“Now you’re going to take this one home. There’ll be no strong smell when you cook this fellow.”
Our talk turned to poetry—the skinning still going forward—the woodchuck brimming full of verse; for Burroughs, at every other turn of his knife, would seem to open up a vein of song. The beauty of nature to Burroughs had always been more than skin deep. He wanted the skin for a coat; the carcass he wanted for a roast; but here was a chance for him to look into some of the hidden, fearful things of nature, and the sight inside of that woodchuck made him stop and sing.
But how old and frail he looked! And he was old, very old, eighty-four the coming April 9. And he was suddenly sad.
Resting a bit from his labor, he began to chant to the slackening rain:
“’Tis a dull sight
To see the year dying.
When winter winds
Set yellow woods sighing,
Sighing, O sighing.