Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1904-11-05
LIKE EMPTY HOUSES
New Tenants in Abandoned
Farms.
BIRDS AND ICE
RABBITS AND wooDCHUCKs IN
DESERTED PLACES, TOO.
A Fox With Family Of Four Made
Home in an Old
Barn.

Written for The Evening Star
Down here in New Hampshire one of the
first things to Impress a newcomer is the
great number of deserted homes and aban-
doned farms. If you were to ask how they
came to be abandoned you would find that
there were about as many answers as there
are deserted houses; each house has It's
own story, though in manyseases= this story
will never be told. Some were deserted be-
cause of the harshness of the parents;
others because of waywardness of children;
others still because the nggard soil would
not yield a living. Here you will find a
house whose last occupant committed sui
eide, and there is one 1 know of whose
owner was murdered years ago, and whose
body has not yet been found. But it Is an
i'll wind which blows good to no one. and
there are many who have profited by the
desertion of these old houses.
1 have visited many so-caIled deserted
farms since came down here, and almost
all of them have new tenants now-tenants
whose ancestors owned this country thou
sands of years before Columbus was a
baby.
these old places were the birds. There are
few of them indeed which cannot boast at
least pair of phoebes in the summer.
Occasionally these gentle little f1ycatchers
Will puilu Ofl projecting OF
woodwork under the caves perhaps, but
more often they go right inside through
broken window or some half-open door, and
build their home on the mantelpiece or
above window frame. Sometimes l find
them in the cellar one of the beams
and on such a site last summer l watched
a pair of phoebes rear two broods Of five
The chimney Swifts, too, were quick to
note that there were no fires in the Chin
neys of these houses, and were prompt to
take advantage Of the fact. All summer
long these stiff-looking birds were to be
seen, wheeling in wide circles over the old
farm lands, fitting bat-like above the
houses or. with wings raised over their
backs, dropping like plummets to their
sunless homes.
One day about two weeks ago was hid
ing in one of these deserted houses to
watch for deer. which often came into the
orchard for the fallen apples. Hearing a
slight noise behind me, / turned my head
slowly, and there was a chipmunk sitting
on the top Of an old wooden bin and look
ing straight at me. His cheek pouches
were full of what 1 afterward discovered
were apple seeds He sat watching me for
few minutes, and, as l didn't move. ran
to hole which had been gnawed in the
top of the bin and into it he whisked.
Presently he was out again, with the swell
ing gone from his face, and in a moment
he was scampering across the orchard,
where he sat down on a stone and began
biting a small apple to pieces to get at
the seeds
Had Snug Nest.
In another ancient dwelling-this was in
the Blue Mountain forest game preserved
CHANGED to open an old closet and found
upward of a dozen white-footed mice,
which popped out of a large and snug
nest made entirely of buffalo hair. have
seen or heard mice in many another of
these old buildings, and there are brown
rats in a few of them at least. l noticed
a pair of weasels emerge from one old cell
lar, and in the mud upon the floor of an
other there were the footprints of large
raccoon. In a cottage surrounded by wood
land / found the floors gnawed by the
teeth of porcupines The gnawing had been
done chiefly along the cracks between the
planking, possibly because here, more than
elsewhere, the boards were soaked with
salty grease, a delicacy much beloved by
porcupines Porcupines are so fond of salt
in any form that it is no uncommon thing
for them to ruin oars, paddles and other
implements by gnawing at those parts
which have been held in the hand, and in
which salt has been deposited from the per-
spiration.
Nothing to Fear.
But shyer creatures than these have
learned that there is no longer anything to
fear In these silent. weather-beaten build
ings. Rabbits and woodchucks frequent
them with impunity; the former usually
run out and the latter run in when any
one approaches.
But what surprised me most of all one
July evening was to see in what had once
been the barnyard of one of these old
farms a fox with four well-grown cubs.
came upon them suddenly, or l might have
enjoyed the sight at my leisure; as it was,
the old lady caught sight of me on the
instant and there was wild scramble for
the mouth of the den, good-sized hole
under the floor of the barn, where they
vanished in less time than IT takes to tell
of it. ERNEST HAROLD BAYNES.