WINTER is a stern old teacher but his heart is kind. Come out and see what he is teaching the little four-footed people of the parks and woods.
Here are tracks upon the snow, two long ones and two short ones, then a space, and four more just like the first ones. They were made by two short legs and two long legs with springs in them, real live, muscle springs, for see how far the creature leaped! Follow them! Let's find out who made them.
Bunny! There he sits, his ears pricked straight up over his head, his eyes glistening, his nose quivering. A gray rabbit we call him, a common name and a common animal, but he is a wonderful little being; alert, witty, keen of scent, swift of motion, and danger and winter have taught him all of these. Foxes and weasels and hawks and gunners and dogs are all after him, and winter is upon him with cold and snow and scarcity of food.
Aha, but his big ears! they catch a sound long before his quick eye sees the enemy coming; his quick scent smells danger; his bright wits tell him what to do and his nimble legs bear him away, away, away with long, strong, unerring leaps.
He does not like the open, well-known field with no weeds for his home, but give him a briery pasture with clumps of huckleberry and bayberry, or a weedy, grassy field, with tangles of wild rose and brambles here and there, and he is as happy and contented and as much a part of the jungle as the briers themselves. Across such a weedy field in different directions he will build himself, or rather mow for himself, the cunning-est little paths, cutting away with his teeth every thorn, brier and reed from a space wide enough for his little body to slip noiselessly through. He has dozens of such paths, all in the same tangle, running across, around and about. Into these, when danger threatens, he whisks himself and is far off to the other end of the field while the puzzled dog or fox is sniffing away on the wrong track; and by the time the dog is at last on the true scent, Bunny is hiding near the starting place.
In or near some of his paths, rabbit has spots — "forms" we call them — where he sits, his nose and ears to the windward for scents and sounds of danger, his little legs curled up under him. There he sleeps, but always seemingly with one eye and both ears wide open, for he must not be caught napping by day or night.
Afraid of winter? Not he. The driving storms and sheets of snowflakes seem to give him a sense of security and peace; fewer enemies are out at such times. There he crouches in his ' 'form,'' his eye twinkling cunningly as though he were saying, ' 'Oh, ho, old snow! I am glad you are coming; you will keep the cold wind from my back; the higher you pile your drifts the nearer will you bring me to the tips of those twigs and branches whose spicy buds I love to nibble.''
But it is lonely, lonely, lonely, sitting all day by one's self in a snowstorm and nibbling a bit of sassafras bark for breakfast, dinner and supper. Some luxuries would not hurt Bunny at such times, and a few of our apples, or even the peelings and cores from them, with a bit of the lettuce or celery we had left from our dinner, would make him a bright happy little fellow.
Rabbits are really sociable little animals and many are the stories told of their playing together in companies by the light of the moon. There they leap about, looking as though they would shout and laugh if they could. These games seem to be tests of jumping and leaping, and as every rabbit can jump much higher than he can reach on tip toes, there is nothing slow or stupid about the sports.
Do you not believe these are really lessons in athletics studied on purpose to keep all those little muscles of legs and thighs in perfect running order?
