The Fall of the Year Part 13

This chapter and the next (chapter IX) should be taken together as a single study of the provision of nature against the severity of winter's cold, chapter VIII being a detailed account of one creature's preparations, while chapter IX follows, showing how the foresight and care obtain even among the plants and trees. The two chapters together should give the pupils a glad thought for winter, should utterly change their conventional language and feeling for it as a time of _death_.

And instead of lamenting the season as a necessary evil, you must show them that it is to be welcomed as a period of sleep for nature from which she will waken in all the freshness of a springtime such as is nowhere to be had outside of the temperate zone. "It is not always May," wails the poet; but ask them: Who wants it always May? We want the variety, the contrasts of our four seasons, and as to winter, let the North Wind blow at will, redden our cheeks, quicken our step, put purpose into our wills and--it won't starve us; for we, too, like the muskrat, are provided for.

FOR THE PUPIL

If there is a muskrat house or village of houses in your neighborhood, report to the cla.s.s, or better, take teacher and cla.s.s, as soon as freezing weather comes, to see it. Go out yourselves and try to see the muskrats plastering their walls on one of the bright October nights.

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_muskrats combine_: The author has frequently found as many as six rats in a single house; but whether all of these helped in the building or not, he is unable to say.

_winter house_: If the house is undisturbed (as when situated out in a stumpy pond) it will stand for years, the rats dwelling in it the year around.

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_pick and shovel_: What is meant by a fox's "pick and shovel"?

_Lupton's Pond_: the name of a little wood-walled pond that the author haunted as a boy.

"The best-laid schemes o' mice and men Gang aft agley."

Learn this poem ("To A Mouse") by heart. Burns is the author.

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_very much alike_: Name some other respects in which animals and men are alike in their lives. What famous line in the poem just quoted is it that makes men and mice very closely related?

_bottom of the house_: Down in the very foundation walls of the muskrat's house are two runways or "doors" that open under water and so far under that they rarely if ever freeze. See picture of such a house with its door in the author's "Wild Life Near Home," page 174.

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_tepee_: What is a tepee?

_juicy and pink and tender_: The muskrats eat gra.s.s stems and roots, so that under the water near the lodge you will often find in winter little stacks of these tender pink stems and roots ready for eating--much as the beaver stores up sticks of tender bark under the water near his lodge for food when the ice forms overhead.

_Winter is coming_: Are you glad or sorry? Are you ready?

CHAPTER IX

TO THE TEACHER

Let the pupils continue this list of examples of winter preparations by watching and observing for themselves. Every field, every tree, every roadside, will reveal the work done or going on under their eyes. Without preaching you may draw many an interesting and telling parallel with their own preparation--in school for instance.

FOR THE PUPIL

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"The north wind doth blow, And we shall have snow, And what will the Robin do then, Poor thing?"

Where does the verse come from? Mother Goose? Yes, but who was she?

_Chipmunk_: Our little striped ground squirrel, interesting because he has cheek-pouches and thus forms a link between the arboreal squirrels (gray squirrels, etc.) and the ground squirrels or spermophiles, of which the beautiful little thirteen-lined squirrel of the prairies is an example.

_Whitefoot, the wood mouse_: The white-footed or wood mouse or deer mouse.

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_Not so much as a bug or a single beetle's egg has he stored_: Why not, seeing that these are his food?

_a piece of suet for him on a certain lilac bush_: Whose bush might it be? Is there a piece on yours?

_upon the telegraph-wires were the swallows--the first sign that the getting ready for winter has begun_: What kind or kinds of swallows? Have you any earlier sign?

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_the few creatures that find food and shelter in the snow_: Name four of the _animals_ that so find their food and shelter. Are there any others? Look them up.

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_there will be suffering and death_: In your tramps afield this winter look out for signs of suffering. There are many little things that you can do to lessen it--a little seed scattered, a piece of suet nailed up on a tree, a place cleared in the snow where gravel stones can be picked up.

_or even three hundred pounds of honey_: By not allowing the bees to swarm, and thus divide their strength, bee-keepers often get more than three hundred pounds of comb-honey (in the little pound boxes or sections) from a single hive. The bees themselves require only about twenty to twenty-five pounds to carry them through the winter.

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_the witch-hazels_: The witch-hazels do not yield honey so far as the author has observed. Suppose you watch this autumn to see if the honey-bees (do you know a honey-bee when you see _her_?) visit it. Whence comes this quotation? From which poem of Bryant's:--

"when come the calm, mild days."

_put on their storm-doors_: In modern bee-hives there is a movable board in front upon which the bees alight when entering the hive; this can be so turned as to make a large doorway for the summer, and a small entrance for the cold winter.

_whole drove of forty-six woodchucks_: The author at one time had forty-six inhabited woodchuck holes on his farm.

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_as Bobolink among the reeds of the distant Orinoco_: The bobolink winters even farther south--beyond the banks of the Amazon.

_to sleep until dawn of spring_: What is the name for this strange sleeping? What other American animals do it? Name three.

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_frogs frozen into the middle of solid lumps of ice_: Of course, this was never done intentionally: each time the frogs were forgotten and left in the laboratory, where they froze.

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_they seem to have given up the struggle at once ..._: This may not be the explanation. One of the author's friends suggests that it may have been caused by exposure, due to their having been frightened in the night from their usual bed and thus forced to roost where they could until morning.