pot-bellied mouse whose paths you see everywhere in the meadows
and fields, stays wide awake all winter. He is not so tender as
_Zapus_. The cold does not bother him; he likes it. Up he comes from
his underground nest,--or home, rather, for it is more than a mere
sleeping-place,--and runs out into the snow like a boy. He dives
and plunges about in the soft white drifts, plowing out roads that
crisscross and loop and lady's-chain and lead nowhere--simply for the
fun of it.
Fairies do wonderful things and live in impossible castles; but no
fairy ever had a palace in fairy-land more impossible than this
unfairy-like meadow-mouse had in my back yard.
One February day I broke through the frozen crust of earth in the
garden and opened a large pit in which forty bushels of beets were
buried. I took out the beets, and, when near the bottom, I came upon a
narrow tunnel running around the wall of the pit like the Whispering
Gallery around the dome of St. Paul's. It completely circled the pit,
was well traveled, and, without doubt, was the corridor of some small
animal that had the great beet-pit for a winter home.
There were numerous dark galleries branching off from this main
hallway, piercing out into the ground. Into one of these I put my
finger, by way of discovery, thinking I might find the nest. I did
find the nest--and more. The instant my finger entered the hole a
sharp twinge shot up my arm, and I snatched away my hand with a
large meadow-mouse fastened to the end of my finger, and clinging
desperately to her, lo! two baby mice, little bigger than thimbles.
In this mild and even temperature, four feet below the frozen surface
of the garden, with never a care as to weather and provisions, dwelt
this single family of meadow-mice. What a home it was! A mansion,
indeed, with rooms innumerable, and a main hall girdling a very
mountain of juicy, sugary beets. This family could not complain of
hard times. Besides the beets, the mice had harvested for themselves
a number of cribs of clover-roots. These cribs, or bins, were in
the shape of little pockets in the walls of the great gallery. Each
contained a cupful of the thick, meaty tap-roots of clover, cut into
lengths of about half an inch. If the beets should fail (!), or cloy
upon them, they had the roots to fall back on.
It was absolutely dark here, and worse; there was no way to get fresh
air that I could see. Yet here two baby mice were born in the very
dead of winter, and here they grew as strong and warm and happy as
they would have grown had the season showered rose-petals instead of
snowflakes over the garden above.
_Hesperomys_ is the rather woodsy name of the white-footed or
deer-mouse, a shy, timid little creature dwelling in every wood, who,
notwithstanding his abundance, is an utter stranger to most of us. We
are more familiar with his tracks, however, than with even those of
the squirrel and rabbit. His is that tiny double trail galloped across
the snowy paths in the woods. We see them sprinkled over the snow
everywhere; but when have we seen the feet that left them? Here goes
a line of the wee prints from a hole in the snow near a stump over to
the butt of a large pine. Whitefoot has gone for provender to one of
his storehouses among the roots of the pine; or maybe a neighbor lives
here, and he has left his nest of bird-feathers in the stump to make a
friendly call after the storm.
A bed of downy feathers at the heart of a punky old stump beneath
the snow would seem as much of a snuggery as ever a mouse could
build; but it is not. Instead of a dark, warm chamber within a hollow
stump, Whitefoot sometimes goes to the opposite extreme, and climbs a
leafless tree to an abandoned bird's nest, and fits this up for his
winter home. Down by Cubby Hollow I found a wood-thrush's nest in a
slender swamp-maple, about fifteen feet from the ground. The young
birds left it late in June, and when Whitefoot moved in I do not know.
But along in the winter I noticed that the nest looked suspiciously
round and full, as if it were roofed over. Perhaps the falling leaves
had lodged in it, though this was hardly likely. So I went up to the
sapling and tapped. My suspicions were correct. After some thumps,
a sleepy, frightened face appeared through the side of the nest,
and looked cautiously down at me. No one could mistake that pointed
nose, those big ears, and the round pop-eyes so nearly dropping out
with blinking. It was Whitefoot. I had disturbed his dreams, and he
had hardly got his wits together yet, for he had never been awakened
thus before. And what could wake him? The black-snakes are asleep,
and there is not a coon or cat living that could climb this spindling
maple. Free from these foes, Whitefoot has only the owls to fear,
and I doubt if even the little screech-owl could flip through these
interlaced branches and catch the nimble-footed tenant of the nest.
[Illustration: "It was Whitefoot."]
In spite of the exposure this must be a warm bed. The walls are thick
and well plastered with mud, and are packed inside with fine, shredded
bark which the mouse himself has pulled from the dead chestnut limbs,
or, more likely, has taken from a deserted crow's nest. The whole is
thatched with a roof of shredded bark, so neatly laid that it sheds
water perfectly. The entrance is on the side, just over the edge of
the original structure, but so shielded by the extending roof that the
rain and snow never beat in. The thrushes did their work well; the
nest is securely mortised into the forking branches; and Whitefoot
can sleep without a tremor through the wildest winter gale. Whenever
the snow falls lightly a high white tower rises over the nest; and
then the little haycock, lodged in the slender limbs so far above our
heads, is a very castle indeed.
High over the nest of the white-footed mouse, in the stiffened top of
a tall red oak that stands on the brow of the hill, swings another
winter bed. It is the bulky oak-leaf hammock of the gray squirrel.
A hammock for a winter bed? Is there anything snug and warm about a
hammock? Not much, true enough. From the outside the gray squirrel's
leaf bed looks like the coldest, deadliest place one could find in
which to pass the winter. The leaves are loose and rattle in the wind
like the clapboards of a tumble-down house. The limb threatens every
moment to toss the clumsy nest out upon the storm. But the moorings
hold, and if we could curl up with the sleeper in that swaying bed, we
should rock and dream, and never feel a shiver through the homespun
blankets of chestnut bark that wrap us round inside the flapping
leaves.
Be it never so cozy, a nest like this is far from a burrow--the bed
of a fat, thick-headed dolt who sleeps away the winter. A glance into
the stark, frozen top of the oak sends over us a chill of fright and
admiration for the dweller up there. He cannot be an ease-lover;
neither can he know the meaning of fear. We should as soon think of
a sailor's being afraid of the shrieking in the rigging overhead, as
of this bold squirrel in the tree-tops dreading any danger that the
winter winds might bring.
There are winters when the gray squirrel stays in the hollow of some
old tree. A secure and sensible harbor, this, in which to weather the
heavy storms, and I wonder that a nest is ever anchored outside in the
tree-tops. The woodsmen and other wiseacres say that the squirrels
never build the tree-top nests except in anticipation of a mild
winter. But weather wisdom, when the gray squirrel is the source, is
as little wise as that which comes from Washington or the almanac. I
have found the nests in the tree-tops in the coldest, fiercest winters.
[Illustration: "From his leafless height he looks down into the
Hollow."]
It is not in anticipation of fine weather, but a wild delight in the
free, wild winter, that leads the gray squirrel to swing his hammock
from the highest limb of the tallest oak that will hold it. He dares
and defies the winds, and claims their freedom for his own. From his
leafless height yonder he looks down into the Hollow upon the tops of
the swamp trees where his dizzy roads run along the angled branches,
and over the swamp to the dark pines, and over the pines, on, on
across the miles of white fields which sweep away and away till they
freeze with the frozen sky behind the snow-clouds that drift and pile.
In his aery he knows the snarl and bite of the blizzard; he feels the
swell of the heaving waves that drive thick with snow out of the cold
white north. Anchored far out in the tossing arms of the strong oak,
his leaf nest rocks in the storm like a yawl in a heaving sea.
But he loves the tumult and the terror. A night never fell upon the
woods that awed him; cold never crept into the trees that could chill
his blood; and the hoarse, mad winds that swirl and hiss about his
pitching bed never shook a nerve in his round, beautiful body. How he
must sleep! And what a constitution he has!
A BIRD OF THE DARK
[Illustration]
A BIRD OF THE DARK
The world is never more than half asleep. Night dawns and there is
almost as wide a waking as with the dawn of day. We live in the glare
till it leaves us blind to the forms that move through the dark;
we listen to the roar of the day till we can no longer hear the
stir that begins with the night. But here in the darkness is life
and movement,--wing-beats, footfalls, cries, and calls,--all the
wakefulness, struggle, and tragedy of the day.
Whatever the dusk touches it quickens. Things of bare existence by day
have life at night. The very rocks that are dead and inanimate in the
light get breath and being in the dark. What was mere substance now
becomes shadow, and shadow spirit, till all the day's dead live and
move. The roads, fences, trees, and buildings become new creatures;
landmarks, distances, and places change; new odors are on the winds;
strange lights appear; soft footsteps pass and repass us; and hidden
voices whisper everywhere. The brightest day is not more awake; at
high noon we are not more alert.
One of the commonest of these night sounds is the cry of the
whippoorwill. From the middle of April to the end of September it
rings along the edge of the clearing; but how seldom we have seen
the singer! To most of us it is only a disembodied voice. Night has
put her spell upon the whippoorwills and changed them from birds
into wandering shadows and voices. There is something haunting in
their call, a suggestion of fear, as though the birds were in flight,
pursued by a shape in the gloom. It is the voice of the lost--the
voice of the night trying to find its way back to the day. There is
snap enough in the call if you happen to be near the bird. Usually the
sound comes to us out of the darkness and distance--the loneliest,
ghostliest cry of all the night.
It is little wonder that so many legends and omens follow the
whippoorwill. How could our imaginations, with a bent for
superstition, fail to work upon a creature so often heard, so rarely
seen, of habits so dark and uncanny?
One cannot grow accustomed to the night. The eager, jostling,
open-faced day has always been familiar; but with the night, though
she comes as often as the day, no number of returns can make us
acquainted. Whatever is peculiarly her own shares her mystery. Who can
get used to the bats flitting and squeaking about him in the dusk? Or
who can keep his flesh from creeping when an owl bobs over him in the
silence against a full moon? Or who, in the depths of a pine barren,
can listen to a circle of whippoorwills around him, and not stay
his steps as one lost in the land of homeless, wailing spirits? The
continual shifting of the voices, the mocking echoes, and the hiding
darkness combine in an effect altogether gruesome and unearthly.
One may hear the whippoorwill every summer of his life, but never see
the bird. It is shy and wary, and, with the help of the darkness,
manages to keep strangely out of sight. Though it is not unusual to
stumble upon one asleep by day, it is a rare experience to surprise
one feeding or singing at night.
One evening I was standing by a pump in an open yard, listening to the
whippoorwills as they came out to the edge of the woods and called
along the fields. The swamp ran up so close on this side of the house
that faint puffs of magnolia and wild grape could be strained pure
from the mingling odors in the sweet night air. The whippoorwills
were so near that the introductory _chuck_ and many of the finer,
flute-like trills of their song, which are never heard at a distance,
were clear and distinct. Presently one call sounded out above the
others, and instantly rang again, just behind a row of currant-bushes
not ten feet away.
I strained my eyes for a glimpse of the creature, when swift wings
fanned my face, and a dark, fluffy thing, as soft and noiseless
as a shadow, dropped at my feet, and exploded with a triple cry
of _Whip-poor-will!_ that startled me. It was a rapid, crackling,
vigorous call that split through the night as a streak of lightning
through a thunder-cloud. The farmers about here interpret the notes
to say, _Crack-the-whip!_ and certainly, near by, this fits better
than _Whip-poor-will!_
[Illustration: "It caught at the insects in the air."]
The bird was flitting about the small platform upon which I stood. I
remained as stiff as the pump, for which, evidently, it had mistaken
me. It was not still a moment, but tossed back and forth on wings
that were absolutely silent, and caught at the insects in the air
and uttered its piercing cry. It leaped rather than flew, sometimes
calling on the wing, and always upon touching the ground.
This is as good a view of the bird as I ever got at night. The
darkness was too thick to see what the food was it caught, or how
it caught it. I could not make out a pose or a motion more than the
general movements about the pump. The one other time that I have had a
good look at the bird, when not asleep, showed him at play.
It was an early August morning, between two and three o'clock. The
only doctor in the village had been out all night at a little town
about five miles away. He was wanted at once, and I volunteered to get
him.
Five miles is pure fun to a boy who has run barefoot every one of his
fifteen summers; so I rolled up my trousers, tightened my belt, and
bent away for Shiloh at an easy dog-trot that, even yet, I believe I
could keep up for half a day.
There was not a glimmer in the east when I started. I had covered
three miles, and was entering a long stretch of sprout-land when the
dawn began. The road was dusty, and the dew-laid powder puffed beneath
the soft, swift pats of my feet. Things began to stand out with some
distinctness now as the pale light brightened. No wagons had been
along, and every mark of the night was plain. Here and there were
broad, ragged-edged bands across the road--the trails of the wandering
box-turtles. I saw the smooth, waving channel left by a snake that had
just gone across. Here and there were bunches of rabbit tracks, and
every little while appeared large spots in the road, where some bird
had been dusting itself.
Suddenly I made a sharp turn, and almost ran over a whippoorwill
concealed in a very cloud of dust which she was flirting up with her
wings. This explained the spots back along the road. The bird flew up
and settled a few yards ahead of me, and took another hasty dip. This
she kept up for nearly a quarter of a mile.
The road was alive with whippoorwills. It was their bathing-hour, and
playtime, too. The serious business of the night was done; they had
hunted through the first hours, and now it was time to be social. The
light was coming rapidly, and so was bedtime; but they called and
capered about me, playing away the narrowing night to the very edge of
day.
On my return, an hour later, the sun was looking over the tops of the
"cut-offs," but he did not see a whippoorwill. They were all roosting
lengthwise upon the logs and stumps back among the bushes.
[Illustration]
These unnatural, unbirdlike habits of the whippoorwill are matched by
the appearance of the bird. The first time one sees a whippoorwill he
questions whether its shape and color are the result of its nocturnal
life or whether it took to the night to hide its unbeautiful self from
the gaze of the day.
It has ridiculously short legs, a mere point of a bill, and a
bristled, head-dividing gap that would shame a frog. Looked at in the
daylight, its color, too, is a meaningless mixture, as unreal and
half done as the rest of the creature. But we should not be so hasty
in our judgment. There is design in all things in nature; utility is
the first law of creation: and the discovery of plan and purpose is
the highest appreciation of beauty.
The whippoorwill's dress must be criticized from the view-point of its
usefulness to the bird; then it becomes one of the most exquisitely
artistic garments worn. Compare it with that of any other bird, and
your wonder at it grows. Another such blending of light and shadow
cannot be found. The night herself seems to have woven this robe out
of warp from the strands of early dawn and of woof spun from the
twilight.
The whippoorwill cannot change the color of its dress with the passing
clouds, nor match it with the light green of unfolding leaves and
the deep bronze of old tree-trunks, as the chameleon can. But the
bird has no need of such control. It is always in harmony with its
surroundings. In the falling twilight it seems a shadow among the
shadows; in the breaking dawn it melts into the gray half-light, a
phantom; at midnight it is only an echo in the dark; and at noontime
you would pass the creature for a mossy knot, as it squats close to a
limb or rail, sitting lengthwise, unlike any bird of the light.
We need not expect a bird of such irregular habits as the whippoorwill
to have the normal instincts of birds, even with regard to its
offspring. A bird given to roaming about at night, the companion of
toads and bats and spooks, is not one that can be trusted to bring up
young. You cannot count much on the domesticity of a bird that flits
around with the shadows and fills the night with doleful, spellbinding
cries.
The nest of the whippoorwill is the bare ground, together with
whatever leaves, pebbles, or bits of wood happen to be under the
eggs when they are laid. I found a nest once by the side of a log
in the woods, and by rarest good fortune missed putting my foot
upon the eggs. Here there was no attempt at nest-building, not even
a depression in the earth. There were two of the eggs,--the usual
number,--long and creamy white, with mingled markings of lavender and
reddish brown. Here, upon the log, one of the birds dozed away the
day, while the mate on the nest brooded and slept till the gloaming.
The effect of this erratic life in the forest glooms and under the
cover of night has been to make the whippoorwill careless of her home
and negligent of her young. She has become a creature of omen, weird
and wakeful, lingering behind the time of superstition to keep myths
moving in our scanty groves and mystery still stirring through the
dark rooms of the night.
[Illustration: "Unlike any bird of the light."]
THE PINE-TREE SWIFT
[Illustration]
THE PINE-TREE SWIFT
In any large museum you may see the fossil skeletons, or the casts of
the skeletons, of those mammoth saurians of the Mesozoic Age. But you
can go into the pine barrens any bright summer day and capture for
yourself a real live saurian. The gloom of the pines is the lingering
twilight of that far-off time, and the pine-tree lizard, or swift, is
the lineal descendant of those reptile monsters who ruled the seas and
the dry land before man was.
Throughout southern New Jersey the pine-tree swifts abound. The
worm-fences, rail-piles, bridges, stone-heaps, and, above all, the
pine-trees are alive with them. They are the true children of the
pines, looking so like a very part of the trees that it seems they
must have been made by snipping off the pitch-pines' scaly twigs and
giving legs to them. They are the aborigines, the primitive people of
the barrens; and it is to the lean, sandy barrens you must go if you
would see the swifts at home.
In these wide, silent wastes, where there are miles of scrub-pine
without a clearing, where the blue, hazy air is laden with the odor of
resin, where the soft glooms are mingled with softer, shyer lights,
the swifts seem what they actually are--creatures of another, earlier
world. When one darts over your foot and scurries up a tree to watch
you, it is easy to imagine other antediluvian shapes moving in the
deeper shadows beyond. How they rustle the leaves and scratch the
rough pine bark! They hurry from under your feet and peek around the
tree-trunks into your face, their nails and scales scraping, while
they themselves remain almost invisible on the deep browns of the
pines; and if you are inclined to be at all nervous, you will start
and shiver.
The uncanny name "lizard" is partly accountable for our unpleasant
feelings toward this really intelligent and interesting little beast.
If he were more widely known as "swift," _Sceloporus_ would be
less detested. The _z_ in "lizard" adds a creepy, crawly, sinister
something to the name which even the wretched word "snake" does not
suggest. "Swift," the common name in some localities, is certainly
more pleasing, and, at the same time, quite accurately descriptive.
[Illustration: "They peek around the tree-trunks."]
There is nothing deadly nor vicious, nor yet unlovely, about the
swift, unless some may hate his reptile form and his scales. But he
is strangely dreaded. The mere mention of him is enough to stampede
a Sunday-school picnic. I know good people who kill every swift they
meet, under the queer religious delusion that they are lopping off a
limb of Satan. "All reptiles are cursed," one such zealot declared to
me, "and man is to bruise their heads." The good book of nature was
not much read, evidently, by this student of the other Good Book.
The swift is absolutely harmless. He is without fang, sting, or evil
charm. He is not exactly orthodox, for he has a third eye in the
top of his head, the scientists tell us; but that eye is entirely
hidden. It cannot bind nor leer, like Medusa. Otherwise the swift is
a perfectly normal little creature, about six inches long from tip to
tip, quick of foot, scaly, friendly, wonderfully colored in undulating
browns and blues, and looking, on the whole, like a pretty little
Noah's-ark alligator.
On the south side of the clump of pines beyond Cubby Hollow is a pile
of decaying rails where I have watched the swifts, and they me, for so
many seasons that I fancy they know me. Dewberry-vines and Virginia
creeper clamber over the pile, and at one end, flaming all through
July, burns a splendid bush of butterfly-weed. The orange-red blossoms
shine like a beacon against the dark of the pines, and lure a constant
stream of insect visitors, who make living for the swifts of this
particular place rich and easy while the attraction lasts.
Any hot day I can find several swifts here, and they are so tame that
I can tickle them all off to sleep without the slightest trouble.
They will look up quickly as I approach, fearless but alert, with
head tilted and eyes snapping; but not one stirs. With a long spear
of Indian grass I reach out gently and stroke the nearest one. Shut
go his eyes; down drops his head; he sleeps--at least, he pretends
to. This is my peace greeting. Now I may sit down, and life upon the
rail-pile will go normally on.
Upon the end of a rail, so close to a cluster of the butterfly-weed
blossoms that he can pick the honey-gatherers from it,--as you would
pick olives from a dish on the table,--lies a big male swift without a
tail. He lost that member in an encounter with me several weeks ago. A
new one has started, but it is a mere bud yet. I know his sex by the
brilliant blue stripe down each side, which is a favor not granted
the females. The sun is high and hot. "Fearfully, hot," I say under
my wide straw hat. "Delightfully warm," says the lizard, sprawling
over the rail, his legs hanging, eyes half shut, every possible scale
exposed to the blistering rays, and his bud of a tail twitching with
the small spasms of exquisite comfort that shoot to the very ends of
his being.
The little Caliban! How he loves the sun! It cannot shine too hot nor
too long upon him. He stiffens and has aches when it is cold, so he is
a late riser, and appears not at all on dark, drizzly days.