WINTER ANIMALS. 
293 
hoo-hoo him out of Concord horizon. What do you 
mean by alarming the citadel at this time of night con¬ 
secrated to me ? Do you think I am ever caught nap¬ 
ping at such an hour, and that I have not got lungs and 
a larynx as well as yourself? Boo-hoo , boo-hoo , hoo- 
hoo ! It was one of the most thrilling discords I ever 
heard. And yet, if you had a discriminating ear, there 
were in it the elements of a concord such as these plains 
never saw nor heard. 
I also heard the whooping of the ice in the pond, my 
great bed-fellow in that part of Concord, as if it were 
restless in its bed and would fain turn over, were 
troubled with flatulency and bad dreams; or I was 
waked by the cracking of the ground by the frost, as if 
some one had driven a team against my door, and in 
the morning would find a crack in the earth a quarter 
of a mile long and a third of an inch wide. 
Sometimes I heard the foxes as they ranged over the 
snow crust, in moonlight nights, in search of a partridge 
or other game, barking raggedly and demoniacally like 
forest dogs, as if laboring with some anxiety, or seeking 
expression, struggling for light and to be dogs outright 
and run freely in the streets; for if we take the ages 
into our account, may there not be a civilization going 
on among brutes as well as men ? They seemed to me 
to be rudimental, burrowing men, still standing on their 
defence, awaiting their transformation. Sometimes one 
came near to my window, attracted by my light, barked 
a vulpine curse at me, and then retreated. 
Usually the red squirrel (Sciurus Hudsonius) waked 
me in the dawn, coursing over the roof and up and 
down the sides of the house, as if sent out of the woods 
for this purpose. In the course of the winter I threw 
