She then lay down a few
minutes to rest and enjoy the enjoyment of her feasting family, and
again vanished in the grass and flowers, coming and going every
half-hour or so. Sometimes she brought in birds that we had never seen
before, and occasionally a flying squirrel, chipmunk, or big fox
squirrel. We were just old enough, David and I, to regard all these
creatures as wonders, the strange inhabitants of our new world.
The pup was a common cur, though very uncommon to us, a black and
white short-haired mongrel that we named "Watch." We always gave him a
pan of milk in the evening just before we knelt in family worship,
while daylight still lingered in the shanty. And, instead of attending
to the prayers, I too often studied the small wild creatures playing
around us. Field mice scampered about the cabin as though it had been
built for them alone, and their performances were very amusing. About
dusk, on one of the calm, sultry nights so grateful to moths and
beetles, when the puppy was lapping his milk, and we were on our
knees, in through the door came a heavy broad-shouldered beetle about
as big as a mouse, and after it had droned and boomed round the cabin
two or three times, the pan of milk, showing white in the gloaming,
caught its eyes, and, taking good aim, it alighted with a slanting,
glinting plash in the middle of the pan like a duck alighting in a
lake.
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