WINTER WAYS OF ANIMALS 165 
periods of hibernating often correspond to 
stormy or snowy periods. 
While trying to see a flock of wild turkeys in 
Missouri one winter day I had a surprise. The 
snow showed that they had come out of the 
woods and eaten corn from a corn shock. I 
hoped to see them by using a near-by shock for a 
blind and walked around the shock. The snow 
over and around it showed only an outgoing 
mouse track. No snow had fallen for two 
days. 
I had gotten into the centre of the shock 
when I stepped on something that felt like a big 
dog. But a few seconds later, when it lunged 
against me, trying blindly to get out, it felt as 
big as a bear. I overturned the shock in es- 
caping. A blinking raccoon looked at me for 
a few seconds, then took to the woods. 
Deep snow rarely troubles wild life who lay 
up food for winter. And snow sometimes is 
even helpful to food storers and also to the bears 
and ground-hogs who hibernate, and even to a 
number of small folk who neither hibernate nor 
lay up supplies. 
One winter afternoon I followed down the 
brook which flows past my cabin. The last 
wind had blown from an unusual quarter, the 
northeast. It made hay-stack drifts in a num- 
ber of small aspen groves. One of these drifts 
