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NATURE WITH CLOSED DOORS 
ECEMBER in our climate is the month when 
Nature finally shuts up house and turns the 
key. She has been slowly packing up and putting 
away her things and closing a door and a window 
here and there all the fall. Now she completes the 
work and puts up the last bar. She is ready for 
winter. The leaves are all off the trees, except that 
here and there a beech or an oak or a hickory still 
clings to a remnant of its withered foliage. Her 
streams are full, her new growths of wood are rip- 
ened, her saps and juices are quiescent. The musk- 
rat has completed his house in the shallow pond or 
stream, the beaver in the northern woods has com- 
pleted his. The wild mice and the chipmunk have 
laid up their winter stores of nuts and grains in their 
dens in the ground and in the cavities of trees. The 
woodchuck is rolled up in his burrow in the hill- 
side, sleeping his long winter sleep. The coon has 
deserted his chamber in the old tree and gone into 
winter quarters in his den in the rocks. The winter 
birds have taken on a good coat of fat against the 
‘coming cold and a possible scarcity of food. The 
AT 
