Part 1

EVERYDAY ADVENTURES

EVERYDAY ADVENTURES

By SAMUEL SCOVILLE, JR.

With Illustrations from Photographs

The ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS BOSTON

Copyright 1920, by Samuel Scoville, Jr.

Of the chapters of this book, three have appeared as separate articles in The Atlantic Monthly, three in The Yale Review, two in The Youth's Companion, and the others, in whole or in part, in St. Nicholas, Good Housekeeping, and The Christian Endeavor World.

This book is dedicated to that brave and loyal adventurer, who has shared so many everyday adventures with me--my wife.

The illustrations for this book have been made from photographs taken by Mr. Howard T. Middleton, Mr. J. Fletcher Street, Mr. William L. Baily, and Mr. A. D. McGrew. The author wishes to express his appreciation here of the skill, knowledge, and patience which have made such photographs possible. In some of those taken by Mr. Middleton, tamed, caged, or mounted specimens have been used as models. In others he has persuaded wild animals to photograph themselves by various ingenious devices.

CONTENTS

EVERYDAY ADVENTURES 1 ZERO BIRDS 18 SNOW STORIES 38 A RUNAWAY DAY 59 THE RAVEN'S NEST 73 HIDDEN TREASURE 86 BIRD'S-NESTING 100 THE TREASURE HUNT 120 ORCHID HUNTING 139 THE MARSH DWELLERS 161 THE SEVEN SLEEPERS 176 DRAGON'S BLOOD 216

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Two Adventurers--Gray Fox and Screech Owl Frontispiece Br'er Fox and Br'er Possum 4 The Singer of the Night--The Screech Owl 16 A Crow Chorus 25 Just Out of the Nest--Young Red Squirrels 28 The Dear Deer Mice 35 Death-in-the-Dark--The Great Horned Owl 44 Flyer, the Squirrel 52 The Long-tailed Weasel 64 "The Young Ravens shall neither lack nor suffer Hunger" 82 The Jewel-Box of the Wood Pewee 96 The Red-Shouldered Hawk 104 Mrs. Killdeer at Her Nest 108 Mr. Flicker at Home 126 The Mourning Dove in Her Nest 128 Pink and White Lady Slippers 146 The King of the Forest--The Banded Rattlesnake 154 The Great Blue Heron at Breakfast 160 The Marsh Hawk's Nest 164 Lotor, the Coon 184 The Seventh Sleeper--The Skunk 192 The Whistlepig 196 The Junco on His Watch Tower 219 No Admittance--per order, Mr. Screech Owl 222

EVERYDAY ADVENTURES

For the sick and the sorry and the weary at heart stands a refuge at their very doors. There needs but sight to the unseeing eyes and the unstopping of deafened ears, and the way to the World where the sweet Wild-Folk dwell lies open. Therein is happiness that time cannot tarnish, the stilling of sorrow and rest from toil. Let him who hears the call heed it as he values his soul's welfare.

EVERYDAY ADVENTURES

EVERYDAY ADVENTURES

All that May day long I had been trying to break my record of birds seen and heard between dawn and dark. Toward the end of the gray afternoon an accommodating Canadian warbler, wearing a black necklace across his yellow breast, carried me past my last year's mark, and I started for home in great contentment. My path wound in and out among the bare white boles of a beech wood all feathery with new green-sanguine-colored leaves. Always as I enter that wood I have a sense of a sudden silence, and I walk softly, that I may catch perhaps a last word or so of what They are saying.

That day, as I moved without a sound among the trees, suddenly, not fifty feet away, loping wearily down the opposite slope, came a gaunt red fox and a cub. With her head down, she looked like the picture of the wolf in Red Riding-Hood. The little cub was all woolly, like a lamb. His back was reddish-brown, and he had long stripes of gray across his breast and around his small belly, and his little sly face was so comical that I laughed at the very first sight of it. What wind there was blew from them to me, and my khaki clothes blended with the coloring around me.

As I watched them, another larger cub trotted down the hill. The first cub suddenly yapped at him, with a snarling little bark quite different from that of a dog; but the other paid no attention, but stalked sullenly into a burrow which for the first time I noticed among the roots of a white-oak tree. Back of the burrow lay a large chestnut log which evidently served as a watch-tower for the fox family. To this the mother fox went, and climbing up on top of it, lay down, with her head on her paws and her magnificent brush dangling down beside the log, and went to sleep.

The little cub that was left trotted to the entrance of the burrow and for a while played by himself, like a puppy or a kitten. First he snapped at some blades of grass and chewed them up fiercely. Then, seeing a leaf that had stuck in the wool on his back, he whirled around and around, snapping at it with his little jaws. Failing to catch it, he rolled over and over in the dirt until he had brushed it off. Then he proceeded to stalk the battered carcass of an old black crow that lay in front of the burrow. Crouching and creeping up on it inch by inch, he suddenly sprang and caught that unsuspecting corpse and worried it ferociously, with fierce little snarls. All the time his wrinkled-up, funny little face was so comical that I nearly laughed aloud every time he moved. At last he curled up in a round ball, with his chin on his forepaws like his mother.

There before me, at the end of the quiet spring afternoon, two of the wildest and shyest of all of our native animals lay asleep. Never before had I seen a fox in all that country, nor even suspected that one had a home within a scant mile of mine. As I watched them sleeping, I felt somehow that the wildwood had taken me into her confidence and was trusting her children to my care; and I would no more have harmed them, than I would my own.

As I watched the cub curled up in a woolly ball, I wanted to creep up and stroke his soft fur. Leaving the hard path, I started to cover as silently as possible the fifty feet that lay between us. Before I had gone far, a leaf rustled underfoot, and in a second the cub was on his feet, wide awake, and staring down at me. With one foot in the air, I waited and waited until he settled down to sleep again. A minute later the same thing happened once more, only to be repeated at every step or so. It took me something like half an hour to reach a point within twenty feet of where he lay, and I looked straight into his eyes each time that he stood up.

No wild animal can tell a man from a tree by sight alone if only he stands still. Suddenly, as the cub sprang up, perhaps for the tenth time, there about six feet to one side of him stood the old mother fox. I had not heard a sound or seen a movement, but there she was. I was so close that I dared not move my head to look at the cub, but turned only my eyes. When I looked back the mother fox was gone. With no sudden movement that I could detect, there almost before my eyes she had melted into the landscape.

I stood like a stone until the cub had lain down once more. This time evidently he was watching me out of his wrinkled-up little eyes, for at my very first forward movement he got up, and with no appearance of haste turned around and disappeared down in the burrow. The watch-tower log was vacant, although I have no doubt that the mother fox was watching me from some unseen spot.

When I came to examine the den, I found that there were three burrows in a line, perhaps fifteen feet in length, with a hard-worn path leading from one to the other. The watch-log behind them was rubbed smooth and shiny, with reddish fox-hairs caught in every crevice. Near the three burrows was a tiny one, which I think was probably dug as an air-hole; while in front I found the feathers of a flicker, a purple grackle, and a chicken, besides the remains of the crow aforesaid. How any fox outside of the fable could beguile a crow is a puzzle to me. All of these burrows were in plain sight, and I hunted a long time to find the concealed one which is a part of the home of every well-regulated fox family. For a while I could find no trace of it. Finally I saw on the side of a stump one reddish hair that gave me a clue. Examining the stump carefully, I found that it was hollow and formed the entrance to the secret exit from the three main burrows.

A week later I went again to look at the home of that fox family; but it was deserted by them and was now tenanted by a fat woodchuck, who would never have ventured near the den if the owners had not left it. Mrs. Fox had evidently feared the worst from my visit, and in the night had moved her whole family to some better-hidden home. This was three years ago, and, although I visit the place every winter, no tell-tale tracks ever show that she has moved back.

It is not necessary to go to the forest for adventures: they lie in wait for us at our very doors. My home is in a built-up suburb of a large city, apparently hopelessly civilized. The other morning I was out early for some before-breakfast chopping, the best of all setting-up exercises. As I turned the corner of the garage, I suddenly came face to face with a black-and-white animal with a pointed nose, a bushy tail, and an air of justified confidence. I realized that I was on the brink of a meeting which demanded courage but not rashness. "Be brave, be brave, but not too brave," should always be the motto of the man who meets the skunk. From my past experience, however, I knew that the skunk is a good sportsman. Unless rushed, he always gives three warnings before he proceeds to extremities.