“Mother, what is the starvation moon?” White Sox asked, after they had eaten awhile in silence. “I have heard Uncle Slim speak of it.”
“That is a spring moon,” said Mother Reindeer, and then she explained all about it. “When the herd is kept too near the sea beach and the snow is deep and hard, reindeer become very poor and weak. They have to dig through the snow for all their meals, and there isn’t much to eat after all their digging. Some reindeer mothers are so poor when their fawns come that until the grass grows they don’t have milk enough for them. There was a starvation moon after your sister was born, and consequently her growth was stunted. Luckily for you, last winter and spring were what is called ‘open.’ The herders moved the herd back a day’s journey each moon. Your mother was in good condition and had plenty of milk. You grew fast and strong.”
“‘Your mother was in good condition, and you grew fast and strong.’”
White Sox nibbled awhile; then he thought of something else that he wanted to know.
“Mother, why did we change our course and go almost directly against the wind when we were traveling through that blizzard?” he asked.
“That was to protect ourselves from the driving blast and from wolves,” said Mother Reindeer. “Don’t you know that our hair slants backward like the feathers of a duck? A driving wind that strikes us from behind or on the side gets under our hair and chills us.”
“When we face the wind we can scent wolves and Eskimo dogs ahead of us. But then wolves behind us can scent us, can’t they, mother?”
“Yes, my son; but no wolf or dog can face a blizzard like the snowstorm we passed through today and overtake a reindeer or a caribou. Our enemies like to scent us, or see us, and then sneak up as they tried to do this morning. Our wild cousins are in the greatest danger when they are resting.”
“Resting!” exclaimed White Sox. “Why, mother, our poor cousins don’t know what rest is! But tell me, please, when the snowflakes became hard sleet today, didn’t they hurt your eyes?”