Under the Maples

by John Burroughs

Finally the black worm comes to rest and, clinging by its hind feet, lets itself down and simulates a small dry twig, in which disguise it would deceive the sharpest-eyed enemy. No doubt it passed the night posing as a twig.

Among the sylvan denizens that next came upon the stage were a hummingbird, a little red newt, and a wood frog. The hummer makes short work of everything: with a flash and a hum it is gone. This one seemed to be exploring the dry twigs for nesting-material, either spiders' webs or bits of lichen. For a brief moment it perched on a twig a few yards from me. My ardent wish could not hold it any longer. Truly a fairy bird, appearing and vanishing like a thought, familiar with the heart of all the flowers and taking no food grosser than their nectar, the winged jewel of the poets, the surprise and delight of all beholders—it came like a burnished meteor into my leafy alcove and was gone as quickly.

All sylvan things have a charm and delicacy of their own, all except the woodchuck; wherever he is, he is of the earth earthy. The wood frog is known only to woodsmen and farm boys. He is a real sylvan frog, as pretty as a bird, the color of the dry leaves, slender and elegant in form and quick and furtive in movement. My feet disturbed one in the bed of dry leaves. Slowly I moved my hand toward him and stroked his back with a twig. If you can tickle a frog's back in any way you put a spell upon him. He becomes quite hypnotized. He was instantly responsive to my passes. He began to swell and foreshorten, and when I used my finger instead of the twig, he puffed up very rapidly, rose up more upon his feet, and bowed his head. As I continued the titillation he began to give forth broken, subdued croaks, and I wondered if he were going to break out in song. He did not, but he seemed loath to go his way. How different he looked from the dark-colored frogs which in large numbers make a multitudinous croaking and clucking in the little wild pools in spring! He wakes up from his winter nap very early and is in the pools celebrating his nuptials as soon as the ice is off them, and then in two or three days he takes to the open woods and assumes the assimilative coloring of the dry leaves.

The little orange-colored salamander, a most delicate and highly colored little creature, is as harmless as a baby, and about as slow and undecided in its movements. Its cold body seems to like the warmth of your hand. Yet in color it is as rich an orange as the petal of the cardinal flower is a rich scarlet. It seems more than an outside color; it is a glow, and renders the creature almost transparent, an effect as uniform as the radiance of a precious stone. Its little, innocent-looking, three-toed foot, or three and a half toed—how unreptilian it looks through my pocket glass! A baby's hand is not more so. Its throbbing throat, its close-shut mouth, its jet-black eyes with a glint of gold above them—only a close view of these satisfies one.

Here is another remarkable transformation among the small wild folk. In the spring he is a dark, slimy, rather forbidding lizard in the pools; now he is more beautiful than the jewel-weed in the woods. This is said to be an immature form, which returns to the ponds and matures the next season; but whether it is the male or the female that assumes this bright hue, or both, I do not know. The coat seems to be its midsummer holiday uniform which is laid aside when it goes back to the marshes to hibernate in the fall.

Wild creatures so unafraid are sure to have means of protection that do not at once appear. In the case of the newt it is evidently an acrid or other disagreeable secretion, which would cause any animal to repent that took it in its mouth. It is even less concerned at being caught than is the skunk, or porcupine, or stink-bug.

In my retreat I was unwittingly intruding upon the domain of another sylvan denizen, the chipmunk. One afternoon one suddenly came up from the open field below me with his pockets full of provender of some sort; just what sort I wondered, as there was no grain or seeds or any dry food that it would be safe to store underground for the winter.

Beholding me sitting there within two yards of his den was a great surprise to him. He eyed me a long time—squirrel time—making little, spasmodic movements on the flat stone above his den. At a motion of my arm he darted into his hole with an exultant chip. He was soon out with empty pockets, and he then proceeded to sound his little tocsin of distrust or alarm so that all the sylvan folk might hear. As I made no sign, he soon ceased and went about his affairs.

All this time, behind and above me, concealed by a vase fern, reposed that lovely creature of the twilight, the luna moth, just out of her chrysalis, drying and inflating her wings. I chanced to lift the fern screen, and there was this marvel! Her body was as white and spotless as the snow, and her wings, with their Nile-green hue, as fair and delicate as—well, as only those of a luna moth can be. It is as immaculate as an angel. With a twig I carefully lifted her to the trunk of a maple sapling, where she clung and where I soon left her for the night.

While I was loitering there on the threshold of the woods, observing the small sylvan folk, about a hundred yards above me, near the highway, was a bird's nest of a kind I had not seen for more than a score of years, the nest of the veery, or Wilson's thrush. Some friends were camping there with their touring-car outfit in a fringe of the beech woods, and passed and repassed hourly within a few yards of the nest, and, although they each had sharp eyes and sharp ears, they had neither seen nor heard the birds during the two days they had been there.