The Kangaroo Rat 



a paradise. For every cottonwood of the strag- 

 gling belt that the river used to mark its doubtful 

 course across the plain, and every dwarfed and 

 spiny bush and weedy copse, was teeming with 

 life. And every day and every night I made 

 new friends, or learned new facts about the 

 mudland denizens. 



Man and the Birds are understood to possess 

 the earth during the daylight, therefore the night 

 has become the time for the four-footed ones to 

 be about, and in order that I might set a sleep- 

 less watch on their movements I was careful 

 each night before going to bed to sweep smooth 

 the dust about the shanty and along the two path- 

 ways, one to the spring and one to the corral by 

 way of the former corn-patch, still called the 

 " garden." 



Each morning I went out with all the feel- 

 ings of a child meeting the Christmas postman, 

 or of a fisherman hauling in his largest net, 

 /* j. eager to know what there was for me. 



I Not a morning passed without a message 



,u r i -i J| ][LJ,(i from the beasts. Nearly every night a Skunk 



V Wi riTn^liI or two wolJ ld come and gather up table-scraps, 



ftrp^jf^j r4jc~E» prying into all sorts of forbidden places in their 



234 





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