Chapter 15 - Page 2

intruder from Hudson's Bay by exhibiting a greater compass and
volume of voice in a native, and boo-hoo him out of Concord horizon.
What do you mean by alarming the citadel at this time of night
consecrated to me? Do you think I am ever caught napping at such an
hour, and that I have not got lungs and a larynx as well as
yourself? Boo-hoo, boo-hoo, boo-hoo! It was one of the most
thrilling discords I ever heard. And yet, if you had a
discriminating ear, there were in it the elements of a concord such
as these plains never saw nor heard.
I also heard the whooping of the ice in the pond, my great
bed-fellow in that part of Concord, as if it were restless in its
bed and would fain turn over, were troubled with flatulency and had
dreams; or I was waked by the cracking of the ground by the frost,
as if some one had driven a team against my door, and in the morning
would find a crack in the earth a quarter of a mile long and a third
of an inch wide.
Sometimes I heard the foxes as they ranged over the snow-crust,
in moonlight nights, in search of a partridge or other game, barking
raggedly and demoniacally like forest dogs, as if laboring with some
anxiety, or seeking expression, struggling for light and to be dogs
outright and run freely in the streets; for if we take the ages into
our account, may there not be a civilization going on among brutes
as well as men? They seemed to me to be rudimental, burrowing men,
still standing on their defence, awaiting their transformation.
Sometimes one came near to my window, attracted by my light, barked
a vulpine curse at me, and then retreated.
Usually the red squirrel (Sciurus Hudsonius) waked me in the
dawn, coursing over the roof and up and down the sides of the house,
as if sent out of the woods for this purpose. In the course of the
winter I threw out half a bushel of ears of sweet corn, which had
not got ripe, on to the snow-crust by my door, and was amused by
watching the motions of the various animals which were baited by it.
In the twilight and the night the rabbits came regularly and made a
hearty meal. All day long the red squirrels came and went, and
afforded me much entertainment by their manoeuvres. One would
approach at first warily through the shrub oaks, running over the
snow-crust by fits and starts like a leaf blown by the wind, now a
few paces this way, with wonderful speed and waste of energy, making
inconceivable haste with his "trotters," as if it were for a wager,
and now as many paces that way, but never getting on more than half
a rod at a time; and then suddenly pausing with a ludicrous
expression and a gratuitous somerset, as if all the eyes in the
universe were eyed on him -- for all the motions of a squirrel, even
in the