From all these enemies Tookhees has one refuge, the little arched
nest beyond the pretty doorway under the mossy stone. Most of
his enemies can dig, to be sure, but his tunnel winds about in
such a way that they never can tell from the looks of his doorway
where it leads to; and there are no snakes in the wilderness to
follow and find out. Occasionally I have seen where Mooween the
bear has turned the stone over and clawed the earth beneath; but
there is generally a tough root in the way, and Mooween concludes
that he is taking too much trouble for so small a mouthful, and
shuffles off to the log where the red ants live.

On his journeys through the woods Tookhees never forgets the
dangerous possibilities. His progress is a series of jerks, and
whisks, and jumps, and hidings. He leaves his doorway, after much
watching, and shoots like a minnow across the moss to an
upturned root. There he sits up and listens, rubbing his whiskers
nervously. Then he glides along the root for a couple of feet,
drops to the ground and disappears. He is hiding there under a
dead leaf. A moment of stillness and he jumps like a
jack-in-abox. Now he is sitting on the leaf that covered him,
rubbing his whiskers again, looking back over his trail as if he
heard footsteps behind him. Then another nervous dash, a squeak
which proclaims at once his escape. and his arrival, and he
vanishes under the old moss-grown log where his fellows live, a
whole colony of them.

All these things, and many more, I discovered the first season
that I began to study the wild things that lived within sight of
my tent. I had been making long excursions after bear and beaver,