NOVEMBER TRAITS 



give, once we hear them chirping in a 

 blizzard. June is a lyric, November a 

 hymn. 



The squirrels have put away enough nuts 

 to last through the holidays, and after 

 that they come out and get something else 

 no one ever knows what. They have 

 gone off with most of the acorns, leaving 

 the fairies their usual autumn supply of 

 cupless saucers. No birds worth fighting 

 with are left, for the crows will not notice 

 them, so they go for the chipmunks. 

 Sometimes at the wood's edge a bird that 

 came only with the blossoms and that 

 should long since have gone sits lost, half 

 grotesque, on a stark twig spent and 

 beautiful singer, belated by perversity or 

 by untimely faintness of wing! The musk- 

 rat's winter house is ready, but no happy 

 quiet such as his good citizenship deserves 

 is in store for him, because soon the trap- 

 pers will begin their patrol of the forest, 

 and his skin, called wild Patagonian ox, 

 the exquisite new fur, will bring a good 

 price. Emotional wild geese still pass 

 overhead in the dawns and sunsets the 

 crows can scarcely conceal their amuse- 

 ment: "What nonsense, to be always 



[63] 



