WINTER WAYS OF ANIMALS 171 
a porcupine. Both winter and summer he 
seemed blindly content. There were ten thou- 
sand trees around, and winter or summer there 
were meals to last a life-time. Always he had 
a dull, sleepy look and I doubt if he ever gets 
enthusiastic enough to play. 
Birds that remain all winter in snowy lands 
enjoy themselves. Like the winter animals, 
usually they are well fed. But most species of 
birds with their airplane wings fly up and down 
the earth, go northward in the spring and south- 
ward in the autumn, and thus linger where sum- 
mer lingers and move with it when it moves. 
Around me the skunks hibernated about two 
months each year; some winters possibly not 
at all. Generally the entire skunk family, from 
two to eight, hole up together. One den which 
I looked into in mid-winter had a stack of eight 
sleepy skunks in it. A bank had caved off ex- 
posing them. I left them to sleep on, for had I 
wakened them they might not have liked it. 
And who wants to mix up with a skunk? 
Another time a snowslide tore a big stump 
out by the roots and disclosed four skunks be- 
neath. When I arrived, about half an hour 
after the tear-up, the skunks were blinking and 
squirming as though apparently too drowsy to 
decide whether to get up or to have another 
good sleep. 
