15.
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.(1)
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,(2)
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 (3)
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 (4) 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,(5)
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.(6)
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 be 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
(7) 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 (8)--he pronounced it
Bugine--which my informant used to borrow. In the "Wast Book"(9)
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 ½ a Catt
(10) skin 0--1--4½"; of course, a wild-cat,
for Stratton was a sergeant in the old French war,(11)
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 (12) 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.
Notes
1. the North Atlantic Ocean between
Greenland and Canada - back
2. Thoreau's spelling of Eskimos - back
3. local or regional language -
back
4. large bay in northern Canada
- back
5. "Before you can say Jack Robinson"
- phrase means "immediately" - back
6. in Greek mythology, a hunter
changed into a stag, hunted & killed by his own dogs - back
7. town near Concord - back
8. John Burgoyne (1722-92) British general
in the American Revolution - back
9. account book or diary - back
10. "can it be a Calf? v. Mott
ledger near beginning" - Thoreau's note - back
11. French & Indian War, 1754-60 -
back
12. "wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter
before the LORD." - Genesis 10:9, King James version - back
[ 홈 ] [ 위로 ] [ Walden - Chapter 1-A ] [ Walden - Chapter 1-B ] [ Walden - Chapter 1-C ] [ Walden - Chapter 1-D ] [ Walden - Chapter 1-E ] [ Walden - Chapter 2 ] [ Walden - Chapter 3 ] [ Walden - Chapter 4 ] [ Walden - Chapter 5 ] [ Walden - Chapter 6 ] [ Walden - Chapter 7 ] [ Walden - Chapter 8 ] [ Walden - Chapter 9-A ] [ Walden - Chapter 9-B ] [ Walden - Chapter 10 ] [ Walden - Chapter 11 ] [ Walden - Chapter 12 ] [ Walden - Chapter 13 ] [ Walden - Chapter 14 ] [ Walden - Chapter 15 ] [ Walden - Chapter 16 ] [ Walden - Chapter 17 ] [ Walden - Chapter 18 ] [ The Walden Express ]
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