HARVEST OF WILD PLACES 105 



The major harvest of our pasture is undoubtedly the 

 apple crop, and the major harvesters are the deer. The 

 apples are small and bitter or else tasteless now. 

 Encouraged by the optimism of Thoreau, I have bitten 

 into many hundreds of wild apples since I first read his 

 immortal psean in their praise, but I have yet to discover 

 a second Baldwin, or even an equal of the poorest 

 variety in our orchard crop. At any rate, I no longer 

 pick the apples in this pasture. No one picks them. 

 They fall to the gound on an autumn night, and no one 

 hears the soft, startling thud in the silence of the for- 

 gotten clearing. But the squirrels and the deer know 

 where they are. More than once, in Autumn, we have 

 come out into the pasture in time to see a squirrel 

 leaping across the open spaces toward the shelter of the 

 pines with an apple in his mouth, and we have often 

 seen one nip an apple from its stem, run down to the 

 ground to get it, and then climb back with it to a 

 crotch and eat at it. Sometimes they spit out the pulp, 

 apparently aiming to get at the seeds, especially after 

 the fruit is over-ripe. Sometimes they appear to 

 swallow it. In old fence-holes frequented by chip- 

 munks and squirrels you will often find apple seeds. 

 On the other hand, you will often find apples partially 

 eaten on the ground beneath the trees, but not bitten 

 through to the core, unmistakably by squirrels. The 

 rabbits, also, eat the apples in winter. They will even 

 come into our garden close to the village street, and 



