MUSKRAT HOLE IN THE ICE? DEER AT THE BIRD BATH

Got slowed down this AM by watching four deer come up to the house to feed on our Yew bush.  Our yews are so ragged, we are appreciative for all the help trimming them!  

I knew we got the bird bath heater for a reason!

It was fun to see them, as the deer below were only about 5 feet from me! They stayed for about 15 minutes and then moved on.  -4º outside this AM, so they are welcome to whatever sustenance they can get from the yews.

 

 

On a different note, there has been a hole in the ice on the pond and I have wondered if it is a muskrat hole.  Haven't seen any brown furry critters there, but it seems logical.  Then Linda was reading H.D. Thoreau: A Writer's Journal, edited by Laurence Stapleton, and ran across the following:

"I saw a muskrat come out of a hole in the ice.  He is a man wilder than Ray or Melvin.  While I am looking at him, I am thinking what he is thinking of me. [I felt that way this morning as the deer was looking in the window at me!]  He is a different sort of a man, that is all.  He would dive when I went nearer, then reappear again, and had kept open a place five or six feet square so that it had not frozen, by swimming about in it.  Then he would sit on the edge of the ice and busy himself about something.  I could not see whether it was a clam or not.  What a cold-blooded fellow!  thoughts (sic) at a low temperature, sitting perfectly still so long on ice covered with water, mumbling a cold, wet clam in its shell.  What safe, low, moderate thoughts it must have!  It does not get on to stilts.  The generations of muskrats do not fail. They are not preserved by the legislature of Massachusetts."  ~Henry David Thoreau, Novemeber 25, 1846.

I wonder what Thoreau was thinking when he said, "What safe, low, moderate thoughts he must have".  What are low thoughts?  Moderate thoughts?  I wouldn't think he'd feel safe on the ice...  Perhaps HDT was even then comparing him to politicians? "It does not get on to stilts."  Interesting that so much of HDT's paragraph fits with today.  Somethings don't change, and unfortunately, it is not just nature!

A muskrat hole in the ice?