche. No living animal can stay within range of the choking fumes of the liquid musk which the skunk can throw for a distance of several feet. The snow told me what happened next. It was a sad story. The fox had sprung and l

oted or deer-mice. These were the same little robbers which swarmed into my winter camp and gnawed everything in sight. Even a flitch of bacon hung on a cord was riddled with their tiny teeth-marks. Only things hung on wires were safe, for their clinging little feet cannot find a footing on the naked iron. One night they gnawed a ring of round holes through the crown of a cherished felt hat belonging to a friend of mine. The language he used when he looked at that hat the next mornin

ece on my shoe, and after running back and forth from the wood-box several times, Mr. Mouse at last became brave enough to take it. When he found that I did not move, he sat up on my shoe like a little squirrel and nibbled away at his crumb, watching me all the time out of a corner of his black eyes. I forgave him my friend's hat, and was almost ready to overlook the horse-hair episode. When I mov

er footprints were not side by side as with the deer-mice, but almost always one behind the other. These smaller paw-marks among all jumping-animals, such as rabbits, squirrels

to death on the melting snow, having crept up from their underground burrows through the shafts made by grass and weed-stems. Wandering over the white waste, they lose their way and, failing to find food, starve before the sun is half way down the sky. As the shrew does not hibernate, his whole life is a swift hunt for food; for every day this apparently eyeless, earless animal must eat its own weight in flesh. The weasels kill from blood-lust, but the shrews kill for their very

directions. The shrew-track circled faintly here and there, ran for some distance in a long straight trail, and-stopped. The Sword of Damocles, which hangs forever over the head of all the little wild-folk, had fallen. The shrew was gone. A tiny fleck of blood and a single track like a great X on the snow told the tale of his passing. All his fierceness and courage availed nothing when the great talons of the fl

barred owl, which ends in a falling cadence with a peculiar deep, hollow note. So I decided that the maker of the track was that fierce king of the deep woods, whose head, with its ear-tufts or horns, may be seen peering from his nest of st

as owned and ploughed clear to its peak by Great-great-uncle Samuel, who had a hasty disposition and a tremendous voice, and ploughed with two yoke of oxen which required a considerable amount of conversation. Tradition

-DARK-THE GR

met two on the roads with the cows, and later saw seven make an unappreciated visit to my neighbor's garden, where they seemed to approve highly of her lettuce. Straight up the hillside ran the line of deeply stamped little hoof-marks. The trail looks like a sheep's; but the front of each

w exploded all over me, and out burst a magnificent cock partridge, as we call the ruffed grouse in New England, and whizzed away among the laurels like a lyddite shell. When the snowstorm began, he had selected a cozy spot in the l

cold storage until spring. The bear, the raccoon, the woodchuck, the skunk, the chipmunk, and the jumping-mouse are all fast asleep underground. The last sleeper never touches the gr

y was as blue as in June, as the Botanist and I swung into an old road that the forgotten feet of more than two centuries had worn deep below its banks. It was opened

rivalry as to who shall meet the greatest number from the crowd of travelers going north. Last year my best day's record was eighty-four different kinds of birds, which beat the Botanist by two.

ter winter day, he saw his first (and last) flock of horned larks. For my part, I never fail t

r. We saw the flutter of the white skirts of the juncos. From a blighted chestnut tree we saw a bird flash down into the dry grass from his perch on a dead lim

t on his breast. Far ahead, across a snow-covered meadow, a bird flew dippingly up and down

white bird back down a tree. This cautious procedure stamped him as the

y harsher and wilder, and caught a glimpse of the hairy woodpecker, the big brother of the downy, a rarer

ers, who pass there every October day and never suspect what a miracle of color lies hidden in the tangle of marsh-grass beside their path.

rabbit, his white powder-puff gleaming at every jump. The lithe, lean, springing body seemed the very embodiment of speed. There are few animals that can pass a rabbit in a hundred yards

with only a few dripping leaves for a mattress-a forlorn bed. Yet Runny-Bunny, as some children

now!-and walked out among the wild-folk to forget. In a bleak meadow, right at our feet, we saw a rabbit crouched, nearly covere

t. There was not a quiver from his taut body, or a blink from his wide-open eyes. He lay motionless until my hand stroked gently his wet fur

came to a stop, a rabbit burst out of the snow, almost between the runners. The astonis

legs thrust themselves far in front. They made the two far-apart tracks in the snow, while the close-set fore-paws made the nearby tra

Orion, and you will see a great rabbit-track in the sky-the constellation of Lepus, the Hare

others. In the midst of the marsh were rows of the fruit-stems of the sensitive fern, which is the first to blacken before the frost. These were heavy with rich wine-brown seed-pods, filled with seeds

. To-day I broke one of the brittle branches, to nibble the perfumed bark, and found at the end of a twig, pretending to be a withered leaf, a cocoon o

s intensely sour, its flavor giving the sumac its other name of "vinegar plant." These red clusters crushed in sweetened water make a very good imitation of the red circus-lemonade of our childhood. The staghorn is not to be confounded

y, however, did it catch his eye. The bark was that of an oak, but the leaves, which clung thick and brown to the limb, were long, with a straight edge something like

life-history of the oaks, and propounded several ingenious theories to account for the presence of this strange species. This discourse continued until we reached the histor

the goings and comings of the wild-folk. Gray squirrels, red squirrels, muskra

It is a round, tunnel-like trail, like that of some large caterpillar, with the trough made by the w

ame on the home-stretch. We were passing through the last pasture before reaching the humdrum turnpike which led to the tame-folk. Suddenly in the snow I saw a strange trail. It was evidentl

d to the surface, expecting to find spring awaiting him. Two jumps, however, had landed him in a snowbank. It was a disillusion, and Mr. Toad winked his mild brown eyes pite

THE S

spells quick death to the reptile folk. Only his blinking beautiful eyes, like lignite flecked with gold, and the slow throbbing

ing to mammalian ideas. It was evidently home for Mr. Toad, and when I set him therein, he scrambled relievedly under some of the loose wet leaves which had fallen back into his nest. I piled a generous measure of dripping leaves and moist earth over hi

Toad's winter residence, and I strongly suspect that he will be the

at the Puddle Club in April. "Look at what happened to me. If it hadn't been for a well-meani

arkers. I have in my diary "The Day of the Prothonotary Warbler," "The Day of the Henslow's Sparrow's Nest" (that was a day!), "The Day of the F

h the snow, and above them were the dark depths of the Bear-Hole where Great-great-uncle Jake had once shot with his flintlock musk

layer, or Daniel Boone, or any other well-known tracker, the trail would have, of course, been an open book. But it had taken an amateur trailer like myself some years to be able to read that snow record aright. The trail was that of a cottontail rabbit. At first he had been hopping contentedly along, with an eye open for anything eatable in the line of winter vegetables. The far-apart tracks we

howed a frantic burst of speed. In an effort to get every possible bit of leverage, the fore-legs were twisted so that they struck the ground one behind the other, which accounted for the last set of marks perpendicular to those in front. A line of tracks which came from a pile of stones, and paralleled

nearly as well as a squirrel; and if the animal it is chasing goes into a burrow, it has gone to certain death. The rabbit's only chance would have been a straight-away run at full speed for miles and hours. In this way it could probably have tired out the weasel, which is a killer, not a runner, by p

th a sprint that in a minute carried it out of sight. Then a strange thing happened. Although a rabbit can run for an hour at nearly top speed, and in this ca

the tree-tops, sometimes becomes almost hysterical with fright, and has been known to fall out of a tree-top in a perfect ecstasy of terror. Even the rat, which is a cynical, practical animal, with no nerves, and a bitter, brave fighter when fight it must, loses its head w

e in sight again, the trail stopped as the rabbit crouched in the snow waiting for the end. It came mercifully quick. When the weasel saw the rabbit had stopped, its

need not our pity. Better a thousand times the quick passing at the end of a swift run or of a brave fi