My Studio Neighbors | Page 2

of, not because of, his surroundings.
Here in my country studio--not a hermitage, 'tis true, but secluded
among trees, some distance isolated from my own home and out of
sight of any other--what company! What occasional "tumultuous
privacy" is mine! I have frequently been obliged to step out upon the
porch and request a modulation of hilarity and a more courteous respect
for my hospitality. But this is evidently entirely a matter of point of
view, and, judging from the effects of my protests at such times, my
assumed superior air of condescension is apparently construed as a
huge joke. If the resultant rejoinder of wild volapük and expressive
pantomime has any significance, it is plain that I am desired to
understand that my exact status is that of a squatter on contested
territory.
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!
The little red-headed chippy, the most familiar and sociable of our birds,
of course pays me his frequent visit, hopping in at the door and picking
up I don't know what upon the floor. A barn-swallow occasionally darts
in through the open window and out again at the door, as though for
very sport, only a few days since skimming beneath my nose, while its
wings fairly tipped the pen with which I was writing. The chipmonk
has long made himself at home, and his scratching footsteps on my
door-sill, or even in my closet, is a not uncommon episode. Now and
then through the day I hear a soft pat-pat on the hard-wood floor, at
intervals of a few seconds, and realize that my pet toad, which has
voluntarily taken up its abode in an old bowl on the closet floor, is
taking his afternoon outing, and with his always seemingly inconsistent
lightning tongue is picking up his casual flies at three inches sight
around the base-board.

A mouse, I see, has heaped a neat little pile of seeds upon the top of the
wainscot near by--cherry pits, polygonum, and ragweed seeds, and
others, including some small oak-galls, which I find have been
abstracted from a box of specimens which I had stored in the closet for
safe-keeping. I wonder if it is the same little fellow that built its nest in
an old shoe in the same closet last year, and, among other mischief,
removed the white grub in a similar lot of specimen galls which I also
missed, and subsequently found in the shoe and scattered on the closet
floor?
I have mentioned the murmur of the bees, but the incessant buzzing of
flies and wasps is an equally prominent sound. Then there is the
occasional sortie of the dragon-fly, making his gauzy, skimming circuit
about the room, or suggestively bobbing around against wall or ceiling;
and that occasional audible episode of the stifled, expiring buzz of a fly,
which is too plainly in the toils of Arachne up yonder! For in one
corner of my room I boast of a prize dusty "cobweb," as yet spared
from the household broom, a gossamer arena of two