208 Next to the Ground 



themselves in the powder-dry earth, and feed 

 on the grasshoppers, beetles, butterflies, and 

 all the host of creeping things that are the corn 

 land's rabble guests. Turkeys, wild or tame, 

 feed gluttonously, gulping down a worm yet 

 wiggling, an insect wings and all, except when 

 they are carrying young. Then they practise, 

 and teach to the broods, the art of killing 

 before eating, also of pecking their prey and 

 beating it against earth until it is freed of 

 wings, legs, and long stiff feelers. Mother 

 turkeys peck up a grasshopper into a flat 

 mangled mass before they let their young seize 

 upon it and pull it apart. Sometimes after the 

 mother has pecked a dozen insects thus for 

 her brood, she slips stealthily away from the 

 brood, runs after other insects, and swallows 

 them whole the instant they are in her beak. 

 There were several gangs of wild turkeys 

 in the flat-woods, but Joe did not hunt them 

 in the snow. Instead he hunted rabbits. 

 Indeed everybody hunted rabbits. Every cabin 

 on the place or round about it, had its big bunch 

 of cottontails swung high on the outer walls. 

 There was broiled rabbit, and fried, and 

 smothered, for everybody. As to rabbit- 

 skins, a regiment of Baby Buntings could have 

 been wrapped in them until they looked like 

 little Esquimaux. Killing rabbits, indeed, was 

 partly a sport, but more nearly a duty. Major 



