He cast anxious glances at his mate, but she showed no desire to get up.
He looked outside, and half a dozen snow-birds fluttered across his field
of vision. He started to get up, then looked back to his mate again, and
settled down and dozed. A shrill and minute singing stole upon his
heating. Once, and twice, he sleepily brushed his nose with his paw.
Then he woke up. There, buzzing in the air at the tip of his nose, was a
lone mosquito. It was a full-grown mosquito, one that had lain frozen in
a dry log all winter and that had now been thawed out by the sun. He
could resist the call of the world no longer. Besides, he was hungry.
He crawled over to his mate and tried to persuade her to get up. But she
only snarled at him, and he walked out alone into the bright sunshine to
find the snow-surface soft under foot and the travelling difficult. He
went up the frozen bed of the stream, where the snow, shaded by the
trees, was yet hard and crystalline. He was gone eight hours, and he
came back through the darkness hungrier than when he had started. He had
found game, but he had not caught it. He had broken through the melting
snow crust, and wallowed, while the snowshoe rabbits had skimmed along on
top lightly as ever.
He paused at the mouth of the cave with a sudden shock of suspicion.
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