Wood Folk at School | Page 5

two of them, you
remember; and though they looked alike at first glance, I soon found
out that there is just as much difference in fawns as there is in folks.
Eyes, faces, dispositions, characters,--in all things they were as unlike
as the virgins of the parable. One of them was wise, and the other was
very foolish. The one was a follower, a learner; he never forgot his
second lesson, to follow the white flag. The other followed from the
first only his own willful head and feet, and discovered too late that
obedience is life. Until the bear found him, I have no doubt he was
thinking, in his own dumb, foolish way, that obedience is only for the
weak and ignorant, and that government is only an unfair advantage
which all the wilderness mothers take to keep little wild things from
doing as they please.
The wise old mother took them both away when she knew I had found
them, and hid them in a deeper solitude of the big woods, nearer the
lake, where she could the sooner reach them from her feeding grounds.
For days after the wonderful discovery I used to go in the early
morning or the late afternoon, while mother deer are away feeding

along the watercourses, and search the dingle from one end to the other,
hoping to find the little ones again and win their confidence. But they
were not there; and I took to watching instead a family of mink that
lived in a den under a root, and a big owl that always slept in the same
hemlock. Then, one day when a flock of partridges led me out of the
wild berry bushes into a cool green island of the burned lands, I ran
plump upon the deer and her fawns lying all together under a fallen
treetop, dozing away the heat of the day.
They did not see me, but were only scared into action as a branch, upon
which I stood looking for my partridges, gave way beneath my feet and
let me down with a great crash under the fallen tree. There, looking out,
I could see them perfectly, while Kookooskoos himself could hardly
have seen me. At the first crack they all jumped like Jack-in-a-box
when you touch his spring. The mother put up her white flag--which is
the snowy underside of her useful tail, and shows like a beacon by day
or night--and bounded away with a hoarse Ka-a-a-a-h! of warning. One
of the little ones followed her on the instant, jumping squarely in his
mother's tracks, his own little white flag flying to guide any that might
come after him. But the second fawn ran off at a tangent, and stopped
in a moment to stare and whistle and stamp his tiny foot in an odd
mixture of curiosity and defiance. The mother had to circle back twice
before he followed her, at last, unwillingly. As she stole back each time,
her tail was down and wiggling nervously--which is the sure sign, when
you see it, that some scent of you is floating off through the woods and
telling its warning into the deer's keen nostrils. But when she jumped
away the white flag was straight up, flashing in the very face of her
foolish fawn, telling him as plain as any language what sign he must
follow if he would escape danger and avoid breaking his legs in the
tangled underbrush.
I did not understand till long afterwards, when I had watched the fawns
many times, how important is this latter suggestion. One who follows a
frightened deer and sees or hears him go bounding off at breakneck
pace over loose rocks and broken trees and tangled underbrush; rising
swift on one side of a windfall without knowing what lies on the other
side till he is already falling; driving like an arrow over ground where

you must follow like a snail, lest you wrench a foot or break an
ankle,--finds himself asking with unanswered wonder how any deer can
live half a season in the wilderness without breaking all his legs. And
when you run upon a deer at night and hear him go smashing off in the
darkness at the same reckless speed, over a tangled blow-down,
perhaps, through which you can barely force your way by daylight,
then you realize suddenly that the most wonderful part of a deer's
education shows itself, not in keen eyes or trumpet ears, or in his finely
trained nose, more sensitive a hundred times than any barometer, but in
his forgotten feet, which seem to have eyes and nerves and brains
packed into their hard shells instead of the senseless matter you see
there.
Watch the doe yonder as she bounds away, wigwagging