Some people are trying hard to believe that we have sleighing, but I have no delusions on that point. An inch or two of light fluffy snow on a lumpy gravel road isn't sleighing. For the past week it has been threatening snow every day, and some has fallen, but it will take a lot more to make good sleighing. The temperature has ranged from zero to twenty-two above during the past week, and we have had real winter weather. From what I have heard about the temperature from others who own thermometers I am beginning to believe that watching the weather is something like fishing. People like to get an unusual record. I have heard four degrees below zero reported, but my thermometer is a prosy, unimaginative instrument that seems inclined to record things as it finds them. I also find that there are people who do not hesitate for a moment to dispute the thermometer. When the mercury is standing at twenty above I have heard them assert vehemently: "I don't care what your old thermometer says; it is colder to-day than it has been since the storm started. I guess I know when I feel cold, don't I?" Of course it is not the function of a thermometer to warm people up when it rises in the tube. If they choose to go out without enough clothes it does not record that fact, but they do. The use of thermometers seems to be having an influence on the climate. Judging by the stories one hears, we don't have such cold winters as they had before thermometers came into use. The effect seems to be the opposite of that reported by the Irishwoman who was asked how far it was to a certain town.
"It used to be only three miles, but one day a surveyor came along and measured the road and it has been five weary miles ever since." In that case science made things harder, but the reading of the thermometer in this section makes the climate seem less severe.
Driving to school with the children these mornings is a task full of interest. The white page of the snow is scribbled over with all sorts of stories. I never knew rabbits and quail to be so plentiful as they are this year. Their tracks are everywhere, though where they hide themselves is a mystery. I have seen only one rabbit this year. That one was poked out of a culvert, and I saw it only for the three or four seconds it took to get under a stack, yet the whole neighbourhood is tracked by them as if mobs of them played about at night. There are three flocks of quail on the farm and yet I have never seen them except when I set out to search for them diligently. I hear them whistling in different directions almost every morning and evening, but they manage to keep themselves out of sight. This makes me wonder a little about the sharp-sighted heroes of modern nature stories who can't walk through a page of printed text without seeing game and making observations that would take me hours of hunting and watching. If it were not for the snow, which reveals every movement of the little creatures, we should hardly know that there is life of any kind in the fields. To the children these tracks are a never-ending source of wonder and delight. They are sure that the rabbits or quail are under every bush to which the tracks lead, if I would only stop the buggy long enough to let them go and see. But I looked too often years ago when trudging through the fields and woods with a gun to feel much enthusiasm. These winter tracks seem to lead everywhere and nowhere. One almost imagines that they are purposely confused so as to conceal the hiding-places.
Nov. 9.—The turkeys in Appin district are not wild, but their owners are. This is the season of the annual round-up, and if it were not that Canadians are a peaceable and law-abiding people the results might be disastrous. The confusion is equal to that of a round-up of wild cattle in Texas in the old evil days. Flocks are inextricably mixed. It is true that some of the tough stringy old gobblers and hens are marked with bits of gaudy rags tied on their wings, but the young, plump, edible birds are unbranded. Hence the confusion and heart-burnings.
Turkeys are native here, and they do not seem to understand that the world has become civilised since the time when their ancestors roamed through the woods in mighty flocks. They are the only important survivors of the wild life of other days, and they still retain many of their wild instincts. Although they are hatched out in the barns or poultry houses, they take to the woods as soon as they have the use of their legs, and live the wild life until full grown.
The great trouble is that, like the Indians, they are unable to understand property rights in land. Line fences mean nothing to them, and they will range wherever food is plentiful. Flocks sometimes wander miles from home in quest of grasshoppers in the summer time, and of beechnuts in the fall. While the weather is mild the flocks keep apart, but when a cold snap comes on they rush together, and then the trouble begins.
"My turkeys were hatched early in June," says one farmer's wife.
Sixty gobblers gobble together as at a signal, while an equal number of hens stretch their necks and look worried.
"Mine were July birds, but they are of a big breed, and fast growers." The gobblers comment on this statement with a clamorous, simultaneous gobble.
"Mine were July birds, too, but I fed them on oatmeal for a couple of weeks, and that gave them a good start."