A Mountain Boyhood — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
A Mountain Boyhood
John Stuart Mill · en
Ten feet away upon a bowlder that rose above the rest of the rocks, sat
a small animal which at first I mistook for a young rabbit. In shape
and size he closely resembled a quarter-grown cottontail, but his ears
were different from any rabbit's, being short and round. His eyes were
beady; somehow he made me think of a rat. He ran down the rock and
climbed to another perch. Not even so much tail as a bunny--none at
all. In some respects he resembled a rabbit, a squirrel and a prairie
dog. His actions reminded me of all of them. In fact, he is sometimes
called "Rock Rabbit" and "Little Chief Hare." He may have other names
besides.
I watched the interesting little fellow for some time and later found
his actions characteristic of his tribe. He literally makes hay while
the summer shines. He is the only harvester I ever saw who works on
the run. He dashed at top speed, without stopping for breath, bit off
a mouthful of grass and again ran pell-mell for his growing stack. He
scampered down its side, then leaped from an adjacent rock to its top,
laden with his bundle of hay. Evidently he found the alpine summer
short and felt it necessary to step lively. Altitude, that convenient
scapegoat of tenderfeet, did not seem to affect his wind or his
endurance. He stacked his harvest in one corner of the field from
which he cut it. He cut flowers along with the grass. Perhaps he used
them for flavor as grandmother put rose-geranium leaves in her
crab-apple jelly. The haycock he built was about the size of a
bucket--I have since seen them as large as bushel baskets. His tiny
fields lay between bowlders; some of them were but a few inches square,
others a foot, several a yard, perhaps.
I was interested to learn if the little haycocks were blown away by the
timberline gales, so returned later, not really expecting to find them.
Nor were they in the same location, but their owners, not the wind, had
moved them. Evidently, as soon as the hay was cured, it was stored for
safe-keeping, usually beneath the overhang of a rock, away from the
wind.
I was then curious to see how the cony would transport his hay in
winter. Many of his under-rock passages would, at that season, be
filled with snow, forcing him to appear on the surface where the wind
was often strong enough to blow me over, to say nothing of what it
would do to the little midget in fur with a load of hay attached. He
met the storm situation easily. Whenever he exhausted one hayloft, he
moved his home to another. Thus he solved the transportation question
and gained a new home at the same time. Several times, upon digging
beneath the slide rock, I discovered cony dens, merely openings far
down between the jumbled rocks, beyond the reach of wind and weather.
They were of great variety, large, small, wide, narrow; all ready to
move into. They were the conies' castles, ready refuges from enemies,
their devious passages as effective as drawbridge or portcullis.