How Animals Talk 



bite here or there, giving the impression that they 

 eat now from habit rather than from hunger. As 

 the moon wanes they change their hours to take 

 advantage of its shining; and on the "dark of the 

 moon" they browse only in the early part of the 

 night, then rest many hours, and have two periods 

 of feeding or roaming the next day. 



Such seems to be the rule in the North, with 

 plenty of exceptions to keep one guessing, as in 

 the November mating-season, when bucks are 

 afoot at all hours; or during a severe storm, which 

 keeps deer and all other wild animals close in their 

 coverts. 



Because of this regularity of habit at irregular 

 hours, the only certainty about the salt-lick was 

 that the animals would come if one waited long 

 enough. As I watched expectantly from my 

 larch bower, the morning shadows might creep 

 up to me, halt, and lengthen away on the other 

 side, while not a deer showed himself in the open. 

 Then there would be a stir in the distant larches, 

 a flash of bright color; a doe would emerge from 

 one of the game-trails, hastening her springy steps 

 as she neared the spring. As my eyes followed 

 her, noting with pleasure her graceful poses, her 

 unwearied alertness, her frequent turning of the 

 head to one distant spot in the woods where she 

 had left her fawn, there would come another 



[262! 



