Almost the entire business of the woods is a struggle to take life or preserve it, and the recording snow makes note of each incident with broad 
impartiality 
Stories In the Snow 
THE LITTLE TRAGEDIES OF THE WOODS AND FIELDS THAT FOOTPRINTS IN THE SNOW CAN 
TELL—AN OPEN BOOK THAT WINTER OFFERS THOSE WHO REFUSE TO STAY INDOORS 
BY Warwick S. Carpenter 
Photographs by the author and others 
R eynard had been about in the night. He had come out 
of the woods at the back fence and up the hill along the 
line of the old stone wall with its thick screen of snow-lodged 
raspberry vines. Thence unerringly he had pointed straight for 
the chicken coop and had sniffed longingly at its closed door. 
Then seeking again the shelter of the wall, he had gone back as 
he had come, to earn his breakfast honestly among the big, 
white rabbits of the swamp. Like a neurasthenic that he is not, 
he has a well-marked dread of open places, and much prefers 
the protection of some overhanging fence or concealing hedge 
when he ventures out of the timber to forage abroad. Accord¬ 
ingly his tracks are often found along the drifted fence lines, 
public highways of so many creatures of the wild whose business 
takes them into the haunts of man. 
But in the woods Reynard's affairs are spread out upon a 
broader scale. His lines of control are drawn upon every eleva¬ 
tion and slope, and follow into each nook and cranny of the 
forest, until we may be sure that little has gone on there which 
has escaped his astute espionage. It is interesting to pick up 
the thread of his wanderings and follow its twists and turns. 
It is quite unmistakable. One footprint falls almost squarely in 
front of another, making a clean, straight line, and indicating a 
preciseness of body quite in keeping with his well-known habits 
of mind. Often he travels aimlessly, winding in and out, doub¬ 
ling and circling, or walking straight up the trunk of some fallen, 
inclined tree for a better view at the top. Again he has an errand 
of much importance which takes him straight away over ridge 
and valley to some far swamp. There, after a little, he appears 
to have been joined by other buccaneers of his color, so much 
have his tracks multiplied, and to have investigated every rod 
of the cover and run down every beaten pathway of his quarry. 
In a single night he can make a fair sized rabbit swamp look 
much like your own city backyard when it has hemmed in the 
activities of a lively terrier. 
Those same rabbits that interest Br’er Fox so intensely are 
themselves prolihc track makers. On moonlight nights after a 
fresh fall of snow has cleaned the forest floor, they come out in 
force to reopen their old runways and weave fresh patterns with 
the shadows of the trees. They must course the whole night 
through, in the ghostly light of a winter moon, for by the time 
the morning sun has blackened the half-tones of the moonlight 
shadows, their territory is again well organized, with trails, 
short-cuts and stopping places, and full of all the erratic wander¬ 
ings of restless feet. 
One is prone upon first sight to mistake the direction that a 
rabbit has taken, or, if he has seen him go, to think that, like the 
horse upon which that Briton of history escaped, he has his shoes 
on backwards. He throws his long hind legs forward at each 
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