After a long journey the reindeer must be unharnessed for feeding. They find their own food, of course, and Mekolka seizes the chance to go to sleep. He always goes to sleep in the same queer way; he sits down on the ground, pulls his arms out of the sleeves, and then lies flat on his back. The empty sleeves stretch out stiffly by his side, and look, of course, as though the arms are in them, though the hands have found a warmer spot inside on his chest.
The air on the Tundra, and, indeed, in all the Arctic region has a curious way of deceiving the traveler. It makes things look like something else. Take a day when the sunshine lights up the scene and the grey, lichen-covered mounds take wonderful colors in the distance from the blue sky and the haze. Though lakes of water appear to grow and fill the far-off hollows, Mekolka knows they are not lakes, but little snowdrifts. It is the mirage that plays these little tricks. So when he sees mighty ships sailing over the sea, he knows it is nothing more than blocks of ice, while what looks like a great headland on the coast is nothing but a little mound thirty or forty feet high. And if, when alone, he sees half a dozen other Samoyads come to the river-bank within a couple of hundred yards and then stop while one sits on a stone, he doesn't call out or walk toward them; he knows quite well that in a minute or two they will form themselves into a group of bernacle geese, or a family of snow buntings; in fact, he is quite prepared to hear one suddenly burst into song (for the snow bunting is the gayest warbler of the Arctic), and to find a cleft in the peat where there will be a nest, lined with dead grasses and the white feathers of the willow-grouse, and holding half a dozen eggs.
He knows every bird that flies overhead, and can name them, too, though his names are very different from ours. He knows that the snow bunting arrives about the middle of April, and he begins to watch for its appearance as soon as the days are getting long. He has no calendar of months and days to look at, but he makes notches on a stick—one for each day, with an extra cut at the seventh—and he is just as quick in glancing at his stick and telling you the date as an American boy would be with his printed calendar. He will watch for the purple sandpiper in May, and find its eggs in June, though they are very hard to find for anyone with eyes less trained than Mekolka's. The nest is always built in some hollow among the Arctic willow or lichen, and the eggs are difficult enough to see, as is the bird itself when sitting on them—they all look so exactly like the ground. And the bird will let you come ever so close to her—in fact, almost tread on her—before she will leave her cherished eggs.
Mekolka can tell you about the behavior of the little stint when he came upon her nest one day. It had four precious eggs in it. When the old bird found she was really discovered, she jigged about like an acrobat, squeaked like a mouse, and did everything she could to take off Mekolka's attention from the nest. As that did not work, the little bird twittered and pretended to be lame, running about as though asking to be caught; but all she wanted was that no one should notice that deep hole in the ground half full of dried birch-leaves where her four cherished eggs were laid. The little stint had been into a creek in Scotland early in June, and wanted to get back there with four chicks before the end of July. She did not want to lose those eggs and go back all that long journey without any little ones. Not that she is very kind to them after they begin to grow, for on the very earliest opportunity she kicks them out of the nest to teach them self-reliance!
—From "Finn and Samoyad".
Imagine that you have been for a long visit to Mekolka. Your teacher will call on some one to come to the front of the class to tell about each of the following experiences:
1. Helping Mekolka make a horn knife-handle.
2. A ride with Mekolka.
3. Being fooled by a mirage.
4. Some birds I saw with Mekolka.