Winter Animals
When the ponds were firmly frozen, they afforded not only new and
shorter routes to many points, but new views from their surfaces of the
familiar landscape around them. When I crossed Flint's Pond, after it
was covered with snow, though I had often paddled about and skated over
it, it was so unexpectedly wide and so strange that I could think of
nothing but Baffin's Bay. The Lincoln hills rose up around me at the
extremity of a snowy plain, in which I did not remember to have stood
before; and the fishermen, at an indeterminable distance over the ice,
moving slowly about with their wolfish dogs, passed for sealers, or
Esquimaux, or in misty weather loomed like fabulous creatures, and I did
not know whether they were giants or pygmies. I took this course when
I went to lecture in Lincoln in the evening, travelling in no road and
passing no house between my own hut and the lecture room. In Goose Pond,
which lay in my way, a colony of muskrats dwelt, and raised their cabins
high above the ice, though none could be seen abroad when I crossed it.
Walden, being like the rest usually bare of snow, or with only shallow
and interrupted drifts on it, was my yard where I could walk freely when
the snow was nearly two feet deep on a level elsewhere and the villagers
were confined to their streets. There, far from the village street, and
except at very long intervals, from the jingle of sleigh-bells, I slid
and skated, as in a vast moose-yard well trodden, overhung by oak woods
and solemn pines bent down with snow or bristling with icicles.
For sounds in winter nights, and often in winter days, I heard the
forlorn but melodious note of a hooting owl indefinitely far; such
a sound as the frozen earth would yield if struck with a suitable
plectrum, the very lingua vernacula of Walden Wood, and quite familiar
to me at last, though I never saw the bird while it was making it. I
seldom opened my door in a winter evening without hearing it; _Hoo hoo
hoo, hoorer, hoo,_ sounded sonorously, and the first three syllables
accented somewhat like how der do; or sometimes hoo, hoo only. One
night in the beginning of winter, before the pond froze over, about nine
o'clock, I was startled by the loud honking of a goose, and, stepping to
the door, heard the sound of their wings like a tempest in the woods
as they flew low over my house. They passed over the pond toward Fair
Haven, seemingly deterred from settling by my light, their commodore
honking all the while with a regular beat. Suddenly an unmistakable
cat-owl from very near me, with the most harsh and tremendous voice
I ever heard from any inhabitant of the woods, responded at regular
intervals to the goose, as if determined to expose and disgrace this
intruder from Hudson's Bay by exhibiting a greater compass and volume of
voice in a native, and boo-hoo him out of Concord horizon. What do you
mean by alarming the citadel at this time of night consecrated to me? Do
you think I am ever caught napping at such an hour, and that I have not
got lungs and a larynx as well as yourself? _Boo-hoo, boo-hoo, boo-hoo!_
It was one of the most thrilling discords I ever heard. And yet, if you
had a discriminating ear, there were in it the elements of a concord
such as these plains never saw nor heard.
I also heard the whooping of the ice in the pond, my great bed-fellow in
that part of Concord, as if it were restless in its bed and would fain
turn over, were troubled with flatulency and had dreams; or I was waked
by the cracking of the ground by the frost, as if some one had driven a
team against my door, and in the morning would find a crack in the earth
a quarter of a mile long and a third of an inch wide.
Sometimes I heard the foxes as they ranged over the snow-crust, in
moonlight nights, in search of a partridge or other game, barking
raggedly and demoniacally like forest dogs, as if laboring with some
anxiety, or seeking expression, struggling for light and to be dogs
outright and run freely in the streets; for if we take the ages into our
account, may there not be a civilization going on among brutes as
well as men? They seemed to me to be rudimental, burrowing men, still
standing on their defence, awaiting their transformation. Sometimes one
came near to my window, attracted by my light, barked a vulpine curse at
me, and then retreated.
Usually the red squirrel (Sciurus Hudsonius) waked me in the dawn,
coursing over the roof and up and down the sides of the house, as if
sent out of the woods for this purpose. In the course of the winter I
threw out half a bushel of ears of sweet corn, which had not got ripe,
on to the snow-crust by my door, and was amused by watching the motions
of the various animals which were baited by it. In the twilight and the
night the rabbits came regularly and made a hearty meal. All day long
the red squirrels came and went, and afforded me much entertainment by
their manoeuvres. One would approach at first warily through the shrub
oaks, running over the snow-crust by fits and starts like a leaf blown
by the wind, now a few paces this way, with wonderful speed and waste
of energy, making inconceivable haste with his "trotters," as if it were
for a wager, and now as many paces that way, but never getting on more
than half a rod at a time; and then suddenly pausing with a ludicrous
expression and a gratuitous somerset, as if all the eyes in the universe
were eyed on him--for all the motions of a squirrel, even in the most
solitary recesses of the forest, imply spectators as much as those of a
dancing girl--wasting more time in delay and circumspection than would
have sufficed to walk the whole distance--I never saw one walk--and then
suddenly, before you could say Jack Robinson, he would be in the top
of a young pitch pine, winding up his clock and chiding all imaginary
spectators, soliloquizing and talking to all the universe at the same
time--for no reason that I could ever detect, or he himself was aware
of, I suspect. At length he would reach the corn, and selecting a
suitable ear, frisk about in the same uncertain trigonometrical way to
the topmost stick of my wood-pile, before my window, where he looked me
in the face, and there sit for hours, supplying himself with a new
ear from time to time, nibbling at first voraciously and throwing the
half-naked cobs about; till at length he grew more dainty still and
played with his food, tasting only the inside of the kernel, and the
ear, which was held balanced over the stick by one paw, slipped from
his careless grasp and fell to the ground, when he would look over at it
with a ludicrous expression of uncertainty, as if suspecting that it had
life, with a mind not made up whether to get it again, or a new one,
or be off; now thinking of corn, then listening to hear what was in
the wind. So the little impudent fellow would waste many an ear in
a forenoon; till at last, seizing some longer and plumper one,
considerably bigger than himself, and skilfully balancing it, he would
set out with it to the woods, like a tiger with a buffalo, by the same
zig-zag course and frequent pauses, scratching along with it as if it
were too heavy for him and falling all the while, making its fall a
diagonal between a perpendicular and horizontal, being determined to
put it through at any rate;--a singularly frivolous and whimsical
fellow;--and so he would get off with it to where he lived, perhaps
carry it to the top of a pine tree forty or fifty rods distant, and
I would afterwards find the cobs strewn about the woods in various
directions.
At length the jays arrive, whose discordant screams were heard long
before, as they were warily making their approach an eighth of a mile
off, and in a stealthy and sneaking manner they flit from tree to tree,
nearer and nearer, and pick up the kernels which the squirrels have
dropped. Then, sitting on a pitch pine bough, they attempt to swallow in
their haste a kernel which is too big for their throats and chokes
them; and after great labor they disgorge it, and spend an hour in
the endeavor to crack it by repeated blows with their bills. They
were manifestly thieves, and I had not much respect for them; but the
squirrels, though at first shy, went to work as if they were taking what
was their own.
Meanwhile also came the chickadees in flocks, which, picking up the
crumbs the squirrels had dropped, flew to the nearest twig and, placing
them under their claws, hammered away at them with their little bills,
as if it were an insect in the bark, till they were sufficiently reduced
for their slender throats. A little flock of these titmice came daily to
pick a dinner out of my woodpile, or the crumbs at my door, with faint
flitting lisping notes, like the tinkling of icicles in the grass, or
else with sprightly day day day, or more rarely, in spring-like days,
a wiry summery phe-be from the woodside. They were so familiar that at
length one alighted on an armful of wood which I was carrying in, and
pecked at the sticks without fear. I once had a sparrow alight upon my
shoulder for a moment while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt
that I was more distinguished by that circumstance than I should have
been by any epaulet I could have worn. The squirrels also grew at last
to be quite familiar, and occasionally stepped upon my shoe, when that
was the nearest way.
When the ground was not yet quite covered, and again near the end of
winter, when the snow was melted on my south hillside and about my
wood-pile, the partridges came out of the woods morning and evening to
feed there. Whichever side you walk in the woods the partridge bursts
away on whirring wings, jarring the snow from the dry leaves and twigs
on high, which comes sifting down in the sunbeams like golden dust, for
this brave bird is not to be scared by winter. It is frequently covered
up by drifts, and, it is said, "sometimes plunges from on wing into the
soft snow, where it remains concealed for a day or two." I used to start
them in the open land also, where they had come out of the woods at
sunset to "bud" the wild apple trees. They will come regularly every
evening to particular trees, where the cunning sportsman lies in wait
for them, and the distant orchards next the woods suffer thus not
a little. I am glad that the partridge gets fed, at any rate. It is
Nature's own bird which lives on buds and diet drink.
In dark winter mornings, or in short winter afternoons, I sometimes
heard a pack of hounds threading all the woods with hounding cry and
yelp, unable to resist the instinct of the chase, and the note of the
hunting-horn at intervals, proving that man was in the rear. The woods
ring again, and yet no fox bursts forth on to the open level of the
pond, nor following pack pursuing their Actæon. And perhaps at evening
I see the hunters returning with a single brush trailing from their
sleigh for a trophy, seeking their inn. They tell me that if the fox
would remain in the bosom of the frozen earth he would be safe, or if he
would run in a straight line away no foxhound could overtake him; but,
having left his pursuers far behind, he stops to rest and listen till
they come up, and when he runs he circles round to his old haunts, where
the hunters await him. Sometimes, however, he will run upon a wall many
rods, and then leap off far to one side, and he appears to know that
water will not retain his scent. A hunter told me that he once saw a fox
pursued by hounds burst out on to Walden when the ice was covered with
shallow puddles, run part way across, and then return to the same shore.
Ere long the hounds arrived, but here they lost the scent. Sometimes
a pack hunting by themselves would pass my door, and circle round my
house, and yelp and hound without regarding me, as if afflicted by a
species of madness, so that nothing could divert them from the pursuit.
Thus they circle until they fall upon the recent trail of a fox, for a
wise hound will forsake everything else for this. One day a man came
to my hut from Lexington to inquire after his hound that made a large
track, and had been hunting for a week by himself. But I fear that he
was not the wiser for all I told him, for every time I attempted to
answer his questions he interrupted me by asking, "What do you do here?"
He had lost a dog, but found a man.
One old hunter who has a dry tongue, who used to come to bathe in Walden
once every year when the water was warmest, and at such times looked in
upon me, told me that many years ago he took his gun one afternoon and
went out for a cruise in Walden Wood; and as he walked the Wayland road
he heard the cry of hounds approaching, and ere long a fox leaped the
wall into the road, and as quick as thought leaped the other wall out of
the road, and his swift bullet had not touched him. Some way behind came
an old hound and her three pups in full pursuit, hunting on their own
account, and disappeared again in the woods. Late in the afternoon, as
he was resting in the thick woods south of Walden, he heard the voice
of the hounds far over toward Fair Haven still pursuing the fox; and
on they came, their hounding cry which made all the woods ring sounding
nearer and nearer, now from Well Meadow, now from the Baker Farm. For
a long time he stood still and listened to their music, so sweet to
a hunter's ear, when suddenly the fox appeared, threading the solemn
aisles with an easy coursing pace, whose sound was concealed by a
sympathetic rustle of the leaves, swift and still, keeping the round,
leaving his pursuers far behind; and, leaping upon a rock amid the
woods, he sat erect and listening, with his back to the hunter. For
a moment compassion restrained the latter's arm; but that was a
short-lived mood, and as quick as thought can follow thought his piece
was levelled, and whang!--the fox, rolling over the rock, lay dead on
the ground. The hunter still kept his place and listened to the hounds.
Still on they came, and now the near woods resounded through all their
aisles with their demoniac cry. At length the old hound burst into view
with muzzle to the ground, and snapping the air as if possessed, and ran
directly to the rock; but, spying the dead fox, she suddenly ceased her
hounding as if struck dumb with amazement, and walked round and round
him in silence; and one by one her pups arrived, and, like their mother,
were sobered into silence by the mystery. Then the hunter came forward
and stood in their midst, and the mystery was solved. They waited in
silence while he skinned the fox, then followed the brush a while, and
at length turned off into the woods again. That evening a Weston squire
came to the Concord hunter's cottage to inquire for his hounds, and told
how for a week they had been hunting on their own account from Weston
woods. The Concord hunter told him what he knew and offered him the
skin; but the other declined it and departed. He did not find his hounds
that night, but the next day learned that they had crossed the river and
put up at a farmhouse for the night, whence, having been well fed, they
took their departure early in the morning.
The hunter who told me this could remember one Sam Nutting, who used
to hunt bears on Fair Haven Ledges, and exchange their skins for rum
in Concord village; who told him, even, that he had seen a moose
there. Nutting had a famous foxhound named Burgoyne--he pronounced it
Bugine--which my informant used to borrow. In the "Wast Book" of an
old trader of this town, who was also a captain, town-clerk, and
representative, I find the following entry. Jan. 18th, 1742-3, "John
Melven Cr. by 1 Grey Fox 0--2--3"; they are not now found here; and in
his ledger, Feb, 7th, 1743, Hezekiah Stratton has credit "by 1/2 a Catt
skin 0--1--4-1/2"; of course, a wild-cat, for Stratton was a sergeant in
the old French war, and would not have got credit for hunting less noble
game. Credit is given for deerskins also, and they were daily sold. One
man still preserves the horns of the last deer that was killed in this
vicinity, and another has told me the particulars of the hunt in which
his uncle was engaged. The hunters were formerly a numerous and merry
crew here. I remember well one gaunt Nimrod who would catch up a leaf
by the roadside and play a strain on it wilder and more melodious, if my
memory serves me, than any hunting-horn.
At midnight, when there was a moon, I sometimes met with hounds in my
path prowling about the woods, which would skulk out of my way, as if
afraid, and stand silent amid the bushes till I had passed.
Squirrels and wild mice disputed for my store of nuts. There were scores
of pitch pines around my house, from one to four inches in diameter,
which had been gnawed by mice the previous winter--a Norwegian winter
for them, for the snow lay long and deep, and they were obliged to mix
a large proportion of pine bark with their other diet. These trees were
alive and apparently flourishing at midsummer, and many of them had
grown a foot, though completely girdled; but after another winter such
were without exception dead. It is remarkable that a single mouse should
thus be allowed a whole pine tree for its dinner, gnawing round instead
of up and down it; but perhaps it is necessary in order to thin these
trees, which are wont to grow up densely.
The hares (Lepus Americanus) were very familiar. One had her form under
my house all winter, separated from me only by the flooring, and
she startled me each morning by her hasty departure when I began to
stir--thump, thump, thump, striking her head against the floor timbers
in her hurry. They used to come round my door at dusk to nibble the
potato parings which I had thrown out, and were so nearly the color of
the ground that they could hardly be distinguished when still. Sometimes
in the twilight I alternately lost and recovered sight of one sitting
motionless under my window. When I opened my door in the evening, off
they would go with a squeak and a bounce. Near at hand they only excited
my pity. One evening one sat by my door two paces from me, at first
trembling with fear, yet unwilling to move; a poor wee thing, lean and
bony, with ragged ears and sharp nose, scant tail and slender paws. It
looked as if Nature no longer contained the breed of nobler bloods, but
stood on her last toes. Its large eyes appeared young and unhealthy,
almost dropsical. I took a step, and lo, away it scud with an elastic
spring over the snow-crust, straightening its body and its limbs into
graceful length, and soon put the forest between me and itself--the wild
free venison, asserting its vigor and the dignity of Nature. Not without
reason was its slenderness. Such then was its nature. (Lepus, levipes,
light-foot, some think.)
What is a country without rabbits and partridges? They are among the
most simple and indigenous animal products; ancient and venerable
families known to antiquity as to modern times; of the very hue and
substance of Nature, nearest allied to leaves and to the ground--and to
one another; it is either winged or it is legged. It is hardly as if you
had seen a wild creature when a rabbit or a partridge bursts away, only
a natural one, as much to be expected as rustling leaves. The partridge
and the rabbit are still sure to thrive, like true natives of the soil,
whatever revolutions occur. If the forest is cut off, the sprouts and
bushes which spring up afford them concealment, and they become more
numerous than ever. That must be a poor country indeed that does not
support a hare. Our woods teem with them both, and around every swamp
may be seen the partridge or rabbit walk, beset with twiggy fences and
horse-hair snares, which some cow-boy tends.
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