17 I Learn About Birds and People

In Which I Learn About Birds and People Frightful and I settled down to living in snow. We went to bed early, slept late, ate the mountain harvest, and explored the country alone. Oh. the deer walked with us, the foxes followed in our footsteps, the winter birds flew over our heads, but mostly we were alone in the white wilderness, It was nice. It was very, very nice. My deerskin rabbit-lined suit was so warm that even when my breath froze in my nostrils, my body was snug and comfortable. Frightful fluffed on the coldest days, but a good flight into the air around the mountain would warm her, and she would come back to my fist with a thump and a flip. This was her signal of good spirits.

I did not become lonely. Many times during the summer I had thought of the "long winter months ahead" with some fear. I had read so much about the loneliness of the farmer, the trapper, the woodsman during the bleakness of winter that I had come to believe it. The winter was as exciting as the summer– maybe more so. The birds were magnificent and almost tame. They talked to each other, warned each other, fought for food for kingship, and for the right to make the most noise. Sometimes I would sit in my doorway. which became an entrance to behold– a portico of pure white snow, adorned with snowmen– and watch them with endless interest. They reminded me of Third Avenue, and I gave them the names that seemed to fit. There was Mr Bracket. He lived on the first floor of our apartment house, and no one could sit on his step or even make a noise near his door without being chased. Mr Bracket, the chickadee, spent most of his

time chasing the young chickadees through the woods. Only his mate could share his favourite perches and feeding places. Then there were Mrs O'Brien, Mrs Callaway, and Mrs Federio. On Third Avenue they would all go off to the market together first thing in the morning, talking and pushing and stopping to lecture to children in gutters and streets. Mrs Federio always followed Mrs O'Brien, and Mrs O'Brien always followed Mrs Callaway in talking and pushing and even in buying an apple. And there they were again in my hemlock; three busy chickadees. They would flit and rush around and click and fly from one eating spot to another. They were noisy, scolding and busily following each other. All the other chickadees followed them, and they made way only for Mr Bracket. The chickadees, like the people on Third Avenue, had their favourite routes to and from the best food supplies. They each had their own resting perches and each had a

little shelter in a tree cavity to which they would fly when the day was over. They would chatter and call good night and make a big fuss before they parted; and then the forest would be as quiet as the apartment house on Third Avenue when all the kids were off the streets and all the parents had said their last words to each other and everyone had gone to their own little hole. Sometimes when the wind howled and the snows blew, the chickadees would be out for only a few hours. Even Mr Bracket, who had been elected by the chickadees to test whether or not it was too stormy for good hunting, would appear for, a few hours and disappear. Sometimes I would find him just sitting quietly on a limb next to the bole of a tree, all fluffed up and doing nothing. There was no one who more enjoyed doing nothing on a bad day than Mr Bracket of Third Avenue.

Frightful, the two Mr Brackets, and I shared this feeling. When the ice and sleet and snow drove down through the hemlocks, we all holed up. I looked at my calendar pole one day, and realized that it was almost Christmas. Bando will come, I thought. I'll have to prepare a feast and make a present for him. I took stock of the frozen venison and decided that there were enough steaks for us to eat nothing but venison for a month. I scooped under the snow for teaberry plants to boil down, and pour over snowballs for dessert. I checked my cache of wild onions to see if I had enough to make onion soup, and set aside some large firm groundnuts for mashed potatoes. There were still piles of dogtooth violet bulbs and Solomon's-seal roots and a few dried apples. I cracked walnuts, hickory nuts, and beechnuts, then began a pair of deer-hide moccasins to be lined with rabbit fur for Bando's present. I finished these

before Christmas, so I started a hat of the same materials. Two days before Christmas I began to wonder if Bando would come. He had forgotten, I was sure– or he was busy I said. Or he thought that I was no longer here and decided not to tramp out through the snows to see. On Christmas Eve Bando still had not arrived, and I began to plan for a very small Christmas with Frightful. About four-thirty Christmas Eve I hung a small red cluster of teaberries on the deerskin door. I went in my tree room for a snack of beechnuts when I heard a faint "halloooo" from far down the mountain. I snuffed out my tallow candle, jumped into my coat and moccasins and plunged out into the snow. Again a "halloooo" floated over the quiet snow. I took a hearing on the sound and bounced down the hill to meet Bando. I ran into him just as he turned up the valley to follow the stream bed. I was so glad to see