Wood-folk comedies

Sunrise in the big woods, morning and springtime and fishing weather! For the new day Killooleet the white-throated sparrow has a song of welcome; fishing has its gleeman in Kos...

One morning--I remember only that the snow lay deep, and that all birds were uncommonly eager at their breakfast--a stranger appeared at the birds’ table, a sober fellow whom I...

Whenever I heard the hounds after that, I pictured comedy afoot and followed it eagerly, still roaming alone in hope of meeting the fox, and making myself a nuisance to many a p...

Therefore it befalls, whenever I venture to say, that wolves do not chase men, that some fellow appears with a story to contradict me. Indeed, I contradict myself after a fashio...

From one end of the charging line a big wolf suddenly shot out at top speed, circling to get behind me. I picked him as the one I must first kill; but I would wait till the last...

The mink darts up to my foot and rests a paw upon it before he begins to suspect something wrong in the motionless figure with two big fish hanging beside it. He goes away unwil...

Again the trail is before you, silent but never lifeless; it seems always to be listening. As you follow it onward, you are wiser than before, having learned the odor of a deer...

Presently the bear glided away, but falteringly, and I knew that he was not satisfied. Without a sound I reached for my heavy revolver, gripped it, and lay as I was before. Very...

Here the beavers have their winter home in a great domed lodge. Around the open water are tracks made by three generations of beaver, and these with the uncommonly big house tel...

That is an odd thing, too, since wolves trust to stealth rather than to speed. Though they have tremendous power of running and leaping, they refuse (in their hunting, at least)...

We know so little of an animal (the real animal which you meet in the woods, not the labeled skin-and-bones which you find in a book or a museum) that any answer must be guesswo...

Keeonekh does most of his winter fishing in half-open streams, where it is easy to bring his catch out on the bank, and where he has hidden dining rooms under shelves of ice lef...

At any ordinary time such an outcry seems to stun the wilderness into deeper silence; but now it had an opposite effect, as if it were an alarm for which wild ears had been wait...

Holding across the wild country, therefore, within the hour I had picked up the forward trail of my cub-wolf. As I expected, he had followed a direct course till his trail joine...

The answer is, probably, that instinct has nothing to do with the matter; so we may as well put that prejudice out of our heads and open our eyes. Instincts are fairly constant,...

Yes, a curious life, monotonous and dismal, or cheery and forever expectant, according as you view it from without or from within. Coming upon the lodge now, you see only a moun...

Another time I was in an opening of the big woods at dusk of a winter day when a red fox appeared, carrying a rabbit. Evidently he had eaten as much as he wanted of the sweet me...