144 HAPPY HOLLOW FARM 



You know what the old farmer said about 

 the hog- tight fence: He said it was perfectly 

 easy to build one, but perfectly impossible to 

 keep the hogs from getting through it. Well, 

 there you are ! We've built fence that a giraffe 

 couldn't see over, and it's never given our goats 

 a single moment's pause. 



Eat sprouts? I'd like to know who started 

 that story. They're fond of slippery elm when 

 it's in just the right stage in the spring; it's 

 quite good sport to watch them loosen a strip 

 of the tender inner bark and then peel it 

 smoothly off while the huskiest of the big 

 grades straddles the sapling and bends it down. 

 Also they like to nibble daintily at the sour 

 berries of the sumac when they redden in late 

 summer; and there are a few tidbits in leaves 

 and buds they'll take if they're starved into it. 

 But as for the real serious business of eating 

 sprouts, that's a canard. They'll eat anything 

 else first. They caught Sam's boy in the pas- 

 ture once and ate his little blue gingham shirt 

 off. A friend who visited us at Christmas 

 was butted down in the lane and held prostrate 

 while they ate up his necktie and the sprig of 

 mistletoe he wore in his buttonhole. They'll 

 fight for the privilege of eating a knot of dried 



