My Studio Neighbors

There are those snickering squirrels, for instance! At this moment two of them are having a rollicking game of tag on the shingled roof--a pandemonium of scrambling, scratching, squealing, and growling--ever and anon clambering down at the eaves to the top of a blind and peeping in at the window to see how I like it. A woodchuck is perambulating my porch--he was a moment ago--presumably in renewed quest of that favorite pabulum more delectable than rowen clover, the splintered cribbings from the legs of a certain pine bench, which, up to date, he has lowered about three inches--a process in which he has considered average rather than symmetry, or the comfort of the too trusting visitor who happens to be unaware of his carpentry. The drone of bees and the carol of birds are naturally an incessant accompaniment to my toil--at least, in these spring and summer months. The tall, straight flue of the chimney, like the deep diapason of an organ, is softly murmurous with the flurry of the swifts in their afternoon or vesper flight. There is a robin's nest close by one window, a vireo's nest on a forked dogwood within touch of the porch, and continual reminders of similar snuggeries of indigo-bird, chat, and oriole within close limits, to say nothing of an ants' nest not far off, whose proximity is soon manifest as you sit in the grass--and immediately get up again. Fancy a wild fox for a daily entertainment! For several days in succession last year I spent a half-hour observing his frisky gambols on the hillside across the dingle below my porch, as he jumped apparently for mice in the sloping rowen-field. How quickly he responded to my slightest interruption of voice or footfall, running to the cover of the alders!