Instantly came a chorus of answering gobbles as every turkey along the track saw, in the failing light, that real, buildings—farmyard buildings—were here to roost on! And into the air they went, helped all along the train by the two boys, who were tossingthem into the cars, or upon the loads of lumber, as fast as they could pass from car to car.
Luckily, the rails were sleety, and the mighty driving-wheels, spinning on the ice with their long load, which seemed to freeze continually to the track, made headway so slowly that the whole flock had come to roost upon the cars before the train was fairly moving.
Conductor and brakeman, hurrying back to board the caboose, were midway of the train before they noticed what was happening.Howit was happening they did not see at all, so hidden were the movements of the two boys in the swirl of the blinding snow.
For just an instant the conductor checked himself. But it was too late to do anything. The train was moving, and he must keep it moving as fast as he could to the freight-yards ahead at the junction—the very yards where, even now, an empty car was waiting for the overdue turkeys.
As he ran on down the track and swung aboard the caboose, two other figures closed in behind the train. One of them, seizing the other by the arm, landed him safe upon the steps, and then shouted at him through the storm:—
“Certainly you shall! I’m safe enough! I’ll drive on to that old sawmill to-night. Feed ’em in the morning and wait for me! Good-by,” and as the wind carried his voice away, George Totman found himself staring after a ghost-white car that had vanished in the storm.
He was alone; but the thought of the great flock speeding on to the town ahead was company enough. Besides, he had too much to do, and to do quickly, to think of himself; for the snow was blocking his road, and the cold was getting at him. But how the wires overhead sang to him! How the sounding forest sang to him as he went back to give the horse a snatch of supper!
He was soon on the road, where the wind at his back and the tall trees gave him protection. The four-wheeled wagon pulled hard through the piling snow, but the horse had had an easy day, and George kept him going until, toward eight o’clock, he drew up behind a lofty pile of slabs and sawdust at the old mill.
A wilder storm never filled the resounding forests of the North. The old mill was far from being proof against the fine, icy snow; but when George rolled himself in his heavy blanket and lay down beside his dog, it was to go to sleep to the comfortable munching of the horse, and with the thought that Herbert and the turkeys were safe.
And they were safe. It was late in the afternoon the next day when George, having left the wagon at the mill, came floundering behind the horse through the unbroken road into the streets of the junction, to find Herbert anxiously waiting for him, and the turkeys, with full crops, trying hard to go to roost inside their double-decked car.
TheDecember rain was falling down, down, down, as if the drops were lead instead of water. The December sky, if you could call it sky, had settled down, down, down, as if it too were of lead, and were being propped up only by the tops of the stiff bare trees.
A green stick in the fireplace behind me sizzled and sputtered and blew its small steam whistles to warn me away from the window,—from the sight of the naked trees, and the cold, thick fog upon the meadow, and the blur of the pine woods beyond, and the rain falling down, down, down.
A dreary world out of doors surely, with not a sign of life! The pine tree, rising up above the hillside in front of the window, was green, but only a few lifeless leaves rattled among the middle branches of the oaks, while up in the stark top of a hickory sapling was wedged a robin’s nest, deserted and wet and going to pieces.
I shivered, in spite of the hearth-fire behind me, for the face of the gray gloom pressed close up against the window outside. And the empty robin’snest, already a ruin! its mud walls broken, its tiny timbers hanging loose in the rain!
But what a large nest for a robin, I thought; and how strangely peaked and pointed it is, like a little haycock! Then all at once, inside of me, and all over me, I felt a warm, delightful feeling.
“It isn’t possible,” said I aloud, but all to myself; “it isn’t possible that little White-Foot has moved into that old robin’s nest and fitted it up with a peaked roof for the winter?”
And the thought of it started the warm, delightful feeling again inside of me and all over me; and snatching up the tongs by the fireplace I ran out into the December rain and tapped a few times on the slender hickory sapling.
And what do you think happened?
It stopped raining?
No.
You broke your tongs?
No.
The nest fell out and hit you on the head?
No.
You ran back into the house again out of the rain?
Yes, I did, and I went straight to the window and looked out again at the robin’s nest,—my deserted, ruined robin’s nest, with its thick thatch of waterproof cedar bark, with its little round door-hole in the side, with its soft furry bed, all toasty warm, outof which with my tapping tongs I had just roused White-Foot and brought him sleepy-eyed to look down at me from his door.
The rain continued to fall down; but my spirits went up, and up, at the thought of that little mouse all safe and warm for the winter in Robin’s deserted nest.
And so, if “there are no birds in last year’s nest,” as mourns a doleful poem, you need not be sad on that account, for if you look closely, you may find, now and then, a mouse in last year’s nest—and who will say that finding a mouse in a bird’s nest is not almost as interesting as finding a bird there?
A robin’s nest in the winter-time would be the wettest, muddiest, coldest place in the world for a robin; but a mouse can take that old robin’s nest and turn it into a snuggery (if you know what a “snuggery” is) so cozy and warm that neither the tip of Mr. Mouse’s sharp nose, nor the tip of his thin ears, nor the tippy-tip of his long bare tail ever feels one sharp nip of the cold outside.
So, if there are no birds in last year’s nest (as surely there ought not to be), take your tongs and tap, or, better, climb up, and reach gently into the nest with your finger, for a mouse may be waiting inside to bite you,—and that would be interesting.
For a mouse is interesting—just as interesting in his mousy ways as a whale in his whalish ways, or a robin in his ways. Can you name anything thatdoes not grow interesting as soon as you begin to watch and study it? Large things, small things, Bengal tigers or earthworms—all things will surprise and interest you if you will study them for a season.
I have a friend, for instance, who has shot more tigers, in more lands, than any other living man; who knows more about tiger habits and the tempers of the dangerous beasts than any other man; and who, as I am writing this, is himself writing a book which is to be called “Tiger Lands.” That will be an exciting book, no doubt, for he has had adventures that made my hair stand up on my head, just to hear about. Yet I very much doubt if that book, with all its man-eaters, will be any more interesting or any more valuable to us than Darwin’s book on earthworms.
So am I going to sigh because there are no birds in last year’s nests? Had the poem said, “there are nomicein last year’s nests,” that might have made me sad, perhaps; though I am sure that I could go into the woods almost any winter day and find plenty of oldstumpswith mice in them. And I am equally sure that there will be plenty of birds in next summer’s nests; so, until the robins come back and build new nests, I am going to look out of the window these dark December days, and think of White-Foot in Robin’s old nest, high up there in the slender sapling, where no cat can climb tohim, and where no crow will dare come to tear his house to pieces.
“THERE HE WILL SWING IN THE WINTER GALES”
“THERE HE WILL SWING IN THE WINTER GALES”
There he will swing in the winter gales with the snow swirling around and beneath him; there he will dream through the rain and the slanting sleet when his high sapling stairway is coated with ice and impossible for him to climb; there he will live, and whenever I thump with the tongs at his outer gate, up there in the little round doorway will appear his head—his eyes, I should say, for he looks all eyes up there, so large, so black, so innocent, so inquiring are they, so near to rolling off down the tip of his nose with sheer surprise.
I shall have many a cheering glimpse of White-Foot, many a comforting thought of him, out there, his thatch snow-covered, his thick-walled nest in the slender hickory riding the winter seas that sweep the hilltop, as safe as the ships anchored yonder in the landlocked harbor; and he will be much more comforting to me out there than here in the house with me; for, strangely enough, while White-Foot never seems to join the common mice in the barn, never a winter goes by without one or more of his kind coming into the house for the cold weather.
This would be very pleasant if they could keep out of the pop-corn and the nuts and the apples and the linen-drawers. But only recently one got into the linen in the china-closet, andchewed togetherthe loveliest damask nest that any being ever slept in.
There was nothing for such conduct, then, of course, except to kill her. But I did not kill her, though I take no credit to myself, for I tried to kill her, as any one would have been tempted to do.
I got her out of that linen-drawer in a hurry and chased her from cupboard to couch, to radiator and bookcase, and lost her. The next day I resumed the chase, and upset most of the furniture before she finally gave me the slip. The next day she appeared, and once more we turned things upside down, and once more from some safe corner she watched me put the chairs back on their legs and pick up the pieces of things.
But the next morning, as I opened the grate of the kitchen stove to light the fire, there in the ash-pan huddled that little mouse; and under her in a bed of ashes, as if to reproach me forever, were five wee mice, just born, blind and naked in the choking dust, babes that should have been sleeping covered in a bed of downy damask in the linen-drawer.
I said I did not kill her. No, I reached in slowly, lifted her and her babes out softly in my hand, carried them into a safe, warm place and left them, devoutly hoping that they might all grow up to help themselves, if need be, to an ear of pop-corn, or even to a cozy corner and a sip of honey in the beehives.
No, I don’t believe I hoped all of that, for White-Foot is exceedingly fond of honey, and no roof in all the out-of-doors is so much to his liking as a beehive, warm with the heat of the clustered swarm; and nowhere can he make such a nuisance of himself as inside the hive.
A robin’s nest, a beehive, a linen-drawer, a woodpecker’s hole—almost any place will do for the winter home, so thick and warm can the mice build their walls, so many bins of acorns and grain do they lay up, and so bold are they to forage when their winter stores run low.
I had a curious experience with a white-footed mouse in the cellar one winter. The small boys had carried into the cellar (to hide them from me, I imagine) about four quarts of chestnuts which they had gathered. A little later, when they went to get their nuts, the box was empty. Not a chestnut left!
“Have you eaten all our chestnuts, father?”
“No, I haven’t—not a nut,” I answered.
“Well, they are all gone!” was the wail.
And so they were, but how, and where, we did not know. House mice had not eaten them, for no shells were left behind; there were no rats or squirrels in the cellar that fall; and as for one of the small boys—that was past thought. The fact is, more suspicion was attached to me in the case than anything in my previous conduct called for; and, though altogether guiltless, I continued to be uncomfortablyquizzed from time to time about those chestnuts, until I began to wonder if Ihadgot up in my sleep and devoured the four quarts, shells and all.
Then one day, while we were putting things shipshape in the vegetable cellar, what did we come upon but a nice little pile of chestnuts hidden away in a dark corner; then we discovered another pile, laid up carefully, neatly, in a secret spot, where no human eye—except the human house-cleaning eye, that misses nothing—would ever have seen them, and where no big human hand would ever have put them.
I was allowed to go then and there scot-free; and a trap was set for the wood mouse. It was White-Foot, we knew. But we never caught her. And I am glad of it, for after we took away what chestnuts we could find, she evidently felt it necessary to make a new hoard, and began with a handful of old hickory-nuts, shagbarks, that had been left in the vegetable cellar beside the box of chestnuts.
Now, however, she felt the insecurity of the inner cellar, or else she had found a fine big bin out in the furnace cellar, for out there by the furnace she took those nuts and tucked them compactly away into the toe of one of my tall hunting-boots.
There were double doors and a brick partition wall between the two cellars. No matter. Here were the nuts she had not yet stored; and out yonderwas the hole, smooth and deep and dark, to store them in. She found a way past the partition wall.
Every morning I shook those nuts out of my boot and sent them rattling over the cellar floor. Every night the mouse gathered them up and put them snugly back into the toe of the boot. She could not have carried more than one nut at a time—up the tall boot-leg and down the oily, slippery inside.
I should have liked to see her scurrying about the cellar, looking after her curiously difficult harvest. Apparently, they were new nuts to her every evening. Once I came down to find them lying untouched. The mouse, perhaps, was away over night on other business. But the following morning they were all gathered and nicely packed in the boot as before. And as before I sent them sixty ways among the barrels and boxes of the furnace room.
But I did it once too often, for it dawned upon the mouse one night that these were the same old nuts that she had gathered now a dozen times. That night they disappeared. Where? I wondered.
Weeks passed, and I had entirely forgotten about the nuts, when I came upon them, the identical nuts of my boot, tiered carefully up in a corner of the deep, empty water-tank away off in the attic!
Thefirst snowstorm! I would not miss seeing the first snowstorm, not if I had to climb up to my high, tarry, smoky roof in the city and lie down on my back, as I once did, in order to shut out everything but the gray wavering flakes that came scattering from the sky. But how marvelously white and airy they looked, too, coming down over the blackened city of roofs, transfiguring it with their floating veil of purity! You must see the first snowfall, and, if you want to, jump and caper with the flakes, as I always do.
The sorrows of winter are its storms. They are its greatest glories also. One should no more miss the sight of the winter storms than he should miss the sight of the winter birds and stars, the winter suns and moons! A storm in summer is only an incident; in winter it is an event, a part of the main design. Nature gives herself over by the month to the planning and bringing off of the winter storms—vast arctic shows, the dreams of her wildest moods, thework of her mightiest minions. Do not miss the soft feathery fall that plumes the trees and that roofs the sheds with Carrara marble; the howling blizzard with its fine cutting blast that whirls into smoking crests; the ice-storm that comes as slow, soft rain to freeze as it falls, turning all the world to crystal: these are some of the miracles of winter that you must not fail to see.
You must see how close you had passed to and fro all summer to the vireo’s nest, hanging from the fork on a branch of some low bush or tree, so near to the path that it almost brushed your hat. Yet you never saw it! Go on and make a study of the empty nests; see particularly how many of them were builtout along the roads or paths, as if the builders wished to be near their human neighbors—as, indeed, I believe they do. Study how the different birds build—materials, shapes, finish, supports; for winter is the better season in which to make such study, the summer being so crowded with interests of its own.
When the snow hardens, especially after a strong wind, go out to see what you can find in the wind furrows of the snow—in the holes, hollows, pockets, and in footprints in the snow. Nothing? Look again, closely—that dust—wind-sweepings—seeds!Yes, seeds. Gather several small boxes of them and when you return home take a small magnifying glass and make them out—the sticktights, gray birches, yellow birches, pines, ragweeds, milfoil—I cannot number them! It is a lesson in the way the winds and the snows help to plant the earth. Last winter I followed for some distance the deep frozen tracks of a fox, picking out the various seeds that had drifted into every footprint, just so far apart, as if planted in the snow by some modern planting-machine. It was very interesting.
When the snow lies five or six inches deep, walk out along the fence-rows, roadsides, and old fields to see the juncos, the sparrows, and goldfinches feeding upon the seeds of the dead weeds standing stiff and brown above the snow. Does the sight mean anything to you? What does it mean?
Burns has a fine poem beginning—
“When biting Boreas, fell and doure,Sharp shivers thro’ the leafless bow’r,”
“When biting Boreas, fell and doure,Sharp shivers thro’ the leafless bow’r,”
“When biting Boreas, fell and doure,
Sharp shivers thro’ the leafless bow’r,”
in which, he asks,—
“Ilk happing bird—wee, helpless thing!—·······What comes o’ thee?Whare wilt thou cow’r thy chittering wing,An’ close thy e’e?”
“Ilk happing bird—wee, helpless thing!—·······What comes o’ thee?Whare wilt thou cow’r thy chittering wing,An’ close thy e’e?”
“Ilk happing bird—wee, helpless thing!—
·······
What comes o’ thee?
Whare wilt thou cow’r thy chittering wing,
An’ close thy e’e?”
Did you ever ask yourself the question? Go forth, then, as the dusk begins to fall one of these chill winter days and try to see “what comes o’” the birds, where they sleep these winter nights. You will find an account of my own watching in a chapter called “Birds’ Winter Beds” in “Wild Life Near Home.”
You will come back from your watching in the dusk with the feeling that a winter night for the birds is unspeakably dreary, perilous, and chill. You will close the door on the darkness outside with a shiver as much from dread as from the cold.
“List’ning the doors an’ winnocks rattle,”—
“List’ning the doors an’ winnocks rattle,”—
“List’ning the doors an’ winnocks rattle,”—
you will think of the partridge beneath the snow, the crow in his swaying pine-top, the kinglet in the close-armed cedar, the wild duck riding out the storm in his freezing water-hole, and you will be glad for your four thick walls and downy blankets, and you will wonder how any creature can live through the long, long night of cold and dark and storm. But there is another view of this same picture; another picture, rather, of this same stormy, bitter night which you must not miss seeing. Go out to see how the animals sleep, what beds they have, what covers to keep off the cold: the mice in the corn-shocks; the muskrats in their thick mud homes; the red squirrels in their rocking, wind-swung beds, so softwith cedar bark and so warm that never a tooth of the cold can bite through!
“I heard nae mair, for ChanticleerShook off the pouthery snaw,And hail’d the morning with a cheer,A cottage-rousing craw.”
“I heard nae mair, for ChanticleerShook off the pouthery snaw,And hail’d the morning with a cheer,A cottage-rousing craw.”
“I heard nae mair, for Chanticleer
Shook off the pouthery snaw,
And hail’d the morning with a cheer,
A cottage-rousing craw.”
This winter I have had two letters asking me how best to study the mosses and lichens, and I answered, “Begin now.” Winter, when the leaves are off, the ground bare, the birds and flowers gone, and all is reduced to singleness and simplicity—winter is the time to observe the shapes, colors, varieties, and growth of the lichens. Not that every lover of nature needs to know the long Latin names (and many of these lesser plants have no other names), but that every lover of the out-of-doors should notice them—the part they play in the color of things, the place they hold in the scheme of things, their exquisite shapes and strange habits.
You should see the brook, “bordered with sparkling frost-work ... as gay as with its fringe of summer flowers.” You should examine under a microscope the wonderful crystal form of the snow-flakes—each flake shaped by an infinitely accurate hand according to a pattern that seems the perfection, the very poetry, of mechanical drawing.
What a world of gray days, waste lands, bare woods, and frozen waters there is to see! And you should see them—gray and bare and waste and frozen. But what is a frozen pond for if not to be skated on? and waste white lands, but to go sleighing over? and cold gray days, but so many opportunities to stay indoors with your good books?
See the winter bleak and cheerless as at times you will, and as at times you ought; still if you will look twice, and think as you look, you will see the fishermen on the ponds catching pickerel through the ice—life swimming there under the frozen surface! You will see the bare empty woodland fresh budded to the tip of each tiny twig—life all over the trees thrust forward to catch the touch of spring! You will see the wide flinty fields thick sown with seeds—life, more life than the sun and the soil can feed, sleeping there under “the tender, sculpturesque, immaculate, warming, fertilizing snow”!
“’Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the houseNot a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.”
“’Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the houseNot a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.”
“’Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.”
Buton the night before this particular Christmas every creature of the woods that could stir was up and stirring; for over the old snow was falling swiftly, silently, a soft, fresh covering that might mean a hungry Christmas unless the dinner were had before morning.
Yet, when the morning dawned, a cheery Christmas sun broke across the great gum swamp, lighting the snowy boles and soft-piled limbs of the giant trees with indescribable glory, and pouring, a golden flood, into the deep, spongy bottom of the swamp below. It would be a perfect Christmas in the woods, clear, mild, stirless, with silent footing for me, and everywhere the telltale snow.
And everywhere in the woods would be the Christmas spirit, too. As I paused among the pointed cedars of the pasture, looking down into the tangle at the head of the swamp, a clear, wild whistle rang in the thicket, followed by a flash through the alders like a tongue of fire, as a cardinal grosbeak shot down to the tangle of greenbrier and magnolia under theslope of the hill. The bird was a fleck of flaming summer. As warm as summer, too, were the pointed cones of stag-horn sumac burning on the crest of the ridge against the group of holly trees—trees as fresh as April, and all aglow with red berries.
The woods were decorated for the Holy Day. The gentleness of the soft, new snow touched everything; cheer and good-will lighted the unclouded sky and warmed the thick depths of the evergreens, and blazed in the crimson-berried bushes of the ilex and the alder. The Christmas woods were glad. The heart of the woods was full of Christmas peace.
Now I did not imagine all of this as I went along. Perhaps there was the spirit of Christmas in my heart, and so I found the spirit of Christmas in the woods; but so it must have been with the household I had just left, back on the city street. Every one had Christmas in his heart, and so every one found Christmas in the Christmas-tree blazing and glittering in its candle-flame blossoms and jeweled fruit.
So there was real Christmas joy and peace—a real Christmas spirit—abroad in the woods this snowy Christmas morning. The sky had it, the trees had it, the soft white slopes had it, the softly flowing creek had it, flowing softly toward the bay.
But doubtless my own feelings had something to do with it all. This was Christmas Day, and these were my home woods, the woods where I tramped and trapped and “grew up” when a boy; and this wasI, after twenty years of absence, I, the boy again, back in the old familiar pasture on my way to Lupton’s Pond!
Yes, I must say that I was almost afraid as I followed the old cow-path across the pasture, now only a slightly sunken line in the snow; I was afraid that the path might be gone. Twenty years are a good many years for a cow-path to last. But evidently the cows had been crossing every year since I had been away; and not a single new crook had they worn in the old winding trail. Then I was afraid, as I came to the fence where I could look down upon the pond, lest the pond might have disappeared. But no, there it lay, sealed over, as if kept for me by the snow! Then I looked fearfully over the pond, over the steep ridge on the opposite shore to where there used to stand two particular persimmon trees.
My heart beat wildly for a moment. The woods up the ridge had been cut off! Things had changed! I was confused and looked this way and that, when, so near to me that I could scarcely believe my eyes, I saw the twin trees, their hard, angular limbs closely globed with fruit, and standing softly out against the sky!
It was enough. Forgetting the twenty years, I hurried down across the pond and up to the persimmon trees on the other side—upintothe trees indeed, for I never stopped until I had climbed clear up into the top among the ripe persimmons!
Do you know what a persimmon, picked from a particular tree along Cohansey Creek on Christmas Day, tastes like? especially when you have not had a taste of persimmon for twenty years? No, you do not—because you are not twenty years old, perhaps, and because you were not a boy along Cohansey Creek, perhaps, and because, if you were, you did not know those two particular persimmon trees, maybe.
Nobody ever seemed to know the perfection of those persimmons, except myself and the ’possums. Not one of the Luptons, who owned the pasture, the pond, and the trees, had ever been a boy, so far as I could remember, and certainly not one of them had ever tasted the fruit of those two trees. There were other persimmon trees up and down the township, others here along the pond; but these two were the only trees to hold their fruit until Christmas, preserved with such richness of flavor, such a gummy, candied, wild, woodsy quality, that it could not decay. Those persimmons never decayed. They candied, evaporated, wrinkled, fell, and vanished away.
Or else the ’possums ate them—those that I did not eat. A ’possum had already been here this Christmas morning before me. I had noted his fresh tracks beneath the tree when I came up; and now, in the tree, I saw where the snow had been brushed from several of the large limbs as the ’possum had moved about in the top, eating his Christmas dinner.
You never ate a Christmas dinner high up in the top of a persimmon tree? But you will, perhaps, some day, as good a Christmas dinner, I hope, as ours was. For such persimmons! Bob Cratchit’s goose (“There never was such a goose!”) could not have been any better flavored. Nor could the little Cratchits have been any hungrier for goose than I was for persimmons.
Now the ’possum had been having persimmons every night since the frosts of October; so of course he felt no such hunger for persimmons as I felt. But ripe persimmons would be a Christmas dinner for a ’possum every day in the year. There is nothing so unspeakably good as persimmons if you happen to be a ’possum, or if you happen to be a boy—even after twenty years!
So the ’possum and I had our Christmas dinner together at Nature’s invitation, in the top of thepersimmon tree. The ’possum, to be sure, had eaten and gone before I came. But that is good form in the woods. He was expecting me, so he came early, just before dawn, that neither of us might be embarrassed, leaving his greetings for me in sign-language in the snow.
A Christmas dinner all alone would be cold cheer indeed. But I was not alone. Here was good company and plenty of it. Did not the tracks talk to me? With abundance of fruit still left in the tree, did I need to see that ’possum fold up his napkin, pull down his vest, spread his hands over his expansive person and groan in the fullness of his feast? No; all of that was printed plainly in the snow. Why, I could even hear his groans in his tumbled tracks at the foot of the tree, where the fat old fellow had literally fallen over himself! What an appetite! What a pudding of persimmons he must be! He can hardly walk for fat! Look at his trail in the snow leading down toward the pond—a big wide wallow where he has bounced along!
So I slide down the tree and take up the ’possum’s trail. We have broken bread together, this ’possum and I, and now we will enter the woods together in the same good-fellowship for the rest of the day. Persimmons and good-will are very proper things to be filled with when you go into the Christmas woods.
And there is no better fellowship for such a trampthan the trail of some animal like the possum or the mink or the fox. To go in with one of these through the woods-door is to find yourself at home. Any one can manage to get inside the woods, as the grocery boy or the census man manages to get inside our houses. You can bolt in at any time on business. But atrail, remember, is Nature’s invitation. Go softly in with possum, or rabbit, or coon, and at the threshold of the trees you will be met by the Spirit of the Woods—you will be made a guest in this secret, shadowy house of the out-of-doors.
But do not fail first to break bread with the ’possum. A persimmon, or a handful of wintergreen berries, or a nip of sassafras root, or a piece of spruce gum, or a lump of liquid amber—share anything, take any small part in the life of these who live wild in the woods, and they will meet you at the threshold and make you more than welcome.
I went in with the ’possum. He had traveled home leisurely and without fear, as his tracks plainly showed. He was full of persimmons. A good happy world this, where such fare could be had for the picking! What need to hurry home? Unless, indeed, one were in danger of falling asleep by the way! So I thought, too, as I followed his winding path; and if I was tracking him to his den, it was only to wake him for a moment with the compliments of the season. But when I finally found him in his hollow gum, he was so sound asleep he barely knew thatsome one was poking him gently in the ribs and wishing him a merry Christmas.
The ’possum had led me far along the creek to the centre of the empty, hollow swamp, where the great-boled gums lifted their branches like a timbered, unshingled roof between me and the wide sky. Far away through the spaces of the rafters I saw a pair of wheeling buzzards, and under them, in lesser circles, a broad-winged hawk. Here, at the feet of the tall, clean trees, looking up through the leafless limbs, I had something of a measure for the flight of the great birds. And what power, what majesty and mystery in those distant buoyant wings!
I have seen the turkey buzzard sailing the skies on the bitterest winter days. To-day, however, could hardly be called winter. Indeed, nothing yet had felt the pinch of the cold. There was no hunger yet in the swamp, though this new snow had scared the raccoons out, and their half-human tracks along the margin of the swamp stream showed that, if not hungry, they at least feared that they might be.
For a coon hates snow. He invariably stays in during the first light snowfalls, and even in the late winter he will not venture forth in fresh snow unless driven by hunger or some other dire need. Perhaps, like a cat or a hen, he dislikes the wetting of his feet. Or it may be that the soft snow makes bad hunting—for him. The truth is, I believe, thatsuch a snow makes too good hunting for the dogs and the gunner. The new snow tells too clear a story. For the coon’s home is no dark den among the ledges; only a hollow in some ancient oak or tupelo. Once within, he is safe from the dogs, but his long, fierce fight for life taught him generations ago that the nest-tree is a fatal trap when behind the dogs come the axe and the gun. So he has grown wary and enduring. He waits until the snow grows crusty, when without sign, and almost without scent, he can slip forth among the long shadows and prowl to the edge of dawn.
Skirting the stream out toward the higher back woods, I chanced to spy a bunch of snow in one of the great sour gums, that I thought was an old nest. A second look showed me tiny green leaves, then white berries, then mistletoe!
It was not a surprise, however, for I had found it here before—a long, long time before. It was back in my schoolboy days that I first stood here under the mistletoe and had my first romance. There was no chandelier, no pretty girl, in that romance—only a boy, the mistletoe, the giant trees, and the sombre silent swamp. But there was more than that, there was the thrill of discovery, for until that day the boy did not know that mistletoe grew outside of England, did not know that it grew in his own native swamps! Rambling alone through the swamps along the creek that day, he stopped under a big curiousbunch of green, high up in one of the gums, and—made his first discovery!
So this Christmas Day the boy climbed up again at the peril of his precious neck, and brought down a bit of that old romance.
I followed the stream along through the swamp to the open meadows, and then on under the steep wooded hillside that ran up to the higher land of corn and melon fields. Here at the foot of the slope the winter sun lay warm, and here in the sheltered, briery border I came upon the Christmas birds.
There was a great variety of them, feeding and preening and chirping in the vines. The tangle was a-twitter with their quiet, cheery talk. Such a medley of notes you could not hear at any other season outside a city bird store. How far the different species understood one another I should like to know, and whether the hum of voices meant sociability to them, as it certainly did to me. Doubtless the first cause of their flocking here was the sheltered warmth and the great numbers of berry-laden bushes, for there was no lack of abundance or of variety on this Christmas table.
In sight from where I stood hung bunches of withering chicken, or frost, grapes, plump clusters of blue-black berries of the greenbrier, and limbs of the smooth winterberry beaded with their flaming fruit. There were bushes of crimson ilex, too, treesof fruiting dogwood and holly, cedars in berry, dwarf sumac and seedy sedges, while patches on the wood slopes uncovered by the sun were spread with trailing partridge-berry and the coral-fruited wintergreen. I had eaten part of my dinner with the ’possum; now I picked a quantity of these wintergreen berries, and continued my meal with the birds. And they too, like the ’possum, had enough, and to spare.
Among the birds in the tangle was a large flock of northern fox sparrows, whose vigorous and continuous scratching in the bared spots made a most lively and cheery commotion. Many of them were splashing about in tiny pools of snow-water, melted partly by the sun and partly by the warmth of their bodies as they bathed. One would hop to a softening bit of snow at the base of a tussock, keel over and begin to flop, soon sending up a shower of sparkling drops from his rather chilly tub. A winter snow-water bath seemed a necessity, a luxury indeed; for they all indulged, splashing with the same purpose and zest that they put into their scratching among the leaves.
A much bigger splashing drew me quietly through the bushes to find a marsh hawk giving himself a Christmas souse. The scratching, washing, and talking of the birds; the masses of green in the cedars, holly, and laurels; the glowing colors of the berries against the snow; the blue of the sky, and the goldenwarmth of the light made Christmas in the heart of the noon, that the very swamp seemed to feel.
Two months later there was to be scant picking here, for this was the beginning of the severest winter I ever knew. From this very ridge, in February, I had reports of berries gone, of birds starving, of whole coveys of quail frozen dead in the snow; but neither the birds nor I dreamed to-day of any such hunger and death. A flock of robins whirled into the cedars above me; a pair of cardinals whistled back and forth; tree sparrows, juncos, nuthatches, chickadees, and cedar-birds cheeped among the trees and bushes; and from the farm lands at the top of the slope rang the calls of meadowlarks.
Halfway up the hill I stopped under a blackjack oak, where, in the thin snow, there were signs of something like a Christmas revel. The ground was sprinkled with acorn-shells and trampled over with feet of several kinds and sizes,—quail, jay, and partridge feet; rabbit, squirrel, and mouse feet, all over the snow as the feast of acorns had gone on. Hundreds of the acorns were lying about, gnawed away at the cup end, where the shell was thinnest, many of them further broken and cleaned out by the birds.
As I sat studying the signs in the snow, my eye caught a tiny trail leading out from the others straight away toward a broken pile of cord-wood. The tracks were planted one after the other, so directly in lineas to seem like the prints of a single foot. “That’s a weasel’s trail,” I said, “the death’s-head at this feast,” and followed it slowly to the pile of wood. A shiver crept over me as I felt, even sooner than I saw, a pair of small, sinister eyes fixed upon mine. The evil pointed head, heavy but alert, and with a suggestion of fierce strength out of all proportion to the slender body, was watching me from between the sticks of cord-wood. And just so had it been watching the mice and the rabbits and the birds feasting under the tree!
I packed a ball of snow round and hard, slipped forward upon my knees and hurled it.Spat!it struck the end of a stick within an inch of the ugly head, nearly filling the crevice with snow. Instantly the head appeared at another crack, and another ballstruck viciously beside it. Now it was back where it first appeared, nor did it flinch for the next ball, or the next. The third went true, striking with achugand packing the crack. But the black, hating eyes were still watching me a foot lower down.
It is not all peace and good-will in the Christmas woods. But happily the weasels are few. More friendly and timid eyes were watching me than bold and murderous. It was foolish to want to kill—even the weasel, for one’s woods are what one makes them. And so I let the man with the gun, who just then chanced along, think that I had turned boy again, and was snowballing the woodpile just for the fun of trying to hit the end of the biggest stick.
I was glad he had come. The sight of him took all hatred out of me. As he strode off with his stained bag I felt kindlier toward the weasel—there were worse in the woods than he. He must kill to live, and if he gloated over the kill, why, what fault of his? But the other, the one with the blood-stained game-bag, he killed for the love of killing. I was glad he had gone.
The crows were winging over toward their great roost in the pines when I turned toward the town. They, too, had had good picking along the creek flats and the ditches of the meadows. Their powerful wing-beats and constant play up in the air told of full crops and no fear for the night, already softly gray across the silent fields.
The air was crisper; the snow began to crackle under foot; the twigs creaked and rattled as I brushed along; a brown beech leaf wavered down and skated with a thin scratch over the crust; and pure as the snow-wrapped crystal world, and sweet as the soft gray twilight, came the call of a quail.
These were not the voices, colors, odors, and forms of summer. The very face of things had changed; all had been reduced, made plain, simple, single, pure! There was less for the senses, but how much keener now their joy! The wide landscape, the frosty air, the tinkle of tiny icicles, and, out of the quiet of the falling twilight, the voice of the quail!
There is no day but is beautiful in the woods; and none more beautiful than one like this Christmas Day—warm, and still, and wrapped to the round red berries of the holly in the magic of the snow.
I wascrunching along through the January dusk toward home. The cold was bitter. A half-starved partridge had just risen from the road and fluttered off among the naked bushes—a bit of life vanishing into the winter night of the woods. I knew the very hemlock in which he would roost; but what were the thick, snow-bent boughs of his hemlock, and what were all his winter feathers in such a night as this?—this night of cutting winds and frozen snow!
The road dipped from the woods down into a wide, open meadow, where the winds were free. The cold was driving, numbing here, with a power for death that the thermometer could not mark. I backed against the gale and sidewise hastened forward toward the double line of elms that arched the road in front of the house. Already I could hear them creak and rattle like things of glass. It was not the sound of life. Nothing was alive; for what could live in this long darkness and fearful cold?
The question was hardly thought, when an answer was whirled past me into the nearest of the nakedelms. A chickadee! He caught for an instant on a dead stub of a limb that stuck out over the road, scrambled along to its broken tip, and whisked into a hole that ran straight down the centre of the old stub, down, for I don’t know how far.