Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/117

Rh on, and were a little bloody. Its paunch lay on the leaves, and contained much vegetable matter, old cranberry leaves, etc. Judging by the striae, it was not more than five or six years old (or four or five). Its fore-parts were quite alive, its hind legs apparently dead, its inwards gone, apparently its spine perfect. The flies had entered it in numbers. What creature had done this which it would be difficult for a man to do? I thought of a skunk, weasel, mink, but I do not believe they could have got their snouts into so small a space as that in front of the hind legs, between the shells. The hind legs themselves had not been injured, nor the shell scratched. I thought it likely that this was done by some bird of the heron kind which has a long and powerful bill. This may account for the many dead turtles which I have found, and thought died from disease. Such is Nature, who gave one creature a taste or yearning for another's entrails as its favorite tid-bit! I thought the more of a bird, for just as we were shoving away from this isle, I heard a sound just like, a small dog barking hoarsely, and looking up saw it was made by a bittern (Ardea minor), a pair of which were flapping over the meadows, and probably had a nest in some tussock thereabouts. No wonder the turtle is wary, for notwithstanding its horny shell, when it comes forth to lay its