Books: The Writings of John Burroughs
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John Burroughs >> The Writings of John Burroughs
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Judged by the eye alone, the fox is the lightest and most buoyant
creature that runs. His soft wrapping of fur conceals the muscular
play and effort that is so obvious in the hound that pursues him,
and he comes bounding along precisely as if blown by a gentle wind.
His massive tail is carried as if it floated upon the air by its
own lightness.
The hound is not remarkable for his fleetness, but how he will
hang!--often running late into the night, and sometimes till
morning, from ridge to ridge, from peak to peak; now on the
mountain, now crossing the valley, now playing about a large slope
of uplying pasture fields. At times the fox has a pretty well-
defined orbit, and the hunter knows where to intercept him. Again,
he leads off like a comet, quite beyond the system of hills and
ridges upon which he was started, and his return is entirely a
matter of conjecture; but if the day be not more than half spent,
the chances are that the fox will be back before night, though the
sportsman's patience seldom holds out that long.
The hound is a most interesting dog. How solemn and long-visaged
he is,--how peaceful and well-disposed! He is the Quaker among
dogs. All the viciousness and currishness seem to have been weeded
out of him; he seldom quarrels, or fights, or plays, like other
dogs. Two strange hounds, meeting for the first time, behave as
civilly toward each other as two men. I know a hound that has an
ancient, wrinkled, human, far-away look that reminds one of the
bust of Homer among the Elgin marbles. He looks like the mountains
toward which his heart yearns so much.
The hound is a great puzzle to the farm dog; the latter, attracted
by his baying, comes barking and snarling up through the fields,
bent on picking a quarrel; he intercepts the hound, snubs and
insults and annoys him in every way possible, but the hound heeds
him not: if the dog attacks him, he gets away as best he can, and
goes on with the trail; the cur bristles and barks and struts about
for a while, then goes back to the house, evidently thinking the
hound a lunatic, which he is for the time being,--a monomaniac, the
slave and victim of one idea. I saw the master of a hound one day
arrest him in full course, to give one of the hunters time to get
to a certain runway; the dog cried and struggled to free himself,
and would listen to neither threats nor caresses. Knowing he must
be hungry, I offered him my lunch, but he would not touch it. I
put it in his mouth, but he threw it contemptuously from him. We
coaxed and petted and reassured him, but he was under a spell; he
was bereft of all thought or desire but the one passion to pursue
that trail.
THE TREE-TOAD
We can boast a greater assortment of toads and frogs in this
country than can any other land. What a chorus goes up from our
ponds and marshes in spring! The like of it cannot be heard
anywhere else under the sun. In Europe it would certainly have
made an impression upon the literature. An attentive ear will
detect first one variety, then another, each occupying the stage
from three or four days to a week. The latter part of April, when
the little peeping frogs are in full chorus, one comes upon places,
in his drives or walks late in the day, where the air fairly
palpitates with sound; from every little marshy hollow and spring
run there rises an impenetrable maze or cloud of shrill musical
voices. After the peepers, the next frog to appear is the clucking
frog, a rather small, dark-brown frog, with a harsh, clucking note,
which later in the season becomes the well-known brown wood-frog.
Their chorus is heard for a few days only, while their spawn is
being deposited. In less than a week it ceases, and I never hear
them again till the next April. As the weather gets warmer, the
toads take to the water, and set up that long-drawn musical tr-r-r-
r-r-r-r-ing note. The voice of the bullfrog, who calls, according
to the boys, "jug o' rum," "jug o' rum," "pull the plug," "pull
the plug," is not heard much before June. The peepers, the
clucking frog, and the bullfrog are the only ones that call in
chorus. The most interesting and the most shy and withdrawn of all
our frogs and toads is the tree-toad,--the creature that, from the
old apple or cherry tree, or red cedar, announces the approach of
rain, and baffles your every effort to see or discover it. It has
not (as some people imagine) exactly the power of the chameleon to
render itself invisible by assuming the color of the object it
perches upon, but it sits very close and still, and its mottled
back, of different shades of ashen gray, blends it perfectly with
the bark of nearly every tree. The only change in its color I have
ever noticed is that it is lighter on a light-colored tree, like
the beech or soft maple, and darker on the apple, or cedar, or
pine. Then it is usually hidden in some cavity or hollow of the
tree, when its voice appears to come from the outside.
Most of my observations upon the habits of this creature run
counter to the authorities I have been able to consult on the
subject.
In the first place, the tree-toad is nocturnal in its habits, like
the common toad. By day it remains motionless and concealed; by
night it is as alert and active as an owl, feeding and moving about
from tree to tree. I have never known one to change its position
by day, and never knew one to fail to do so by night. Last summer
one was discovered sitting against a window upon a climbing
rosebush. The house had not been occupied for some days, and when
the curtain was drawn the toad was discovered and closely observed.
His light gray color harmonized perfectly with the unpainted
woodwork of the house. During the day he never moved a muscle,
but next morning he was gone. A friend of mine caught one, and
placed it under a tumbler on his table at night, leaving the edge
of the glass raised about the eighth of an inch to admit the air.
During the night he was awakened by a strange sound in his room.
Pat, pat, pat went some object, now here, now there, among the
furniture, or upon the walls and doors. On investigating the
matter, he found that by some means his tree-toad had escaped from
under the glass, and was leaping in a very lively manner about the
room, producing the sound he had heard when it alighted upon the
door, or wall, or other perpendicular surface.
The home of the tree-toad, I am convinced, is usually a hollow limb
or other cavity in the tree; here he makes his headquarters, and
passes most of the day. For two years a pair of them frequented an
old apple-tree near my house, occasionally sitting at the mouth of
a cavity that led into a large branch, but usually their voices
were heard from within the cavity itself. On one occasion, while
walking in the woods in early May, I heard the voice of a tree-toad
but a few yards from me. Cautiously following up the sound, I
decided, after some delay, that it proceeded from the trunk of a
small soft maple; the tree was hollow, the entrance to the interior
being a few feet from the ground. I could not discover the toad,
but was so convinced that it was concealed in the tree, that I
stopped up the hole, determined to return with an axe, when I had
time, and cut the trunk open. A week elapsed before I again went
to the woods, when, on cutting into the cavity of the tree, I found
a pair of tree-toads, male and female, and a large, shelless snail.
Whether the presence of the snail was accidental, or whether these
creatures associated together for some purpose, I do not know. The
male toad was easily distinguished from the female by its large
head, and more thin, slender, and angular body. The female was
much the more beautiful, both in form and color. The cavity, which
was long and irregular, was evidently their home; it had been
nicely cleaned out, and was a snug, safe apartment.
The finding of the two sexes together, under such circumstances and
at that time of the year, suggests the inquiry whether they do not
breed away from the water, as others of our toads are known at
times to do, and thus skip the tadpole state. I have several times
seen the ground, after a June shower, swarming with minute toads,
out to wet their jackets. Some of them were no larger than
crickets. They were a long distance from the water, and had
evidently been hatched on the land, and had never been polliwogs.
Whether the tree-toad breeds in trees or on the land, yet remains
to be determined. [FOOTNOTE: It now (1895) seems well established
that both common toads and tree-toads pass the first period of
their lives in water as tadpoles, and that both undergo their
metamorphosis when very small. As soon as the change is effected,
the little toads leave the water and scatter themselves over the
country with remarkable rapidity, traveling chiefly by night, but
showing themselves in the daytime after showers.]
Another fact in the natural history of this creature, not set down
in the books, is that they pass the winter in a torpid state in the
ground, or in stumps and hollow trees, instead of in the mud of
ponds and marshes, like true frogs, as we have been taught. The
pair in the old apple-tree above referred to, I heard on a warm,
moist day late in November, and again early in April. On the
latter occasion, I reached my hand down into the cavity of the tree
and took out one of the toads. It was the first I had heard, and I
am convinced it had passed the winter in the moist, mud-like mass
of rotten wood that partially filled the cavity. It had a fresh,
delicate tint, as if it had not before seen the light that spring.
The president of a Western college writes in "Science News" that
two of his students found one in the winter in an old stump which
they demolished; and a person whose veracity I have no reason to
doubt sends me a specimen that he dug out of the ground in December
while hunting for Indian relics. The place was on the top of a
hill, under a pine-tree. The ground was frozen on the surface, and
the toad was, of course, torpid.
During the present season, I obtained additional proof of the fact
that the tree-toad hibernates on dry land. The 12th of November was
a warm, spring-like day; wind southwest, with slight rain in the
afternoon,--just the day to bring things out of their winter
retreats. As I was about to enter my door at dusk, my eye fell
upon what proved to be the large tree-toad in question, sitting on
some low stone-work at the foot of a terrace a few feet from the
house. I paused to observe his movements. Presently he started on
his travels across the yard toward the lawn in front. He leaped
about three feet at a time, with long pauses between each leap.
For fear of losing him as it grew darker, I captured him, and kept
him under the coal sieve till morning. He was very active at night
trying to escape. In the morning, I amused myself with him for
some time in the kitchen. I found he could adhere to a window-
pane, but could not ascend it; gradually his hold yielded, till he
sprang off on the casing. I observed that, in sitting upon the
floor or upon the ground, he avoided bringing his toes in contact
with the surface, as if they were too tender or delicate for such
coarse uses, but sat upon the hind part of his feet. Said toes had
a very bungling, awkward appearance at such times; they looked like
hands encased in gray woolen gloves much too large for them. Their
round, flattened ends, especially when not in use, had a comically
helpless look.
After a while I let my prisoner escape into the open air. The
weather had grown much colder, and there was a hint of coming
frost. The toad took the hint at once, and, after hopping a few
yards from the door to the edge of a grassy bank, began to prepare
for winter. It was a curious proceeding. He went into the ground
backward, elbowing himself through the turf with the sharp joints
of his hind legs, and going down in a spiral manner. His progress
was very slow: at night I could still see him by lifting the grass;
and as the weather changed again to warm, with southerly winds
before morning, he stopped digging entirely. The next day I took
him out, and put him into a bottomless tub sunk into the ground and
filled with soft earth, leaves, and leaf mould, where he passed the
winter safely, and came out fresh and bright in the spring.
The little peeping frogs lead a sort of arboreal life, too, a part
of the season, but they are quite different from the true tree-
toads above described. They appear to leave the marshes in May,
and to take to the woods or bushes. I have never seen them on
trees, but upon low shrubs. They do not seem to be climbers, but
perchers. I caught one in May, in some low bushes a few rods from
the swamp. It perched upon the small twigs like a bird, and would
leap about among them, sure of its hold every time. I was first
attracted by its piping. I brought it home, and it piped for one
twilight in a bush in my yard and then was gone. I do not think
they pipe much after leaving the water. I have found them early in
April upon the ground in the woods, and again late in the fall.
In November, 1879, the warm, moist weather brought them out in
numbers. They were hopping about everywhere upon the fallen leaves.
Within a small space I captured six. Some of them were the hue of
the tan-colored leaves, probably Pickering's hyla, and some were
darker, according to the locality. Of course they do not go to the
marshes to winter, else they would not wait so late in the season.
I examined the ponds and marshes, and found bullfrogs buried in the
mud, but no peepers.
THE SPRING BIRDS
We never know the precise time the birds leave us in the fall: they
do not go suddenly; their departure is like that of an army of
occupation in no hurry to be off; they keep going and going, and we
hardly know when the last straggler is gone. Not so their return
in the spring: then it is like an army of invasion, and we know the
very day when the first scouts appear. It is a memorable event.
Indeed, it is always a surprise to me, and one of the compensations
of our abrupt and changeable climate, this suddenness with which
the birds come in spring,--in fact, with which spring itself comes,
alighting, maybe, to tarry only a day or two, but real and genuine,
for all that. When March arrives, we do not know what a day may
bring forth. It is like turning over a leaf, a new chapter of
startling incidents lying just on the other side.
A few days ago, Winter had not perceptibly relaxed his hold; then
suddenly he began to soften a little, and a warm haze to creep up
from the south, but not a solitary bird, save the winter residents,
was to be seen or heard. Next day the sun seemed to have drawn
immensely nearer; his beams were full of power; and we said,
"Behold the first spring morning! And, as if to make the prophecy
complete, there is the note of a bluebird, and it is not yet nine
o'clock." Then others, and still others, were heard. How did they
know it was going to be a suitable day for them to put in an
appearance? It seemed as if they must have been waiting somewhere
close by for the first warm day, like actors behind the scenes,--
the moment the curtain was lifted, they were ready and rushed upon
the stage. The third warm day, and, behold, all the principal
performers come rushing in,--song sparrows, cow blackbirds,
grackles, the meadowlark, cedar-birds, the phbe-bird, and, hark!
what bird laughter was that? the robins, hurrah! the robins! Not
two or three, but a score or two of them; they are following the
river valley north, and they stop in the trees from time to time,
and give vent to their gladness. It is like a summer picnic of
school-children suddenly let loose in a wood; they sing, shout,
whistle, squeal, call, in the most blithesome strains. The warm
wave has brought the birds upon its crest; or some barrier has
given way, the levee of winter has broken, and spring comes like an
inundation. No doubt, the snow and the frost will stop the
crevasse again, but only for a brief season.
Between the 10th and the 15th of March, in the Middle and Eastern
States, we are pretty sure to have one or more of these spring
days. Bright days, clear days, may have been plenty all winter;
but the air was a desert, the sky transparent ice; now the sky is
full of radiant warmth, and the air of a half-articulate murmur and
awakening. How still the morning is! It is at such times that we
discover what music there is in the souls of the little slate-
colored snowbirds. How they squeal, and chatter, and chirp, and
trill, always in scattered troops of fifty or a hundred, filling
the air with a fine sibilant chorus! That joyous and childlike
"chew," "chew," "chew" is very expressive. Through this medley
of finer songs and calls, there is shot, from time to time, the
clear, strong note of the meadowlark. It comes from some field or
tree farther away, and cleaves the air like an arrow. The reason
why the birds always appear first in the morning, and not in the
afternoon, is that in migrating they travel by night, and stop and
feed and disport themselves by day. They come by the owl train,
and are here before we are up in the morning.
A LONE QUEEN
Once, while walking in the woods, I saw quite a large nest in the
top of a pine-tree. On climbing up to it, I found that it had
originally been a crow's nest. Then a red squirrel had appropriated
it; he had filled up the cavity with the fine inner bark of the red
cedar, and made himself a dome-shaped nest upon the crow's
foundation of coarse twigs. It is probable that the flying
squirrel, or the white-footed mouse, had been the next tenants, for
the finish of the interior suggested their dainty taste. But when
I found it, its sole occupant was a bumblebee,--the mother or queen
bee, just planting her colony. She buzzed very loud and
complainingly, and stuck up her legs in protest against my rude
inquisitiveness, but refused to vacate the premises. She had only
one sack or cell constructed, in which she had deposited her first
egg, and, beside that, a large loaf of bread, probably to feed the
young brood with, as they should be hatched. It looked like Boston
brown bread, but I examined it and found it to be a mass of dark
brown pollen, quite soft and pasty. In fact, it was unleavened
bread, and had not been got at the baker's. A few weeks later, if
no accident befell her, she had a good working colony of a dozen or
more bees.
This was not an unusual incident. Our bumblebee, so far as I have
observed, invariably appropriates a mouse-nest for the site of its
colony, never excavating a place in the ground, nor conveying
materials for a nest, to be lined with wax, like the European
species. Many other of our wild creatures take up with the
leavings of their betters or strongers. Neither the skunk nor the
rabbit digs his own hole, but takes up with that of a wood-chuck,
or else hunts out a natural den among the rocks. In England the
rabbit burrows in the ground to such an extent that in places the
earth is honeycombed by them, and the walker steps through the
surface into their galleries. Our white-footed mouse has been
known to take up his abode in a hornet's nest, furnishing the
interior to suit his taste. A few of our birds also avail
themselves of the work of others, as the titmouse, the brown
creeper, the bluebird, and the house wren. But in every case they
refurnish the tenement: the wren carries feathers into the cavity
excavated by the woodpeckers, the bluebird carries in fine straws,
and the chickadee lays down a fine wool mat upon the floors. When
the high-hole occupies the same cavity another year, he deepens and
enlarges it; the phbe-bird, in taking up her old nest, puts in a
new lining; so does the robin; but cases of reoccupancy of an old
nest by the last-named birds are rare.
A BOLD LEAPER
One reason, doubtless, why squirrels are so bold and reckless in
leaping through the trees is, that, if they miss their hold and
fall, they sustain no injury. Every species of tree squirrel seems
to be capable of a sort of rudimentary flying,--at least of making
itself into a parachute, so as to ease or break a fall or a leap
from a great height. The so-called flying squirrel does this the
most perfectly. It opens its furry vestments, leaps into the air,
and sails down the steep incline from the top of one tree to the
foot of the next as lightly as a bird. But other squirrels know
the same trick, only their coat-skirts are not so broad. One day
my dog treed a red squirrel in a tall hickory that stood in a
meadow on the side of a steep hill. To see what the squirrel would
do when closely pressed, I climbed the tree. As I drew near, he
took refuge in the topmost branch, and then, as I came on, he
boldly leaped into the air, spread himself out upon it, and, with a
quick, tremulous motion of his tail and legs, descended quite
slowly and landed upon the ground thirty feet below me, apparently
none the worse for the leap, for he ran with great speed and
escaped the dog in another tree.
A recent American traveler in Mexico gives a still more striking
instance of this power of squirrels partially to neutralize the
force of gravity when leaping or falling through the air. Some
boys had caught a Mexican black squirrel, nearly as large as a cat.
It had escaped from them once, and, when pursued, had taken a leap
of sixty feet, from the top of a pine-tree down upon the roof of a
house, without injury. This feat had led the grandmother of one of
the boys to declare that the squirrel was bewitched, and the boys
proposed to put the matter to further test by throwing the squirrel
down a precipice six hundred feet high. Our traveler interfered,
to see that the squirrel had fair play. The prisoner was conveyed
in a pillow-slip to the edge of the cliff, and the slip opened, so
that he might have his choice, whether to remain a captive or to
take the leap. He looked down the awful abyss, and then back and
sidewise,--his eyes glistening, his form crouching. Seeing no
escape in any other direction, "he took a flying leap into space,
and fluttered rather than fell into the abyss below. His legs
began to work like those of a swimming poodle-dog, but quicker and
quicker, while his tail, slightly elevated, spread out like a
feather fan. A rabbit of the same weight would have made the trip
in about twelve seconds; the squirrel protracted it for more than
half a minute," and "landed on a ledge of limestone, where we could
see him plainly squat on his hind legs and smooth his ruffled fur,
after which he made for the creek with a flourish of his tail, took
a good drink, and scampered away into the willow thicket."
The story at first blush seems incredible, but I have no doubt our
red squirrel would have made the leap safely; then why not the
great black squirrel, since its parachute would be proportionately
large?
The tails of the squirrels are broad and long and flat, not short
and small like those of gophers, chipmunks, woodchucks, and other
ground rodents, and when they leap or fall through the air the tail
is arched and rapidly vibrates. A squirrel's tail, therefore, is
something more than ornament, something more than a flag; it not
only aids him in flying, but it serves as a cloak, which he wraps
about him when he sleeps. Thus, some animals put their tails to
various uses, while others seem to have no use for them whatever.
What use for a tail has a wood-chuck, or a weasel, or a mouse? Has
not the mouse yet learned that it could get in its hole sooner if
it had no tail? The mole and the meadow mouse have very short
tails. Rats, no doubt, put their tails to various uses. The
rabbit has no use for a tail,--it would be in its way; while its
manner of sleeping is such that it does not need a tail to tuck
itself up with, as do the coon and the fox. The dog talks with his
tail; the tail of the possum is prehensile; the porcupine uses his
tail in climbing and for defense; the beaver as a tool or trowel;
while the tail of the skunk serves as a screen behind which it
masks its terrible battery.
THE WOODCHUCK
Writers upon rural England and her familiar natural history make no
mention of the marmot or woodchuck. In Europe this animal seems to
be confined to the high mountainous districts, as on our Pacific
slope, burrowing near the snow-line. It is more social or
gregarious than the American species, living in large families like
our prairie dog. In the Middle and Eastern States our woodchuck
takes the place, in some respects, of the English rabbit, burrowing
in every hillside and under every stone wall and jutting ledge and
large boulder, from whence it makes raids upon the grass and clover
and sometimes upon the garden vegetables. It is quite solitary in
its habits, seldom more than one inhabiting the same den, unless it
be a mother and her young. It is not now so much a WOODchuck as a
FIELDchuck. Occasionally, however, one seems to prefer the woods,
and is not seduced by the sunny slopes and the succulent grass, but
feeds, as did his fathers before him, upon roots and twigs, the
bark of young trees, and upon various wood plants.
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