The weeks passed all too quickly, as wilderness weeks do, and the
sad task of breaking camp lay just before us. But one thing
troubled me--the little Tookhees, who knew no fear, but tried to
make a nest in the sleeve of my flannel shirt. His simple
confidence touched me more than the curious ways of all the other
mice. Every day he came and took his crumbs, not from the common
table, but from my, hand, evidently enjoying its warmth while he
ate, and always getting the choicest morsels. But I knew that he
would be the first one caught by the owl after I left; for it is
fear only that saves the wild things. Occasionally one finds
animals of various kinds in which the instinct of fear is
lacking--a frog, a young partridge, a moose calf--and wonders
what golden age that knew no fear, or what glorious vision of
Isaiah in which lion and lamb lie down together, is here set
forth. I have even seen a young black duck, whose natural
disposition is wild as the wilderness itself, that had profited
nothing by his mother's alarms and her constant lessons in
hiding, but came bobbing up to my canoe among the sedges of a
wilderness lake, while his brethren crouched invisible in their
coverts of bending rushes, and his mother flapped wildly off,
splashing and quacking and trailing a wing to draw me away from
the little ones.
Pages:
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40