THE LONELY OLD BACHELOR MUSKRAT
Beyond the forest and beside the river lay the marsh where the Muskratslived. This was the same marsh to which the young Frog had taken some ofthe meadow people's children when they were tired of staying at home andwanted to travel. When they went with him, you remember, they were gayand happy, the sun was shining, and the way did not seem long. When theycame back they were cold and wet and tired, and thought it very farindeed. One could never get them to say much about it.
Some people like what others do not, and one's opinion of a marsh mustalways depend on whether he is a Grasshopper or a Frog. But whetherpeople cared to live there or not, the marsh had always been a pleasantplace to see. In the spring the tall tamaracks along the edge put ontheir new dresses of soft, needle-shaped green leaves, themarsh-marigolds held their bright faces up to the sun, and hundreds ofhappy little people darted in and out of the tussocks of coarse grass.There was a warm, wet, earthy smell in the air, and near thepussy-willows there was also a faint bitterness.
Then the Marsh Hens made their nests, and the Sand-pipers ran mincinglyalong by the quiet pools.
In summer time the beautiful moccasin flowers grew in family groups, andover in the higher, dryer part were masses of white boneset, tall spikesof creamy foxglove, and slender, purple vervain. In the fall thecat-tails stood stiffly among their yellow leaves, and the Red-wingedBlackbirds and the Bobolinks perched upon them to plan their journey tothe south.
Even when the birds were gone and the cat-tails were ragged andworn--even then, the marsh was an interesting place. Soft snow clung tothe brown seed clusters of boneset and filled the open silvery-gray podsof the milkweed. In among the brown tussocks of grass ran the daintyfootprints of Mice and Minks, and here and there rose the cone-shapedwinter homes of the Muskrats.
The Muskrats were the largest people there, and lived in the finesthomes. It is true that if a Mink and a Muskrat fought, the Mink waslikely to get the better of the Muskrat, but people never spoke of this,although everybody knew that it was so. The Muskrats were too proud todo so, the Minks were too wise to, and the smaller people who livednear did not want to offend the Muskrats by mentioning it. It is saidthat an impudent young Mouse did say something about it once when theMuskrats could overhear him and that not one of them ever spoke to himagain. The next time he said "Good-evening" to a Muskrat, the Muskratjust looked at him as though he didn't see him or as though he had beena stick or a stone or something else uneatable and uninteresting.
The Muskrats were very popular, for they were kind neighbors and neverstole their food from others. That was why nobody was jealous of them,although they were so fat and happy. Their children usually turned outvery well, even if they were not at all strictly brought up. You knowwhen a father and mother have to feed and care for fifteen or sochildren each summer, there is not much time for teaching them to say"please" and "thank you" and "pardon me." Sometimes these youngMuskrats did snatch and quarrel, as on that night when fifteen of themwent to visit their old home and all wanted to go in first. You mayrecall how, on that dreadful night, their father had to spank them withhis scaly tail and their mother sent them to bed. They always rememberedit, and you may be very sure their parents did. It makes parents feeldreadfully when their children quarrel, and it is very wearing to haveto spank fifteen at once, particularly when one has to use his tail withwhich to do it.
There was one old Bachelor Muskrat who had always lived for himself, andhad his own way more than was good for him. If he had married, it wouldnot have been so, and he would have grown used to giving up to somebodyelse. He was a fine-looking fellow with soft, short, reddish-brown fur,which shaded almost to black on his back, and to a light grayunderneath. There were very few hairs on his long, flat, scaly tail,and most of these were in two fringes, one down the middle of the upperside, and the other down the middle of the lower side. His tiny earshardly showed above the fur on his head, and he was so fat that hereally seemed to have no neck at all. To look at his feet you wouldhardly think he could swim, for the webs between his toes were very,very small and his feet were not large.
He was like all other Muskrats in using a great deal of perfume, and itwas not a pleasant kind, being so strong and musky. He thought it quiteright, and it was better so, for he couldn't help wearing it, and youcan just imagine how distressing it would be to see a Muskrat goingaround with his nose turned up and all the time finding fault with hisown perfume.
Nobody could remember the time when there had been no Muskrats in themarsh. The Ground Hog who lived near the edge of the forest said thathis grandfather had often spoken of seeing them at play in themoonlight; and there was an old Rattlesnake who had been married severaltimes and wore fourteen joints in his rattle, who said that heremembered seeing Muskrats there before he cast his first skin. And itwas not strange that, after their people had lived there so long, theMuskrats should be fond of the marsh.
One day in midsummer the farmer and his men came to the marsh withspades and grub-hoes and measuring lines. All of them had on high rubberboots, and they tramped around and measured and talked, and rooted up afew huckleberry bushes, and drove a good many stakes into the soft andspongy ground. Then the dinner-bell at the farmhouse rang and, they wentaway. It was a dull, cloudy day and a few of the Muskrats were out. Ifit had been sunshiny they would have stayed in their burrows. Theypaddled over to where the stakes were, and smelled of them and gnawed atthem, and wondered why the men had put them there.
"I know," said one young Muskrat, who had married and set up a home ofhis own that spring. "I know why they put these stakes in."
"Oh, do listen!" cried the young Muskrat's wife. "He knows and will tellus all about it."
"Nobody ever told me this," said the young husband. "I thought it outmyself. The Ground Hog once said that they put small pieces of potatointo the ground to grow into whole big ones, and they have done the samesort of thing here. You see, the farmer wanted a fence, and so he stuckdown these stakes, and before winter he will have a fence well grown."
"Humph!" said the Bachelor Muskrat. It seemed as though he had meant tosay more, but the young wife looked at him with such a frown on herfurry forehead that he shut his mouth as tightly as he could (he nevercould quite close it) and said nothing else.
"Do you mean to tell me," said one who had just sent five children outof her burrow to make room for another lot of babies, "that they willgrow a fence here where it is so wet? Fences grow on high land."
"That is what I said," answered the young husband, slapping his tail onthe water to make himself seem more important.
"Well," said the anxious mother, "if they go to growing fences and suchthings around here I shall move. Every one of my children will want toplay around it, and as like as not will eat its roots and get sick."
Then the men came back and all the Muskrats ran toward their burrows,dived into the water to reach the doors of them, and then crawled up thelong hallways that they had dug out of the bank until they got to thelarge rooms where they spent most of their days and kept their babies.
That night the young husband was the first Muskrat to come out, and hewent at once to the line of stakes. He had been lying awake and thinkingwhile his wife was asleep, and he was afraid he had talked too much. Hefound that the stakes had not grown any, and that the men had begun todig a deep ditch beside them. He was afraid that his neighbors wouldpoint their paws at him and ask how the fence was growing, and he wasnot brave enough to meet them and say that he had been mistaken. He wentdown the river bank and fed alone all night, while his wife andneighbors were grubbing and splashing around in the marsh or swimmingin the river near their homes. The young Muskrats were rolling andtumbling in the moonlight and looking like furry brown balls. After itbegan to grow light, he sneaked back to his burrow.
Every day the men came in their high rubber boots to work, and every daythere were more ditches and the marsh was drier. By the time that theflowers had all ripened their seeds and the forest t
rees were bare, themarsh was changed to dry ground, and the Muskrats could find no waterthere to splash in. One night, and it was a very, very dark one, theycame together to talk about winter.
"It is time to begin our cold-weather houses," said one old Muskrat, "Ihave never started so soon, but we are to have an early winter."
"Yes, and a long one, too," added his wife, who said that Mr. Muskratnever told things quite strongly enough.
"It will be cold," said another Muskrat, "and we shall need to buildthick walls."
"Why?" asked a little Muskrat.
"Sh!" said his mother.
"The question is," said the old Muskrat who had first spoken, "where weshall build."
"Why?" asked the little Muskrat, pulling at his mother's tail.
"Sh-h!" said his mother.
"There is no water here except in the ditches," said the oldest Muskrat,"and of course we would not build beside them."
"Why not?" asked the little Muskrat. And this time he actually poked hismother in the side.
"Sh-h-h!" said she. "How many times must I speak to you? Don't you knowthat young Muskrats should be seen and not heard?"
"But I can't be seen," he whimpered. "It is so dark that I can't beseen, and you've just got to hear me."
Of course, after he had spoken in that way to his mother and interruptedall the others by his naughtiness, he had to be punished, so his mothersent him to bed. That is very hard for young Muskrats, for the night,you know, is the time when they have the most fun.
The older ones talked and talked about what they should do. They knew,as they always do know, just what sort of winter they were to have, andthat they must begin to build at once. Some years they had waited untila whole month later, but that was because they expected a late and mildwinter. At last the oldest Muskrat decided for them. "We will moveto-morrow night," said he. "We will go to the swamp on the other side ofthe forest and build our winter homes there."
All the Muskrats felt sad about going, and for a minute it was so stillthat you might almost have heard a milkweed seed break loose from thepod and float away. Then a gruff voice broke the silence. "I will notgo," it said. "I was born here and I will live here. I never have leftthis marsh and I never will leave it."
They could not see who was speaking, but they knew it was the Bachelor.The oldest Muskrat said afterward that he was so surprised you couldhave knocked him over with a blade of grass. Of course, you couldn'thave done it, because he was so fat and heavy, but that is what he said,and it shows just how he felt.
The other Muskrats talked and talked and talked with him, but it made nodifference. His brothers told him it was perfectly absurd for him tostay, that people would think it queer, and that he ought to go with therest of his relatives. Yet it made no difference. "You should stay," hewould reply. "Our family have always lived here."
When the Muskrat mothers told him how lonely he would be, and how hewould miss seeing the dear little ones frolic in the moonlight, heblinked and said: "Well, I shall just have to stand it." Then he sighed,and they went away saying to each other what a tender heart he had andwhat a pity it was that he had never married. One of them spoke asthough he had been in love with her some years before, but the othershad known nothing about it.
The Muskrat fathers told him that he would have no one to help him if aMink should pick a quarrel with him. "I can take care of myself then,"said he, and showed his strong gnawing teeth in a very fierce way.
It was only when the dainty young Muskrat daughters talked to him thathe began to wonder if he really ought to stay. He lay awake most of oneday thinking about it and remembering the sad look in their little eyeswhen they said that they should miss him. He was so disturbed that heate only three small roots during the next night. The poor old Bachelorhad a hard time then, but he was so used to having his own way and doingwhat he had started to do, and not giving up to anybody, that he stayedafter all.
The others went away and he began to build his winter house beside thebiggest ditch. He placed it among some bushes, so that if the water inthe ditch should ever overflow they would help hold his house in place.He built it with his mouth, bringing great mouthfuls of grass roots andrushes and dropping them on the middle of the heap. Sometimes theystayed there and sometimes they rolled down. If they rolled down henever brought them back, for he knew that they would be useful wherethey were. When it was done, the house was shaped like a pine cone withthe stem end down, for after he had made it as high as a tall milkweedhe finished off the long slope up which he had been running and made itlook like the other sides.
After that he began to burrow up into it from below. The right way todo, he knew, was to have his doorway under water and dive down to it.Other winters he had done this and had given the water a loud slap withhis tail as he dived. Now there was not enough water to dive into, andwhen he tried slapping on it his tail went through to the ditch bottomand got muddy. He had to fix the doorway as best he could, and then heate out enough of the inside of his house to make a good room and pokeda small hole through the roof to let in fresh air.
THE MARSH SEEMED SO EMPTY AND LONELY. _Page 127_]
After the house was done, he slept there during the days and prowledaround outside at night. He slept there, but ate none of the roots ofwhich it was made until the water in the ditch was frozen hard. He knewthat there would be a long, long time when he could not dig fresh rootsand must live on those.
At night the marsh seemed so empty and lonely that he hardly knew whatto do. He didn't enjoy his meals, and often complained to the Mice thatthe roots did not taste so good to him as those they used to have whenhe was young. He tried eating other things and found them no better.When there was bright moonlight, he sat upon the highest tussock hecould find and thought about his grandfathers and grandmothers. "If theyhad not eaten their houses," he once said to a Mouse, "this marsh wouldbe full of them."
"No it wouldn't," answered the Mouse, who didn't really mean tocontradict him, but thought him much mistaken. "If the houses hadn'tbeen eaten, they would have been blown down by the wind and beaten downby rains and washed away by floods. It is better so. Who wants things tostay the way they are forever and ever? I'd rather see the trees droptheir leaves once in a while and grow new ones than to wear the same oldones after they are ragged and faded."
The Bachelor Muskrat didn't like this very well, but he couldn't forgetit. When he awakened in the daytime he would think about it and at nighthe thought more. He was really very forlorn, and because he had nobodyelse to think about he thought too much of himself and began to believethat he was lame and sick. When he sat on a tussock and remembered allthe houses which his grandparents had built and eaten, he became verysad and sighed until his fat sides shook. He wished that he could sleepthrough the winter like the Ground Hog, or through part of it like theSkunk, but just as sure as night came his eyes popped open and there hewas--awake.
When spring came he thought of his friends who had gone to the swamp andhe knew that last year's children were marrying and digging burrows oftheir own. The poor old Bachelor wanted to go to them, yet he was soused to doing what he had said he would, and disliked so much to letanybody know that he was mistaken, that he chose to stay where he was,without water enough for diving and with hardly enough for swimming. Howit would have ended nobody knows, had the farmer not come to plough upthe old drained marsh for planting celery.
Then the Bachelor went. He reached his new home in the early morning,and the mothers let their children stay up until it was quite light sothat he might see them plainly. "Isn't it pleasant here?" they cried."Don't you like it better than the old place?"
"Oh, it does very well," he answered, "but you must remember that I onlymoved because I had to."
"Oh, yes, we understand that," said one of the mothers, "but we hope youwill really like it here."
Afterward her husband said to her, "Don't you know he was glad to come?What's the use of being so polite?"
"Poor old fellow,"
she answered. "He is so queer because he lives alone,and I'm sorry for him. Just see him eat."
And truly it was worth while to watch him, for the roots tasted sweet tohim, and, although he had not meant to be, he was very happy--farhappier than if he had had his own way.