Part 6 (1/2)

V

If you live in the city, you ought to go up frequently to your roof and watch for the birds that fly over. If in one of our many cities near the water, you will have a chance that those in the country seldom have, of seeing the seabirds--the white herring gulls (the young gulls are brown, and look like a different species), as they pa.s.s over whistling plaintively, and others of the wild seafowl, that merely to hear and see in the smoky air of the city, is almost as refres.h.i.+ng as an ocean voyage. Then there are the parks and public gardens--never without their birds and, at the fall migrating time, often sheltering the very rarest of visitors.

VI

In order to give point and purpose to one of these autumn outings, you should take your basket, or botanizing can, and scour the woods and fields for autumn berries. No bunch of flowers in June could be lovelier than the bunch of autumn berries that you can gather from thicket and wayside to carry home. And then, in order to enjoy the trip all over again, read James Buckham's exquisite story, ”A Quest for Fall Berries,” in his book, ”Where Town and Country Meet.”

VII

Take your botany can on a trip toward the end of November and see how many blossoming flowers you can bring home from the woods. Wild flowers _after_ Thanksgiving in any northern state? Make the search, on all the southern slopes and in all the sheltered corners and see for yourselves. When you get back, you will want to read Mr. Bradford Torrey's account of the flowers that he found blossoming out of doors in New England in the month of November. But who is Mr. Bradford Torrey? and where can you find this account of his November walk? You do not know? Well, then there is something more for you to do this fall.

VIII

While you are finding out who Mr. Torrey is and what he has written, you should also get acquainted with John Burroughs, Olive Thorne Miller, Th.o.r.eau, Frank Bolles, William Hamilton Gibson, C. C. Abbott, Edward Breck, Gilbert White, and--but these will do for _this_ fall.

Don't fail to read dear old Gilbert White's ”Natural History of Selborne”; though perhaps we grown-ups like it better than you may this fall. If you don't understand Gilbert White, then read this year ”The Life of a Scotch Naturalist” by Samuel Smiles, and Arabella Buckley's two books, ”Life and Her Children,” and ”Winners in Life's Race.”

IX

You ought to tie up a piece of suet for the birds; keep your cat in the house, except during the middle of the day, and--but I shall tell you no more. There is no end to the interesting things to do in your study of the out of doors and in your tramps afield this autumn.

CHAPTER VIII

THE MUSKRATS ARE BUILDING

We have had a week of almost unbroken rain, and the water is standing over the swampy meadow. It is a dreary stretch,--this wet, sedgy land in the cold twilight,--drearier than any part of the woods or the upland pastures. They are empty; but the meadow is flat and wet, it is naked and all unsheltered. And a November night is falling.

The darkness deepens. A raw wind is rising. At nine o'clock the moon swings round and full to the crest of the ridge, and pours softly over. I b.u.t.ton my heavy ulster close, and in my rubber boots go down to the stream and follow it out to the middle of the meadow, where it meets the main ditch. There is a sharp turn here toward the swamp; and here at the bend, behind a clump of black alders, I sit quietly down and wait.

I have come out to the bend to watch the muskrats building; for that small mound up the ditch is not an old hayc.o.c.k, but a half-finished muskrat house.

As I wait, the moon climbs higher over the woods. The water on the meadow s.h.i.+vers in the light. The wind bites through my heavy coat and drives me back, but not before I have seen one, two, three little creatures scaling the walls of the house with loads of mud-and-reed mortar. I am driven back by the cold, but not before I know that here in the desolate meadow is being rounded off a lodge, thick-walled and warm, and proof against the longest, bitterest of winters.

This is near the end of November. My fire-wood is in the cellar; I am about ready to put on the double-windows and the storm-doors. The muskrats are even now putting on theirs, for their house is all but finished. Winter is at hand: but we are prepared, the muskrats and I.

Throughout the summer the muskrats had no house, only their tunnels into the sides of the ditch, their roadways out into the gra.s.s, and their beds under the tussocks or among the roots of the old stumps.

All those months the water was low in the ditch, and the beds among the tussocks were safe and dry enough.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ”TO-NIGHT THERE IS NO LOAFING ABOUT THE LODGE”]

Now the November rains have filled river and ditch, flooded the tunnels, and crept up into the beds under the tussocks. Even a muskrat will creep out of his bed when cold, wet water creeps in. What shall he do for shelter? He knows. And long before the rains begin, he picks out the place for a house. He does not want to leave his meadow, therefore the only thing to do is to build,--move from under the tussock out upon the top of the tussock; and here, in its deep, wiry gra.s.s, make a new bed high and dry above the rising water; and close this new bed in with walls that circle and dome, and defy the very winter.

Such a house will require a great deal of work to build. Why should not two or three muskrats combine--make the house big enough to hold them all, save labor and warmth, too, and, withal, live sociably together? So they left, each one his single bed, and, joining efforts, started, about the middle of October, to build this winter house.

Slowly, night after night, the domed walls have been rising, although for several nights at a time I could see no apparent progress with the work. The builders were in no hurry. The cold was far off. But it is coming, and to-night it feels near and keen. And to-night there is no loafing about the lodge.