Very likely, although the baby elk could see well enough, he cared more for the things which he could smell. There was such a delicious fragrance everywhere of spicy evergreens and the damp sweet breath of mosses and blossoming flowers. Of course he was too young to taste the juicy grasses and tender twigs, but he surely enjoyed the tempting odor of it all. The world smelled very good to eat.
Like all little mammals he drank milk till his teeth cut through his gums later in the year. Like the buffaloes the older elk had horny pads instead of teeth in the front of their upper jaws. They tore off a mouthful of grass or leaves with a jerk of the head and swallowed it half chewed. Then, during the heat of the day, when they were lying down to rest in the shade, or standing in pools of water, they drew up the fodder from their stomachs and chewed it again.
The Elk.
“Grazing over the upland meadows.” Page 48.
All summer long the little elk lived in the mountains with his mother and brother. At night he slept nestled close to them in some safe thicket. In the daytime he trotted beside them as they roamed grazing over the upland meadows and along the brooks. Though they were fond of feeding near the water they did not care so much as some other kinds of deer to eat lily-leaves.
In the early part of the summer the mother and brother looked very ragged. Their thick winter coat began to fall out. It was so matted that it clung to the body like a torn blanket. Every time they rubbed against a bush or thorny tree their old hair was torn in long strips and tatters. When at last it had all been rubbed off their fresh short, summer fur shone out bright and glistening in the sunshine.
Little by little the white spots on the baby’s coat were fading. By the end of August he was all in plain brown like the older ones, with only a patch of white around his tail. Probably he did not notice the difference himself because he could not turn his head far enough to see many of the spots on his sides and neck.
Indeed he was astonished enough one day, while still in the spotted coat, to see another little spotted elk come timidly out of a thicket of aspens. At first both babies stood still, with their ears pricked forward and their big soft eyes wide open. Then the first one bravely walked up to the other and smelled him all over. After that they were friends and played together. They could both say ba-a-a, and drink milk, and gallop over the grass, with their little hoofs kicking out behind.
The next day another mother elk with a baby and a big brother joined the band. Then another family came, and another, till there were dozens and dozens of them all together. Such scampering frolics as the little ones enjoyed! While the old mothers were quietly grazing over the steep slopes the babies raced from one rock to another. Each one tried to push up first to the highest point, and then stand there, looking down at the others. Once the roughest little fellow butted another off a high rock and almost broke his leg.
When a baby butted with his round little head it did not hurt much. But the big brothers all had sharp antlers sprouting from their foreheads. In the spring the knobs above their eyes had begun to swell and grow out into bony spikes covered with a velvety network of skin and veins. These antlers were different from the horns worn by the buffaloes. Every buffalo had a pair of horns that lasted all his life. The mother buffaloes had horns, but the mother elk did not have antlers. The antlers were solid bone instead of hollow like the horns. Each of the father elks and the big brothers had a new pair every spring to replace the old pair that dropped off during the winter.