Chancing to pass a besmirched April snowbank on the border of a hollow,
you see it marked with the footprints of an old acquaintance of whom for
months you have not seen even so much as this.
It is not that he made an autumnal pilgrimage, slowly following the
swift birds and the retreating sun, that you had no knowledge of him,
but because of his home-keeping, closer than a hermit's seclusion. These
few cautious steps, venturing but half way from his door to the tawny
naked grass that is daily edging nearer to his threshold, are the first
he has taken abroad since the last bright lingering leaf fluttered down
in the Indian summer haze, or perhaps since the leaves put on their
first autumnal tints.
He had seen all the best of the year, the blooming of the first flowers,
the springing of the grass and its growth, the gathering of the
harvests and the ripening of fruits, and possibly the gorgeousness of
autumn melting into sombre gray. He had heard all the glad songs of all
the birds and the sad notes of farewell of bobolink and plover to their
summer home; he had seen the swallows depart and had heard the droning
of the bumblebee among the earliest and latest of his own clover
blossoms. All the best the world had to give in the round of her
seasons, luxuriant growth to feed upon, warm sunshine to bask in, he had
enjoyed; of her worst, he would have none.
So he bade farewell to the gathering desolation of the tawny fields and
crept closer to the earth's warm heart to sleep through the long night
of winter, till the morning of spring. The wild scurry of wind-tossed
leaves swept above him unheard, and the pitiless beat of autumnal rain
and the raging of winter storms that heaped the drifts deeper and deeper
over his forsaken door. The bitterness of cold, that made the furred fox
and the muffled owl shiver, never touched him in his warm nest. So he
shirked the hardships of winter without the toil of a journey in
pursuit of summer, while the starved fox prowled in the desolate woods
and barren fields, the owl hunted beneath the cold stars, and the
squirrel delved in the snow for his meagre fare.
By and by the ethereal but potent spirit of spring stole in where the
frost-elves could not enter, and awakening the earth awakened him. Not
by a slow and often impeded invasion of the senses, but as by the sudden
opening of a door, he sees the naked earth again warming herself in the
sun, and hears running water and singing birds. No wonder that with such
surprise the querulous tremolo of his whistle is sharply mingled with
these softer voices.
Day by day as he sees the sun-loved banks blushing greener, he ventures
further forth to visit neighbors or watch his clover, or dig a new home
in a more favored bank, or fortify himself in some rocky stronghold
where boys and dogs may not enter. Now, the family may be seen moving,
with no burden of furniture or provision, but only the mother with her
gray cubs, carried as a cat carries her kittens, one by one to the new
home among the fresher clover.
On the mound of newly digged earth before it, is that erect, motionless,
gray and russet form a half decayed stump uprising where no tree has
grown within your memory? You move a little nearer to inspect the
strange anomaly, and lo! it vanishes, and you know it was your old
acquaintance, the woodchuck, standing guard at his door and overlooking
his green and blossoming domain.
Are you not sorry, to-day at least, to hear the boys and the dog
besieging him in his burrow or in the old stone wall wherein he has
taken sanctuary? Surely, the first beautiful days of his open-air life
should not be made so miserable that he would wish himself asleep again
in the safety and darkness of winter. But you remember that you were
once a boy, and your sympathies are divided between the young savages
and their intended prey, which after all is likelier than not to escape.
He will tangle the meadow-grass and make free with the bean patch if he
chances upon it, yet you are glad to see the woodchuck, rejoicing like
yourself in the advent of spring.