WILDWOOD WAYS 



potatoes. Rough and forbidding as they 

 look they are white and crisp inside, and 

 though their taste is as flat and insipid 

 as that of a raw potato to you and me 

 the muskrat votes them delicious and sat- 

 isfying. The bottom of the pond is stored 

 with them and he has but to dive and dig, 

 and he even buttresses his winter wig- 

 wams with them. 



If he wants something a little more 

 spicy there are spots in the bog, now safe 

 under water and ice but within easy 

 reach of a submarine like himself, where 

 grow the pungent roots of the calamus, 

 the sweet flag, of which he is very fond 

 and which, when dried and sugared, most 

 humans like to nibble. Stored all along 

 the shallows are his shell-fish, the fresh 

 water mussels whose thin shells he can 

 easily tear open and whose white flesh he 

 finds exceedingly toothsome. These, too, 

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