very much alike: Name some other respects in which animals and men are alike in their lives. What famous line in the poem just quoted is it that makes men and mice very closely related?
bottom of the house: Down in the very foundation walls of the muskrat’s house are two runways or “doors” that open under water and so far under that they rarely if ever freeze. See picture of such a house with its door in the author’s “Wild Life Near Home,” page 174.
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tepee: What is a tepee?
juicy and pink and tender: The muskrats eat grass stems and roots, so that under the water near the lodge you will often find in winter little stacks of these tender pink stems and roots ready for eating—much as the beaver stores up sticks of tender bark under the water near his lodge for food when the ice forms overhead.
Winter is coming: Are you glad or sorry? Are you ready?
CHAPTER IX
TO THE TEACHER
Let the pupils continue this list of examples of winter preparations by watching and observing for themselves. Every field, every tree, every roadside, will reveal the work done or going on under their eyes. Without preaching you may draw many an interesting and telling parallel with their own preparation—in school for instance.
FOR THE PUPIL
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“The north wind doth blow,
And we shall have snow,
And what will the Robin do then,
Poor thing?”
Where does the verse come from? Mother Goose? Yes, but who was she?
Chipmunk: Our little striped ground squirrel, interesting because he has cheek-pouches and thus forms a link between the arboreal squirrels (gray squirrels, etc.) and the ground squirrels or spermophiles, of which the beautiful little thirteen-lined squirrel of the prairies is an example.
Whitefoot, the wood mouse: The white-footed or wood mouse or deer mouse.
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