OUR NEAREST NEIGHBORS 



meandered over the window-boxes. I felt he was doing such good 

 work that I must not allow any foolish prejudice to bias me, but 

 when one morning he was found actually inside the screened dog- 

 trot, close to the dining-room door, I rebelled; and that one snake 

 was sacrificed, a victim of overweening ambition. 



I often wondered, those first few weeks as I looked from my 

 window, what that queer-shaped object swimming across the bay 

 could be a turtle, perhaps; but even to my ignorant eyes the 

 head seemed much too large, as he turned his pointed nose upward 

 and his bright eyes looked warily about. It was only a muskrat 

 doing his daily exercises. His nest remains an unexplored country 

 to me. Probably the kingfisher knows all about it, for he seems 

 to be always on guard and his kindly rattle warns the lesser binl> 

 when danger is at hand. 



There are turtles, for we see them often basking in the sun on 

 the flat boulders near the lily pads. One of them strayed toward 

 the house the other day. We admired the beautifully colored 

 marks upon his big body, but kept him only long enough to find 

 out that he was the Western painted turtle, then took him back to 

 his happy hunting grounds in the waters of the bay. One morn- 

 ing in July we discovered one of these turtles laying her eggs in a 

 hole she had made in the gravel of the shore path. Whether our 

 presence frightened her away or not I do not know, but after she 

 had gone we took the four eggs and put them carefully in a big 



pottery bowl, covered them with gravel and placed the bowl on the 



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