BRUTE NEIGHBORS. 
245 
mother’s call which gathers them again. These w r ere 
my hens and chickens. 
It is remarkable how many creatures live wild and 
free though secret in the woods, and still sustain them¬ 
selves in the neighborhood of towns, suspected by hunt¬ 
ers only. How retired the otter manages to live here! 
He grows to be four feet long, as big as a small boy, 
perhaps without any human being getting a glimpse of 
him. I formerly saw the raccoon in the woods behind 
where my house is built, and probably still heard their 
whinnering at night. Commonly I rested an hour or 
two in the shade at noon, after planting, and ate my 
lunch, and read a little by a spring which was the source 
of a swamp and of a brook, oozing from under Brister’s 
Hill, half a mile from my field. The approach to this 
was through a succession of descending grassy hollows, 
full of young pitch-pines, into a larger wood about the 
swamp. There, in a very secluded and shaded spot, 
under a spreading white-pine, there was yet a clean firm 
sward to sit on. I had dug out the spring and made a 
w r ell of clear gray water, where I could dip up a pailful 
without roiling it, and thither I went for this purpose 
almost every day in midsummer, when the pond was 
warmest. Thither too the wood-cock led her brood, to 
probe the mud for worms, flying but a foot above them 
down the bank, while they ran in a troop beneath; but 
at last, spying me, she would leave her young and circle 
round and round me, nearer and nearer till within four 
or five feet, pretending broken wings and legs, to attract 
my attention, and get off her young, who would already 
have taken up their march, with faint wiry peep, single 
file through the swamp, as she directed. Or I heard 
the peep of the young when I could not see the parent 
