Mikhail Prishvin. Stories for children about nature. M. Prishvin stories about nature, about animals for children read online The best stories about nature for children

Mikhail Prishvin "Spider web"

Suddenly I noticed: from side to side across the clearing, from left to right, some small fiery arrows constantly fly here and there. As always in such cases, I concentrated my attention on the arrows and soon noticed that the movement of the arrows was in the wind, from left to right.

I also noticed that on the trees their usual shoots-paws came out of their orange shirts and the wind blew away these unnecessary shirts from each tree in a great multitude: each new paw on the tree was born in an orange shirt, and now how many paws, so many shirts flew off - thousands, millions...

I could see how one of these flying shirts met with one of the flying arrows and suddenly hung in the air, and the arrow disappeared.

I realized then that the shirt was hanging on a cobweb invisible to me, and this gave me the opportunity to go point-blank to the cobweb and fully understand the phenomenon of arrows: the wind blows the cobweb to the sunbeam, the brilliant cobweb flares up from the light, and from this it seems as if the arrow is flying.

At the same time, I realized that there were a great many of these cobwebs stretched across the clearing, and, therefore, if I walked, I tore them, without knowing it, by the thousands.

It seemed to me that I had such an important goal - to learn in the forest to be its real master - that I had the right to tear all the cobwebs and make all the forest spiders work for my goal. But for some reason I spared this cobweb that I noticed: after all, it was she who, thanks to the shirt hanging on her, helped me unravel the phenomenon of arrows.

Was I cruel, tearing thousands of cobwebs?

Not at all: I did not see them - my cruelty was the result of my physical strength.

Was I merciful in bending my weary back to save the gossamer? I don’t think: in the forest I behave like a student, and if I could, I wouldn’t touch anything.

I attribute the salvation of this cobweb to the action of my concentrated attention.

Sergey Aksakov "Nest"

Noticing the nest of some bird, most often the dawn or redstart, we each time went to see how the mother sits on the eggs.

Sometimes, by negligence, we frightened her away from the nest, and then, carefully parting the thorny branches of barberry or gooseberry, we looked at how they were lying in the nest. small - small, speckled testicles.

It sometimes happened that the mother, bored with our curiosity, abandoned the nest; then we, seeing that for several days the bird was not in the nest and that it did not cry out and did not spin around us, as it always happened, we took out the testicles or the whole nest and took them to our room, believing that we were the legal owners of the dwelling left by the mother .

When the bird was safely incubating its testicles, despite our interference, and we suddenly found instead of them naked cubs, constantly gaping with a plaintive quiet squeak. huge mouths, they saw how their mother flew in and fed them flies and worms ... My God, what joy we had!

We never stopped watching how the little birds grew up, gave gifts and finally left their nest.

Konstantin Paustovsky "Gift"

Every time autumn approached, talk began that much in nature is not arranged the way we would like. Our winter is long, protracted, summer is much shorter than winter, and autumn passes instantly and leaves the impression of a golden bird flashing outside the window.

The grandson of the forester Vanya Malyavin, a boy of about fifteen, liked to listen to our conversations. He often came to our village from his grandfather's gatehouse from Lake Urzhensky and brought either a bag of porcini mushrooms, or a sieve of lingonberries, or he just ran to stay with us: listen to conversations and read the magazine "Around the World".

Thick, bound volumes of this magazine lay in the closet, along with oars, lanterns, and an old beehive. The hive was painted with white adhesive paint.

It fell off the dry wood in large pieces, and the wood smelled of old wax under the paint.

One day Vanya brought a small birch dug up by the roots.

He overlaid the roots with damp moss and wrapped in matting.

“This is for you,” he said, and blushed. - Present. Plant it in a wooden tub and put it in a warm room - it will be green all winter.

"Why did you dig it up, weirdo?" Reuben asked.

“You said that you feel sorry for the summer,” Vanya answered. “Grandfather made me think. “Run away, he says, to last year’s burnt area, there birch-two-year-old birch trees grow like grass, there is no passage from them. Dig it up and take it to Rum Isaevich (as my grandfather called Reuben). He worries about the summer, so he will have a summer memory for the icy winter. It is, of course, fun to look at a green leaf when the snow is falling like a sack in the yard.

- I'm not only about summer, I regret autumn even more, - said Reuben and touched the thin leaves of a birch.

We brought a box from the barn, filled it to the top with earth and transplanted a small birch into it.

The box was placed in the brightest and warmest room by the window, and a day later the drooping branches of the birch tree rose, all of it cheered up, and even its leaves were already rustling when a through wind rushed into the room and slammed the door in their hearts.

Autumn settled in the garden, but the leaves of our birch remained green and alive. The maples burned with a dark purple, the euonymus turned pink, the wild grapes dried up on the arbor.

Even in some places yellow strands appeared on the birches in the garden, like the first gray hair of a still young person.

But the birch in the room seemed to be growing younger. We did not notice any signs of wilting in her.

One night the first frost came. He breathed cold on the windows in the house, and they fogged up, sprinkled grainy frost on the roof, crunched underfoot.

Only the stars seemed to rejoice at the first frost and sparkled much brighter than on warm summer nights.

That night I woke up from a long and pleasant sound - a shepherd's horn sang in the dark. Outside the windows, the dawn was barely perceptible.

I got dressed and went out into the garden. The harsh air washed my face cold water The dream passed immediately.

Dawn broke out. The blue in the east was replaced by a crimson haze, like the smoke of a fire.

This haze brightened, became more and more transparent, through it the distant and tender countries of golden and pink clouds were already visible.

There was no wind, but the leaves kept falling and falling in the garden.

During that one night the birch trees turned yellow to the very tops, and the leaves fell from them in a frequent and sad rain.

I returned to the rooms: they were warm, sleepy.

In the pale light of dawn, a small birch stood in a tub, and I suddenly noticed that almost all of it had turned yellow that night, and several lemon leaves were already lying on the floor.

Vanya Malyavin, Reuben and all of us were upset. We have already gotten used to the idea that on winter snowy days the birch will turn green in rooms lit by the white sun and the crimson flame of cheerful stoves. The last memory of summer is gone.

A familiar forester chuckled when we told him about our attempt to save the green foliage on the birch.

“It's the law,” he said. - Law of nature. If the trees did not shed their leaves for the winter, they would die from many things - from the weight of snow that would grow on the leaves and break the thickest branches, and from the fact that by autumn many salts harmful to the tree would accumulate in the foliage, and, finally, from the fact that the leaves would continue to evaporate moisture even in the middle of winter, and the frozen earth would not give it to the roots of the tree, and the tree would inevitably die from the winter drought, from thirst.

And grandfather Mitriy, nicknamed "Ten Percent", having learned about this little story with a birch, interpreted it in his own way.

- You, my dear, - he said to Reuben, - live with mine, then argue. And then you argue with me all the time, but you can see that you still didn’t have enough time to think with your mind. We, the old ones, are more capable of thinking. We have little concern - so we figure out what is what on earth is hewn and what explanation it has. Take, say, this birch. Don't tell me about the forester, I know in advance everything he will say. The forester is a cunning man, when he lived in Moscow, they say, he cooked his own food on an electric current. Can it be or not?

“Maybe,” Reuben replied.

“Maybe, maybe!” his grandfather teased. - Did you see this electric current? How did you see him when he has no visibility, sort of like air? You hear about the birch. Is there friendship between people or not? That is what is. And people get carried away. They think that friendship is only given to them, they boast in front of every living being. And friendship is, brother, everywhere you look. What can I say, a cow is friends with a cow and a chaffinch with a chaffinch. Kill the crane, so the crane will wither away, cry, it will not find a place for itself. And every grass and tree, too, must have friendship sometimes. How can your birch not fly around when all its companions in the forests flew around? With what eyes will she look at them in the spring, what will she say when they suffered in the winter, and she warmed herself by the stove, warm, but full, and clean? You also need to have a conscience.

“Well, it’s you, grandfather, who turned it down,” said Reuben. “You don’t run into.

Grandpa giggled.

- Weak? he asked caustically. - Are you giving up? You don't start with me, it's useless.

Grandfather left, tapping with a stick, very pleased, confident that he had won all of us in this dispute and, along with us, the forester.

We planted the birch in the garden, under the fence, and collected its yellow leaves and dried them between the pages of Around the World.

Ivan Bunin "Birch Forest"

Behind the wheat, behind the birch, a silky birch bush, dark green, appeared.

The place here is steppe, flat, it seems very deaf: you see nothing but the sky and endless bushes when you enter Lanskoe.

Everywhere the land was lushly overgrown, and even here it was an impassable thicket.

Herbs - to the waist; where the bushes - do not mow.

To the waist and flowers. From flowers - white, blue, pink, yellow - ripples in the eyes. Entire glades are flooded with them, so beautiful that they grow only in birch forests.

Clouds gathered, the wind carried the songs of larks, but they were lost in the constant, running rustle and noise.

Barely outlined among the bushes and stumps stalled road.

It smelled sweet of strawberries, bitter - of strawberries, birch, wormwood.

Anton Chekhov "Evening in the Steppe"

On July evenings and nights, the quails and corncrakes no longer sing, the nightingales no longer sing in the forest ravines, there is no smell of flowers, but the steppe is still beautiful and full of life. As soon as the sun sets and the earth is enveloped in darkness, the daytime anguish is forgotten, everything is forgiven, and the steppe sighs easily with a wide chest. As if from the fact that the grass is not visible in the darkness of its old age, a cheerful, young chatter rises in it, which does not happen during the day; crackling, whistling, scratching, steppe basses, tenors and trebles - everything mixes into a continuous, monotonous rumble, under which it is good to remember and be sad. The monotonous chatter lulls like a lullaby; you drive and feel that you are falling asleep, but then from somewhere comes the abrupt, alarming cry of a bird that has not fallen asleep, or an indefinite sound is heard, similar to someone’s voice, like a surprised “ah!”, and drowsiness lowers the eyelids. And then, it happened, you go past a ravine where there are bushes, and you hear how a bird, which the steppe people call spit, shouts to someone: “I’m sleeping! I'm sleeping! I’m sleeping! ”, And the other laughs or bursts into hysterical crying - this is an owl. For whom they cry and who listens to them on this plain, God knows them, but their cry contains a lot of sadness and lamentation... It smells of hay, dried grass and belated flowers, but the smell is thick, sweetly cloying and tender.

Everything is visible through the darkness, but it is difficult to make out the color and outlines of objects. Everything does not seem to be what it is. You are driving and suddenly you see, in front of the road itself, there is a silhouette that looks like a monk; he doesn't move, he waits and holds something in his hands... Isn't this a robber? The figure is approaching, growing, now it has caught up with the cart, and you see that this is not a person, but a lonely bush or a large stone. Such immovable figures, waiting for someone, stand on the hills, hide behind mounds, look out from the weeds, and they all look like people and inspire suspicion.

And when the moon rises, the night becomes pale and languid. The fog was gone. The air is transparent, fresh and warm, everywhere you can clearly see and you can even make out individual stalks of weeds by the road. Skulls and stones are visible in the distance. Suspicious figures, similar to monks, against the light background of the night seem blacker and look more gloomy. More and more often, among the monotonous chatter, disturbing the still air, someone’s surprised “ah!” and the cry of a sleepless or raving bird is heard. Wide shadows walk across the plain, like clouds across the sky, and in an incomprehensible distance, if you peer into it for a long time, foggy, bizarre images rise and pile on top of each other ... A little creepy. And you look at the pale green, star-studded sky, on which there is not a cloud, not a spot, and you will understand why the warm air is motionless, why nature is on the alert and afraid to move: it is terribly and sorry to lose even one moment of life. The immense depth and boundlessness of the sky can only be judged at sea and in the steppe at night when the moon is shining. It is scary, beautiful and affectionate, it looks languidly and beckons to itself, and its head is spinning from its caress. You drive for an hour or two... You come across a silent old mound or a stone woman, set up by God knows who and when, a night bird silently flies over the earth, and little by little steppe legends, stories of passers-by, fairy tales of a steppe nanny and all come to mind. what he himself was able to see and comprehend with his soul. And then in the chatter of insects, in suspicious figures and mounds, in the blue sky, in the moonlight, in the flight of a night bird, in everything you see and hear, the triumph of beauty, youth, the flowering of strength and a passionate thirst for life begin to seem; the soul gives a response to the beautiful, harsh homeland, and I want to fly over the steppe together with nocturnal bird. And in the triumph of beauty, in excess of happiness, you feel tension and anguish, as if the steppe realizes that it is lonely, that its wealth and inspiration perish for nothing for the world, praised by no one and no one needs, and through the joyful roar you hear its dreary, hopeless call : singer! singer!

Ivan Turgenev "Kasyan with a Beautiful Sword"

Excerpt. From the cycle "Notes of a hunter"

The weather was beautiful, even more beautiful than before; but the heat did not subside. Across the clear sky, high and sparse clouds barely rushed, yellow-white, like late spring snow, flat and oblong, like lowered sails. Their patterned edges, fluffy and light, like cotton paper, slowly but visibly changed with every moment; they melted, these clouds, and no shadow fell from them.

We wandered around with Kasyan for a long time. Young offspring, which had not yet managed to stretch out above a arshin, surrounded blackened, low stumps with their thin, smooth stems; round spongy growths with gray borders, the very growths from which tinder is boiled, clung to these stumps; strawberries let their pink tendrils run over them; mushrooms immediately sat closely in families. Feet constantly tangled and clung to the long grass, satiated with the hot sun; everywhere there were ripples in the eyes from the sharp metallic sparkle of young, reddish leaves on the trees; blue clusters of crane peas, golden cups of night blindness, half purple, half yellow flowers of Ivan da Marya were full of flowers everywhere; in some places, near the abandoned paths, on which the tracks of the wheels were marked by stripes of red fine grass, heaps of firewood towered, darkened from the wind and rain, stacked in sazhens; a faint shadow fell from them in oblique quadrangles—there was no other shadow anywhere.

A light breeze either woke up or subsided: it suddenly blows right in your face and seems to play out - everything makes a merry noise, nods and moves around, the flexible ends of the ferns gracefully sway - you will be delighted with it ... but now it froze again, and everything again quieted down.

Some grasshoppers crackle in unison, as if embittered - and this incessant, sour and dry sound is tiring.

He goes to the relentless heat of noon; it is as if he was born by him, as if called by him from the hot earth.

Konstantin Ushinsky "Mountain Country"

Living in the middle of Russia, we cannot form a clear idea of what a mountainous country is.

Our low, gently sloping hills, which you drive up almost without noticing them, rising a lot to a hundred or a hundred and fifty fathoms, and along the slopes of which we see all the same fields, forests, groves, villages and villages, of course, bear little resemblance to high mountains, the tops of which are covered with eternal snow and ice and, rising three, four versts upwards, go far beyond the clouds. In the plain you travel a hundred, two hundred versts, everywhere meeting the same species, the same vegetation, the same way of life.

Not so in the mountains. How much variety is even one big mountain, if you climb it along the roads laid in the valleys, and then along the dangerous mountain paths that meander along its ledges. It seems warm and even hot to you when you stand at the foot of the mountain: summer is all around, gardens with ripening fruits and fields with already ripened bread; but stock up on warm clothes if you think to get to the top, because full winter will meet you there - snow, ice, cold - and in the middle of summer you can easily freeze your hands and feet. Stock up also on strong boots with strong soles so that they do not wear out on stones, a strong stick with an iron tip and provisions; but the main thing is to stock up on strength and patience, because you will have to tirelessly work with your feet for a whole day, and maybe two. Although the top of the mountain rises only three or four versts, it is still considered a plumb line, and to get to the top you will have to make fifteen or twenty versts of the most difficult path along steep ledges.

Stock up on courage as well, so that you don’t feel dizzy when, having climbed onto another ledge, look down.

But above all, take an experienced guide, because without him you can easily get lost between the rocky peaks of the mountain, in its dark forests, between the countless streams and rivers that roll down from its sides, in its snowy fields and glaciers. Sometimes, perhaps, you can climb such a peak and go into such wilderness, into the middle of impregnable ledges or to the edge of a gaping abyss, that you will not know how to get out.

You need to know the mountain paths well in order to set off in the mountains.

Climbing a high, sky-high mountain is a lot of work; but this work pays off with pleasure. How many diverse vegetation you will meet from the sole to the top! How much diversity in the way of life of people! If the mountain you are climbing lies in a warm climate, then at the bottom of it you will leave lemon and orange groves, higher up you will meet trees of temperate countries: poplar, beech, chestnut, linden, maple, oak; further on you will find gloomy coniferous forests and deciduous trees of the North: aspen, birch. Even higher - and the trees are already disappearing, there are even very few flowers and grass - only the alpine rose will accompany you to the very border of eternal snows, and the skinny moss will remind you of the polar countries, where it is almost the only food. reindeer. Higher. - and you will enter the country of eternal snows, although, perhaps, you are several thousand miles from the polar sea.

Down below you have left the noisy, bustling cities; rising higher, they met pretty villages, still surrounded by cultivated fields and fertile gardens; further you will not meet any fields or gardens, but only fat meadows in mountain valleys and admire the beautiful herds; small shepherd villages are leaning against the mountains, so that some houses are molded against the rock, like a bird's nest; on the roofs of the houses, large stones were laid in rows; without this precaution, a storm roaring on the mountains could easily have blown the roof off. Further, you will still find here and there separate huts of mountain dwellers: these are the summer dwellings of the shepherds, left in the winter. Juicy, beautiful grass attracts herds here in summer.

Even higher - and you will no longer meet human dwellings. Tenacious domestic goats are still clinging to the ledges; but a little further and you will come across, perhaps, only small herds of light-footed wild chamois and bloodthirsty eagles; and then you will enter a country where there is neither plant nor animal life.

How good and talkative are the mountain streams, how clear and cold the water is in them! They originate in glaciers and are formed from melting ice, they begin in small, barely noticeable trickles; but then these trickles will gather together - and a noisy fast stream, now wriggling like a silver ribbon, now jumping from ledge to ledge like a waterfall, now hiding in a dark gorge and reappearing into the world, now murmuring over stones, will roll down boldly and quickly until it reaches to a more sloping valley, in the middle of which a calm and decent river will run.

If the storm does not roar in the mountains, then the higher you climb, the quieter the surroundings will be. At the very top, among the eternal snows and ices, where the sun's rays, reflected from the snowy fields, blind the eyes, dead silence reigns; unless a stone moved by your foot will make noise and knock on the whole neighborhood.

But suddenly there is a terrible and prolonged roar, repeated by a mountain echo; it seems to you that the mountain is trembling under your feet, and you ask the guide: “What is this?” - “This is an avalanche,” he answers you calmly: a large mass of snow fell off the top and, carrying stones with it, and lower - trees, herds, people and even shepherds' houses, rushed down the mountain ledges. God grant that it does not collapse on some village and bury its houses and inhabitants under it.

Avalanches most often roll down from the mountains in the spring, because the snow that has attacked in the winter melts.

But if, having overcome all these difficulties and fears, you finally get to a high mountain square, where the guide advises you to sit on the stones, have breakfast and rest, you will be quite rewarded.

Although it is quite cold here, and every slightest movement tires you, your heart beats fast and your breathing is accelerated, but somehow you feel light and pleasant, and you fully enjoy the majestic picture.

Around you are rocks, snowy glades and glaciers; abysses and gorges are visible everywhere, the peaks of other mountains rise in the distance, now dark, now purple, now pink, now shimmering with silver; and below, for sixty versts, a green, flowering valley opens up, cutting far into the mountains; rivers meandering along it, shining lakes, cities and villages as if in the palm of your hand.

Large herds seem to you like moving dots, and you don’t see people at all. But now, under your feet, everything began to be covered with fog: it was the clouds that were gathering around the mountain; a bright sun shines above you, and below from this fog it may be pouring rain...

Leo Tolstoy "What is the dew on the grass"

When you go to the forest on a sunny summer morning, you can see diamonds in the fields, in the grass. All these diamonds shine and shimmer in the sun different colors- and yellow, and red, and blue.

When you come closer and see what it is, you will see that these are drops of dew gathered in triangular leaves of grass and glisten in the sun.

The leaf of this grass inside is shaggy and fluffy, like velvet. And the drops roll on the leaf and do not wet it.

When you inadvertently pick off a leaf with a dewdrop, the drop will roll down like a ball of light, and you will not see how it slips past the stem.

It used to be that you tear off such a cup, slowly bring it to your mouth and drink a dewdrop, and this dewdrop seems to be tastier than any drink.

Konstantin Paustovsky "Collection of Miracles"

Everyone, even the most serious person, not to mention, of course, boys, has his own secret and slightly funny dream. I also had such a dream - be sure to get to Borovoye Lake.

It was only twenty kilometers from the village where I lived that summer to the lake.

Everyone tried to dissuade me from going - and the road was boring, and the lake was like a lake, all around there was only forest, dry swamps and lingonberries.

Famous painting!

- Why are you rushing there, to this lake! the garden watchman Semyon was angry. - What didn't you see? What a fussy, grasping people went, Lord! Everything he needs, you see, he has to snatch with his hand, look out with his own eye! What will you see there? One reservoir. And nothing more!

— Have you been there?

- And why did he surrender to me, this lake! I don't have anything else to do, do I? That's where they sit, all my business! Semyon tapped his brown neck with his fist. - On the hump!

But I still went to the lake. Two village boys, Lyonka and Vanya, followed me. Before we had time to go beyond the outskirts, the complete hostility of the characters of Lenka and Vanya was immediately revealed. Lyonka estimated everything that he saw around in rubles.

“Here, look,” he said to me in his booming voice, “the gander is coming.” How much do you think he pulls?

- How do I know!

- Rubles for a hundred, perhaps, it pulls, - Lyonka said dreamily and immediately asked: - But how much will this pine tree pull? Rubles for two hundred? Or all three hundred?

— Accountant! Vanya remarked contemptuously and sniffled. - At the very brains of a dime are pulled, but he asks the price of everything. My eyes would not look at him.

After that, Lyonka and Vanya stopped, and I heard a well-known conversation - a harbinger of a fight. It consisted, as is customary, of only questions and exclamations.

- Whose brains are they pulling on a dime? My?

- Probably not mine!

— You look!

— See for yourself!

- Don't grab it! They did not sew a cap for you!

“Oh, how I wouldn’t push you in my own way!”

- Don't be scared! Don't poke me in the nose!

The fight was short but decisive.

Lyonka picked up his cap, spat, and went, offended, back to the village. I began to shame Vanya.

- Of course! Vanya said, embarrassed. - I got into a heated fight. Everyone fights with him, with Lyonka. He's kinda boring! Give him free rein, he hangs prices on everything, like in a general store. For every spike. And he will certainly bring down the whole forest, chop it for firewood. And I am most afraid of everything in the world when they bring down the forest. Passion as I fear!

- Why so?

— Oxygen from forests. Forests will be cut down, oxygen will become liquid, rotten. And the earth will no longer be able to attract him, to keep him near him. He will fly away to where he is! Vanya pointed to the fresh morning sky. - There will be nothing for a person to breathe. The forester explained to me.

We climbed the izvolok and entered the oak copse. Immediately, red ants began to seize us. They clung to the legs and fell from the branches by the scruff of the neck.

Dozens of ant roads strewn with sand stretched between oaks and junipers. Sometimes such a road passed, as if through a tunnel, under the knotty roots of an oak tree and again rose to the surface. Ant traffic on these roads was continuous.

In one direction, the ants ran empty, and returned with the goods - white grains, dry paws of beetles, dead wasps and hairy caterpillars.

- Bustle! Vanya said. — Like in Moscow. An old man from Moscow comes to this forest for ant eggs. Every year. Takes away in bags. This is the most bird food. And they are good for fishing. The hook needs to be tiny-tiddly!

Behind the oak copse, on the edge, at the edge of the loose sandy road, stood a lopsided cross with a black tin icon. Red, flecked with white, ladybugs crawled along the cross.

A gentle wind blew in your face from the oat fields. Oats rustled, bent, a gray wave ran over them.

Behind the oat field we passed through the village of Polkovo. I noticed a long time ago that almost all regimental peasants differ from the neighboring inhabitants by their high growth.

- Stately people in Polkovo! our Zaborevskys said with envy. — Grenadiers! Drummers!

In Polkovo, we went to rest in the hut of Vasily Lyalin, a tall, handsome old man with a piebald beard. Gray tufts stuck out in disorder in his black shaggy hair.

When we entered the hut to Lyalin, he shouted:

- Keep your heads down! Heads! All of my forehead on the lintel smash! It hurts in Polkovo tall people, but slow-witted - the huts are put on a short stature.

During the conversation with Lyalin, I finally found out why the regimental peasants were so tall.

- Story! Lyalin said. "Do you think we've gone up in the air for nothing?" In vain, even the Kuzka-bug does not live. It also has its purpose.

Vanya laughed.

- You're laughing! Lyalin observed sternly. — Not enough learned yet to laugh. You listen. Was there such a foolish tsar in Russia - Emperor Pavel? Or was not?

“I was,” Vanya said. - We studied.

— Yes, he swam. Adelov made such that we still hiccup. The gentleman was fierce. The soldier at the parade squinted his eyes in the wrong direction - he is now inflamed and begins to thunder: “To Siberia! To hard labor! Three hundred ramrods!” That's what the king was like! Well, such a thing happened - the grenadier regiment did not please him. He shouts: “Step march in the indicated direction for a thousand miles! Campaign! And after a thousand versts to stand forever! And he shows the direction with his finger. Well, the regiment, of course, turned and marched. What will you do! We walked and walked for three months and reached this place. Around the forest is impassable. One hell. They stopped, began to cut huts, knead clay, lay stoves, dig wells. They built a village and called it Polkovo, as a sign that a whole regiment built it and lived in it. Then, of course, liberation came, and the soldiers settled down to this area, and, read it, everyone stayed here. The area, you see, is fertile. There were those soldiers - grenadiers and giants - our ancestors. From them and our growth. If you don't believe me, go to the city, to the museum. They will show you the papers. Everything is written in them. And just think, if they had to walk another two versts and come out to the river, they would have stopped there. So no, they did not dare to disobey the order - they just stopped. People are still surprised. “What are you, they say, regimental, staring into the forest? Didn't you have a place by the river? Terrible, they say, tall, but guesswork in the head, you see, is not enough. Well, explain to them how it was, then they agree. “Against the order, they say, you can’t trample! It is a fact!"

Vasily Lyalin volunteered to accompany us to the forest, show the path to Borovoye Lake. First we passed through a sandy field overgrown with immortelle and wormwood. Then thickets of young pines ran out to meet us. The pine forest met us after the hot fields with silence and coolness. High in the sun's slanting rays, blue jays fluttered as if on fire. Clean puddles stood on the overgrown road, and clouds floated through these blue puddles. It smelled of strawberries, heated stumps. Drops of dew, or yesterday's rain, glittered on the hazel leaves. The cones were falling.

— great forest! Lyalin sighed. - The wind will blow, and these pines will hum like bells.

Then the pines gave way to birch trees, and water glistened behind them.

— Borovoye? I asked.

- No. Before Borovoye still walk and walk. This is Larino Lake. Let's go, look into the water, look.

The water in Larino Lake was deep and clear to the very bottom. Only near the shore did she tremble a little - there, from under the mosses, a spring poured into the lake. At the bottom lay several dark large trunks. They gleamed with a faint, dark fire as the sun reached them.

“Black oak,” said Lyalin. - Seared, age-old. We pulled one out, but it's hard to work with it. The saw breaks. But if you make a thing - a rolling pin or, say, a rocker - so forever! Heavy wood, sinks in water.

The sun shone in the dark water. Beneath it lay ancient oak trees, as if cast from black steel. And above the water, reflected in it with yellow and purple petals, butterflies flew.

Lyalin led us to a deaf road.

“Go straight ahead,” he pointed, “until you run into msharas, into a dry swamp.” And the path will go along the msharams to the very lake. Just go carefully - there are a lot of pegs.

He said goodbye and left. We went with Vanya along the forest road. The forest grew taller, more mysterious and darker. Gold resin froze in streams on the pines.

At first, the ruts were still visible, long overgrown with grass, but then they disappeared, and the pink heather covered the whole road with a dry, cheerful carpet.

The road led us to a low cliff. Msharas spread out under it - thick birch and aspen undergrowth warmed to the roots. Trees sprouted from deep moss. Small yellow flowers were scattered here and there over the moss, and dry branches with white lichen were lying about.

A narrow path led through the mshary. She walked around high bumps.

At the end of the path, the water shone with a black blue — Borovoye Lake.

We cautiously walked along the msharams. Pegs, sharp as spears, stuck out from under the moss—the remains of birch and aspen trunks. The lingonberry bushes have begun. One cheek of each berry - the one that turned to the south - was completely red, and the other was just beginning to turn pink.

A heavy capercaillie jumped out from behind a bump and ran into the undergrowth, breaking dry wood.

We went to the lake. Grass rose above the waist along its banks. Water splashed in the roots of old trees. A wild duck jumped out from under the roots and ran across the water with a desperate squeak.

The water in Borovoye was black and clean. Islands of white lilies bloomed on the water and smelled sickly. The fish struck and the lilies swayed.

- That's a blessing! Vanya said. Let's live here until our crackers run out.

I agreed. We stayed at the lake for two days. We saw sunsets and twilight and the tangle of plants that appeared before us in the firelight. We heard the calls of wild geese and the sound of night rain.

He walked for a short time, about an hour, and tinkled softly across the lake, as if stretching thin, like cobweb, trembling strings between the black sky and the water.

That's all I wanted to tell.

But since then, I will not believe anyone that there are places on our earth that are boring and do not give any food to either the eye, or hearing, or imagination, or human thought.

Only in this way, exploring some piece of our country, you can understand how good it is and how we are attached with our hearts to each of its paths, springs, and even to the timid squeaking of a forest bird.

We present to your attention a selection of children's stories about nature and animals by the author Mikhail Prishvin. These stories can be read by parents to children of 3-4 years old, and are also well suited for mastering the technique of reading for children of 6-8 years old.

Prishvin's short stories for children are written in simple language, understandable even to kindergarteners. Such stories are very informative for children, and also instill a love of nature.

Chanterelle bread

Once I walked in the forest all day and returned home in the evening with rich booty. He took off his heavy bag from his shoulders and began to spread his belongings on the table.

- What kind of bird is this? Zinochka asked.

“Terenty,” I replied.

And he told her about the black grouse: how he lives in the forest, how he mumbles in the spring, how he pecks at birch buds, picks berries in the swamps in autumn, warms himself from the wind under the snow in winter. He also told her about the hazel grouse, showed her that he was grey, with a tuft, and whistled into a pipe in a hazel grouse and let her whistle. I also poured a lot of white mushrooms on the table, both red and black. I also had a bloody boneberry in my pocket, and blueberries, and red lingonberries. I also brought with me a fragrant lump of pine resin, gave the girl a sniff and said that trees are treated with this resin.

Who is treating them there? Zinochka asked.

“They are curing themselves,” I replied. - It happens that a hunter will come, he wants to rest, he will stick an ax into a tree and hang a bag on an ax, and he will lie down under a tree. Sleep, rest. He will take out an ax from a tree, put on a bag, and leave. And from the wound from the ax made of wood, this fragrant tar will run and this wound will be tightened.

Also on purpose for Zinochka, I brought various wonderful herbs by leaf, by root, by flower: cuckoo's tears, valerian, Peter's cross, hare cabbage. And just under the hare cabbage I had a piece of black bread: it always happens to me that when I don’t take bread to the forest, I’m hungry, but I take it, I forget to eat it and bring it back. And Zinochka, when she saw black bread under my hare cabbage, was stunned:

- Where did the bread come from in the forest?

- What's so amazing about that? After all, there is cabbage there!

- Hare...

- And the bread is chanterelle. Taste. Carefully tasted and began to eat:

“Good fox bread!”

And ate all my black bread clean. And so it went with us: Zinochka, such a copula, often doesn’t even take white bread, but when I bring fox bread from the forest, she always eats it all and praises:

- Chanterelle's bread is much better than ours!

golden meadow

My brother and I, when dandelions ripen, had constant fun with them. It used to be that we went somewhere to our trade - he was in front, I was in the heel.

Seryozha! - I will call him in a businesslike manner. He'll look back, and I'll blow a dandelion right in his face. For this, he begins to watch for me and, as you gape, he also fuknet. And so we plucked these uninteresting flowers just for fun. But once I managed to make a discovery.

We lived in the village, in front of the window we had a meadow, all golden from many blooming dandelions. It was very beautiful. Everyone said: Very beautiful! The meadow is golden.

One day I got up early to fish and noticed that the meadow was not golden, but green. When I returned home around noon, the meadow was again all golden. I began to observe. By evening the meadow turned green again. Then I went and found a dandelion, and it turned out that he squeezed his petals, as if your fingers were yellow on the side of your palm and, clenched into a fist, we would close the yellow. In the morning, when the sun rose, I saw dandelions open their palms, and from this the meadow became golden again.

Since then, the dandelion has become one of the most interesting flowers for us, because dandelions went to bed with us children and got up with us.

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squirrel memory

Today, looking at the tracks of animals and birds in the snow, this is what I read from these tracks: a squirrel made its way through the snow into the moss, took out two nuts hidden there since autumn, ate them right away - I found the shells. Then she ran a dozen meters, dived again, again left the shell on the snow and after a few meters she made the third climb.

What a miracle You can't think that she could smell a nut through a thick layer of snow and ice. So, since the fall, she remembered her nuts and the exact distance between them.

But the most surprising thing is that she could not measure centimeters, as we do, but right on the eye with accuracy determined, dived and pulled out. Well, how could one not envy the squirrel's memory and ingenuity!

Belyak

Direct wet snow pressed down on the branches all night in the forest, broke off, fell, rustled.

A rustle drove the white hare out of the forest, and he probably realized that by morning the black field would turn white and that he, completely white, could lie quietly. And he lay down in a field not far from the forest, and not far from him, also like a hare, lay the skull of a horse, weathered over the summer and whitewashed by the sun's rays.

By dawn, the whole field was covered, and in the white immensity disappeared and white hare and a white skull.

We were a little late, and when the hound was released, the tracks had already begun to blur.

When Osman began to sort out the fat, it was still difficult to distinguish the shape of a hare paw from a hare: he walked along a hare. But before Osman had time to straighten the track, everything completely melted on the white path, and then there was no sight or smell left on the black one.

We gave up on hunting and began to return home at the edge of the forest.

“Look through binoculars,” I said to my friend, “that it is whitening there on a black field and so bright.

“Horse skull, head,” he replied.

I took the binoculars from him and also saw the skull.

“Something is still whitening there,” said the comrade, “look to the left.”

I looked there, and there, too, like a skull, bright white, lay a hare, and through prismatic binoculars one could even see black eyes on the white. He was in a desperate situation: to lie down was to be visible to everyone, to run was to leave a printed mark on the soft wet ground for the dog. We stopped his hesitation: we raised him, and at the same moment, Osman, having seen, with a wild roar, set off on the sighted man.

Butterfly hunting

Zhulka, my young marble-blue hunting dog, rushes like crazy after birds, after butterflies, even after large flies until her hot breath throws her tongue out of her mouth. But that doesn't stop her either.

Here's a story that was in front of everyone.

The yellow cabbage butterfly attracted attention. Giselle rushed after her, jumped and missed. The butterfly moved on. Zhulka behind her - hap! Butterfly, at least something: flies, moths, as if laughing.

Hap! - past. Hup, hop! - past and past.

Hap, hap, hap - and there are no butterflies in the air.

Where is our butterfly? There was excitement among the children. "Ahah!" - was just heard.

Butterflies are not in the air, cabbage has disappeared. Giselle herself stands motionless, like wax, turning her head up, down, then sideways in surprise.

Where is our butterfly?

At this time, hot vapors began to press inside Zhulka's mouth - after all, dogs do not have sweat glands. The mouth opened, the tongue fell out, the steam escaped, and together with the steam a butterfly flew out and, as if nothing had happened to it at all, it was winding itself over the meadow.

Zhulka was so exhausted with this butterfly, before, probably, it was difficult for her to hold her breath with a butterfly in her mouth, that now, seeing the butterfly, she suddenly gave up. With her long, pink tongue hanging out, she stood and looked at the flying butterfly with her eyes, which at once became small and stupid.

Children pestered us with the question:

“Well, why don’t dogs have sweat glands?”

We didn't know what to tell them.

Schoolboy Vasya Veselkin answered them:

- If dogs had glands and they didn’t have to hahat, they would have caught and ate all the butterflies long ago.

grouse

Three forest birds, very closely related to each other, behave very differently when they are approached. protected forests a man approaches with his fields. The capercaillie, like an Old Believer, does not tolerate the proximity of a person, goes further and further into the wilderness. It can be saved from extinction on earth only by the protection of reserves. The black grouse, on the contrary, fits in so well with the human economy that it turns from a forest forest into a field and grazes in rye, oats, and buckwheat. And the hazel grouse hides, remaining on former places, and, without compromising anything, does not go anywhere, but does not take anything from the fields either. And even if not dense forests, but only bushes remain, he will hide in a shallow forest that you can’t take him in any way. It very rarely happens that the hazel grouse will withstand the dog's stance and allow the hunter to come up for a shot. Usually a dog leads, leads, and suddenly somewhere in the bushes: “pr. pr. pr! - flutter. Not far away, it will fly off, stretch out somewhere along a knot in a thick Christmas tree, and you won’t notice it at all, but it looks at you, waits, and when you get very close, again its “pr. pr. pr! you only hear.

The hazel grouse remains a purely forest bird, like the capercaillie; where there are capercaillie, hazel grouses are usually also found, although it cannot be said in reverse: there are often many hazel grouses, and capercaillie have long migrated to more remote forests.

Once we went to capercaillie broods. The dog soon picked up the trail and led the way. We followed her for a long time. When she stopped, they went around the bush from different sides, so that the bird would appear to the wrong person, so that it would be possible to shoot at it. In the dense forest, in dense junipers and tussocks, agitated by every rustle, calling to each other quietly in order to know where our comrade was and not to shoot in his direction, we soon became exhausted. The dog, however, suddenly, throwing away the eyeliner, began to rush in different directions, asking the forest in every way where the birds had disappeared. And we also thought about the capercaillie, that, probably, the cattle climbed here and frightened, or maybe a hawk looked at them from above in the clearing, rushed, dispersed and only traces remained, along which we wandered in vain. This is how we thought about capercaillie, and these were hazel grouses. Hearing our approach far away, they fluttered onto the fir trees and, when we walked down the tracks, mistaking them for capercaillie, looked at us from above all the time.

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Chanterelle bread

Once I walked through the forest all day and returned home in the evening with rich booty. I took off my heavy bag from my shoulders and began to spread my goods on the table.

- What kind of bird is this? Zinochka asked.

"Terenty," I replied.

I also had a bloody stoneberry in my pocket, and blueberries, and red lingonberries. I also brought with me a fragrant lump of pine resin, gave the girl a sniff and said that trees are treated with this resin.

Who is treating them there? Zinochka asked.

“They are curing themselves,” I replied. - Sometimes a hunter comes, he wants to rest, he will stick an ax into a tree and hang a bag on an ax, and he will lie down under a tree. Sleep, rest. He takes out an ax from a tree, puts on a bag, leaves. And from the wound from the ax made of wood, this fragrant tar will run and this wound will be tightened.

Also on purpose for Zinochka, I brought various wonderful herbs by leaf, by root, by flower: cuckoo's tears, valerian, Petrov's cross, hare cabbage. And just under the hare cabbage I had a piece of black bread: it always happens to me that when I don’t take bread into the forest, I’m hungry, but if I take it, I forget to eat it and bring it back. And Zinochka, when she saw black bread under my hare cabbage, was stunned:

“Where did the bread come from in the forest?”

- What's so amazing about that? After all, there is cabbage there!

- Hare...

- And the bread is lisichkin. Taste.

Carefully tasted and began to eat.

- Good fox bread!

- Chanterelle's bread is much better than ours!

"Inventor"

In one swamp, on a hummock under a willow, wild mallard ducklings hatched.

Shortly thereafter, their mother led them to the lake along a cow trail. I noticed them from afar, hid behind a tree, and the ducklings came up to my very feet. I took three of them for my upbringing, the remaining sixteen went further along the cow path.

I kept these black ducklings with me, and soon they all turned gray.

After one of the gray ones came out a handsome multi-colored drake and two ducks, Dusya and Musya. We clipped their wings so that they would not fly away, and they lived in our yard with poultry: we had chickens and geese.

With the onset of a new spring, we made hummocks for our savages from all sorts of rubbish in the basement, like in a swamp, and nests on them. Dusya put sixteen eggs in her nest and began to hatch ducklings. Musya put fourteen, but did not want to sit on them. No matter how we fought, the empty head did not want to be a mother. And we planted on duck eggs our important black chicken- The Queen of Spades.

The time has come, our ducklings have hatched. We kept them warm in the kitchen for a while, crumbled their eggs, and took care of them.

A few days later came very good, warm weather, and Dusya led her little black ones to the pond, and the Queen of Spades hers to the garden for worms.

— Swish-swish! - ducklings in the pond.

- Quack-quack! - answers the duck.

— Swish-swish! - ducklings in the garden.

- Kwoh-kwoh! the chicken answers.

The ducklings, of course, cannot understand what “quoh-quoh” means, and what is heard from the pond is well known to them.

"Swiss-swiss" - this means: "ours to ours."

And “quack-quack” means: “you are ducks, you are mallards, swim quickly!” And they, of course, look there, to the pond.

- Yours to yours!

- Swim, swim!

And they float.

- Kwoh-kwoh! - the important bird chicken rests on the shore.

They keep swimming and swimming. They whistled, swam, joyfully accepted them into her family Dusya; according to Musa, they were her own nephews.

All day long a large combined duck family swam in the pond, and all day the Queen of Spades, fluffy, angry, cackled, grumbled, dug worms on the shore with her foot, tried to attract ducklings with worms and cackled to them that there were too many worms, so good worms!

- Dirty-dirty! the mallard answered her.

And in the evening she led all her ducklings with one long rope along a dry path. Under the very nose of an important bird, they passed, black, with big duck noses; no one even looked at such a mother.

We collected them all in one tall basket and left them to spend the night in a warm kitchen, near the stove.

In the morning, when we were still sleeping, Dusya got out of the basket, walked around on the floor, screamed, called the ducklings to her. In thirty voices, whistlers answered her cry.

The walls of our house, made of a sonorous pine forest, responded to the duck cry in their own way. And yet, in this commotion, we heard separately the voice of one duckling.

- Do you hear? I asked my guys.

They listened.

- We hear! they shouted.

And we went to the kitchen.

It turned out that Dusya was not alone on the floor. One duckling ran next to her, was very worried and whistled continuously. This duckling, like all the others, was the size of a small cucumber. How could such and such a warrior climb over the wall of a basket thirty centimeters high?

We all began to guess about it, and then a new question arose: did the duckling itself come up with some way to get out of the basket after its mother, or did she accidentally touch it somehow with its wing and throw it away? I tied the duckling's leg with a ribbon and put it into the common herd.

We slept through the night, and in the morning, as soon as the morning duck's cry was heard in the house, we went to the kitchen.

On the floor, along with Dusya, a duckling with a bandaged paw was running.

All the ducklings imprisoned in the basket whistled, rushed to freedom and could not do anything. This one got out. I said:

- He's up to something.

He is an inventor! Leva shouted.

Then I decided to see how this “inventor” solves the most difficult task: to climb a sheer wall on his webbed duck feet. I got up the next morning before light, when both my guys and

the ducklings slept soundly. In the kitchen, I sat down near the light switch so that I could turn on the light immediately, when necessary, and examine the events in the back of the basket.

And then the window turned white. It began to get light.

- Quack-quack! Dusya said.

— Swish-swish! - answered the only duckling.

And everything froze. The boys were sleeping, the ducklings were sleeping.

The factory horn blew. The world has increased.

- Quack-quack! Dusya repeated.

No one answered. I understood: the "inventor" now has no time - now, probably, he is solving his most difficult task. And I turned on the light.

Well, that's what I knew! The duck had not yet risen, and its head was still level with the edge of the basket. All the ducklings slept warmly under their mother, only one, with a bandaged paw, crawled out and, like bricks, climbed up on the mother's feathers, onto her back. When Dusya got up, she lifted him high, to the level with the edge of the basket. A duckling, like a mouse, ran along her back to the edge - and somersault down! Following him, his mother also fell out on the floor, and the usual morning commotion began: screaming, whistling for the whole house.

Two days later, in the morning, three ducklings appeared on the floor at once, then five, and it went on and on: as soon as Dusya grunts in the morning, all the ducklings on her back and then fall down.

And the first duckling, who paved the way for others, my children called the Inventor.

Guys and ducks

A little wild duck, the whistling teal, finally decided to transfer her ducklings from the forest, bypassing the village, into the lake to freedom. In the spring, this lake overflowed far, and a solid place for a nest could be found only three miles away, on a hummock, in a marshy forest. And when the water subsided, I had to travel all three miles to the lake.

In places open to the eye of a man, a fox and a hawk, the mother walked behind, so as not to let the ducklings out of sight even for a minute. And near the forge, when crossing the road, she, of course, let them go forward. Here the guys saw them and threw their hats. All the time while they were catching ducklings, the mother ran after them with her beak open or flew several steps in different directions in the greatest excitement. The guys were just about to throw their hats on their mother and catch her like ducklings, but then I approached.

- What will you do with the ducklings? I asked the guys sternly.

They got scared and answered:

- Let's go.

- Here's something "let go"! I said very angrily. Why did you have to catch them? Where is mother now?

- He's sitting there! - the guys answered in unison.

And they pointed me to a close mound of a fallow field, where the duck really sat with its mouth open from excitement.

“Quickly,” I ordered the guys, “go and return all the ducklings to her!”

They even seemed to rejoice at my order, and ran straight up the hill with the ducklings. The mother flew off a little and, when the guys left, she rushed to save her sons and daughters. In her own way, she said something quickly to them and ran to the oat field. Ducklings ran after her - five pieces. And so through the oat field, bypassing the village, the family continued their journey to the lake.

Joyfully, I took off my hat and, waving it, shouted:

— Good luck, ducklings!

The guys laughed at me.

“What are you laughing at, fools? I said to the guys. “Do you think it’s so easy for ducklings to get into the lake?” Quickly take off all your hats, shout "goodbye"!

And the same hats, dusty on the road while catching ducklings, rose into the air, the guys all shouted at once:

- Goodbye, ducklings!

forest doctor

We wandered in the spring in the forest and observed the life of hollow birds: woodpeckers, owls. Suddenly in the direction where we had previously planned interesting tree we heard the sound of a saw. It was, we were told, cutting firewood from deadwood for a glass factory. We were afraid for our tree, hurried to the sound of the saw, but it was too late: our aspen was lying, and around its stump there were many empty fir cones. The woodpecker peeled all this over the long winter, collected it, wore it on this aspen, laid it between two bitches of his workshop and hollowed it out. Near the stump, on our cut aspen, two boys were resting. These two boys were only engaged in sawing the forest.

- Oh, you pranksters! - we said and pointed them to the cut aspen. - You were ordered to cut dead trees, and what did you do?

“The woodpecker made holes,” the guys answered. - We looked and, of course, sawed off. It will still disappear.

They all began to examine the tree together. It was quite fresh, and only in a small space, no more than a meter in length, did a worm pass through the trunk. The woodpecker, obviously, listened to the aspen like a doctor: he tapped it with his beak, understood the void left by the worm, and proceeded to the operation of extracting the worm. And the second time, and the third, and the fourth... The thin aspen trunk looked like a flute with valves. Seven holes were made by the "surgeon" and only on the eighth he captured the worm, pulled out and saved the aspen. We carved this piece as a wonderful exhibit for the museum.

“You see,” we said to the guys, “the woodpecker is a forest doctor, he saved the aspen, and it would live and live, and you cut it off.

The boys marveled.

Hedgehog

Once I was walking along the bank of our stream and noticed a hedgehog under a bush. He also noticed me, curled up and mumbled: knock-knock-knock. It was very similar, as if a car was moving in the distance. I touched it with the tip of my boot; he snorted terribly and jabbed his needles into his boot.

- Oh, you are so with me! I said, and with the tip of my boot shoved him into the stream.

Instantly, the hedgehog turned around in the water and swam to the shore like a small pig, only instead of bristles on its back there were needles. I took a stick, rolled the hedgehog into my hat and carried it home.

I had a lot of mice, I heard - the hedgehog catches them, and decided: let him live with me and catch mice.

So, I put this prickly lump in the middle of the floor and sat down to write, while I myself looked at the hedgehog out of the corner of my eye. He did not lie motionless for a long time: as soon as I calmed down at the table, the hedgehog turned around, looked around, tried to go there, here and finally chose a place for himself under the bed and there it completely calmed down.

When it got dark, I lit the lamp and — hello! The hedgehog ran out from under the bed. He, of course, thought to the lamp that it was the moon that had risen in the forest: in the moonlight, hedgehogs like to run through the forest clearings. And so he started running around the room, imagining that it was a forest clearing. I picked up the pipe, lit a cigarette and let a cloud near the moon. It became just like in the forest: the moon and the clouds, and my legs were like tree trunks and, probably, the hedgehog really liked it, he darted between them, sniffing and scratching the back of my boots with needles.

After reading the newspaper, I dropped it on the floor, went to bed and fell asleep.

I always sleep very lightly. I hear - some rustling in my room, struck a match, lit a candle and just noticed how a hedgehog flashed under the bed. And the newspaper was no longer lying near the table, but in the middle of the room. So I left the candle burning and I don’t sleep myself, thinking: “Why did the hedgehog need a newspaper?” Soon my tenant ran out from under the bed - and straight to the newspaper, spun around near it, made noise, noise, and finally contrived: he somehow put a corner of the newspaper on the thorns and dragged it, huge, into the corner.

Then I understood him: the newspaper was like dry leaves in the forest, he dragged it to himself for a nest. And it turned out, however, that soon the hedgehog all turned into a newspaper and made a real nest out of it. Having finished this important business, he went out of his dwelling and stood opposite the bed, looking at the candle - the moon.

I let the clouds in and I ask:

— What else do you need?

The hedgehog was not afraid.

- Do you want to drink?

I wake up. The hedgehog does not run.

I took a plate, put it on the floor, brought a bucket of water, and now I pour water into the plate, then pour it into the bucket again, and I make such a noise as if it were a stream splashing.

“Well, go, go,” I say, “you see, I arranged the moon for you, and let the clouds go, and here’s water for you ...

I look like I'm moving forward. And I also moved my lake a little towards it. He will move - and I will move, and so they agreed.

“Drink,” I say finally.

He began to cry.

And I so lightly ran my hand over the thorns, as if stroking, and I keep saying:

"You're a good fellow, a good one!"

The hedgehog got drunk, I say:

- Let's sleep.

Lie down and blow out the candle.

I don’t know how much I slept, I hear: again I have work in my room.

I light a candle - and what do you think? The hedgehog runs around the room, and on the thorns he has an apple. He ran to the nest, put it there and after another runs into a corner, and in the corner there was a bag of apples and collapsed. Here the hedgehog ran up, curled up near the apples, twitched and runs again - on the thorns he drags another apple into the nest.

And so I got a hedgehog. And now, like drinking tea, I will certainly put it on my table and either I pour milk on a saucer for him - he will drink it, then I will give the ladies buns - he will eat it.

golden meadow

My brother and I, when dandelions ripen, had constant fun with them. Sometimes, we go somewhere to our craft, he is in front, I am in the heel.

We lived in the village, in front of the window we had a meadow, all golden from many blooming dandelions. It was very beautiful. Everyone said: “Very beautiful! Golden Meadow. One day I got up early to fish and noticed that the meadow was not golden, but green. When I returned home around noon, the meadow was again all golden. I began to observe. By evening the meadow turned green again. Then I went and found a dandelion, and it turned out that he squeezed his petals, as if our fingers were yellow on the side of the palm of our hand and, clenched into a fist, we would close the yellow. In the morning, when the sun rose, I saw how dandelions open their palms and from this the meadow becomes golden again.

Since then, the dandelion has become one of the most interesting flowers for us, because dandelions went to bed with us children and got up with us.

beast chipmunk

One can easily understand why the sika deer has frequent white spots scattered everywhere on its skin.

Once I was walking very quietly along the path in the Far East and, without knowing it myself, I stopped near the lurking deer. They hoped that I would not notice them under the broad-leaved trees, in the dense grass. But it happened that a deer tick bit painfully little calf; he trembled, the grass swayed, and I saw him and everyone. It was then that I realized why deer have spots. The day was sunny, and in the forest there were "bunnies" on the grass - exactly the same as those of deer and fallow deer. With such "bunnies" it is easier to hide. But for a long time I could not understand why the deer has a large white circle like a napkin behind and near the tail, and if the deer gets scared and rushes to run, then this napkin becomes even wider, much more noticeable. Why do deer need these napkins?

I thought about it and here's how I figured it out.

Once we caught wild deer and began to feed them in the home nursery with beans and corn. In winter, when in the taiga with such difficulty the deer gets food, they ate with us the most favorite and most delicious dish in the nursery. And they are so accustomed to the fact that, when they see a bag of beans, they run to us and crowd around the trough. And they poke their muzzles so greedily and hurry that beans and corn often fall from the trough to the ground. Pigeons have already noticed this - they fly to peck grains under the very hooves of deer. Chipmunks also come running to collect falling beans, these small, very pretty striped animals that look like a squirrel. It is difficult to convey how shy these spotted deer are and what they can imagine. The female, our beautiful Hua-Lu, was especially shy.

It happened once, she ate beans in a trough next to other deer. Beans fell to the ground, pigeons and chipmunks ran close to the hooves of the deer. Here Hua-Lu accidentally stepped on the fluffy tail of one animal with her hoof, and this chipmunk dug into the leg of a deer in response. Hua-Lu shuddered, looked down, and she must have imagined the chipmunk as something terrible. How she throws herself! And behind it all at once on the fence, and - bang! Our fence fell down.

The small animal chipmunk, of course, immediately fell off, but for the frightened Hua-Lu, now it was not a small, but a huge chipmunk that was running after her, rushing in her footsteps. Other deer understood her in their own way and after her swiftly rushed. And all these deer would have run away and all our hard work would have been lost, but we had a German shepherd Taiga, well accustomed to these deer. We sent Taiga after them. Deer rushed in insane fear, and, of course, they thought that it was not the dog that was running after them, but the same terrible, huge beast, the chipmunk.

Many animals have such a habit that if they are driven, they run in a circle and return to the same place. This is how hare hunters chase dogs: the hare almost always runs to the same place where he lay, and then the shooter meets him. And the deer so rushed for a long time through the mountains and dales and returned to the same place where they live well - both hearty and warm.

And so the excellent, smart dog Taiga returned the reindeer to us. But I almost forgot about the white napkins, which is why I started this story. When Hua-Lu rushed over the fallen fence and the white napkin became much wider, much more noticeable from fear behind her, then only this flickering white napkin was visible in the bushes. Another deer ran after her along this white spot, and he himself also showed his white spot to the deer following him. It was then that I guessed for the first time what these white napkins serve for sika deer. In the taiga, after all, not only a chipmunk - there is a wolf, and a leopard, and the tiger itself. One deer will notice the enemy, rush, show a white spot and save the other, and this one saves the third, and all together come to a safe place.

white necklace

I heard in Siberia, near Lake Baikal, from one citizen about a bear and, I confess, I did not believe it. But he assured me that in the old days even a Siberian journal had published about this case under the title:

"The man with the bear against the wolves."

There lived one watchman on the shore of Lake Baikal, he caught fish, shot squirrels. And once this watchman seems to see through the window - a big bear runs straight to the hut, and a pack of wolves is chasing him. That would be the end of the bear ... He, this bear, don’t be bad, in the hallway, the door behind him closed by itself, and he also leaned on her paw and leaned himself. The old man, realizing this matter, took the rifle from the wall and said:

- Misha, Misha, hold on!

The wolves climb on the door, and the old man aims the wolf out the window and repeats:

- Misha, Misha, hold on!

So he killed one wolf, and another, and a third, all the while saying:

- Misha, Misha, hold...

After the third flock fled, and the bear remained in the hut to spend the winter under the protection of the old man. In the spring, when the bears come out of their lairs, the old man supposedly put a white necklace on this bear and ordered all the hunters not to shoot this bear - with a white necklace - this bear is his friend.

The conversation of birds and animals

Fun hunting for foxes with flags! They will go around the fox, recognize her lying down and through the bushes for a verst, two around the sleeping one they will hang a rope with red flags. The fox is very afraid of colored flags and the smell of calico, frightened, looking for a way out of the terrible circle. An exit is left for her, and near this place, under the cover of a Christmas tree, her hunter is waiting.

Such a hunt with flags is much more productive than with hounds. And this winter was so snowy, with such loose snow, that the dog was drowning up to his ears, and it became impossible to chase the foxes with the dog. Once, having exhausted myself and the dog, I said to the huntsman Mikhal Mikhalych:

- Let's leave the dogs, let's start the flags - because with the flags you can kill every fox.

- How is it for everyone? asked Michal Mikhalych.

“So simple,” I replied. - After the powder, we will take a fresh trail, go around, tighten the circle with flags, and our fox.

“It was in the old days,” said the huntsman. - It used to be that the fox sat for three days and did not dare to go beyond the flags. What a fox! The wolves sat for two days! Now the animals have become smarter, often chasing right under the flags, and goodbye.

“I understand,” I replied, “that seasoned animals, who have already been in trouble more than once, have grown wiser and go under the flags, but there are relatively few of them, the majority, especially young people, have never seen flags.

- Didn't see it! They don't even need to see. They have a conversation.

- What kind of conversation?

- Ordinary conversation. It happens that you set a trap, an old, smart beast will visit near, he will not like it and will move away. Others won't get very far. Well, tell me, how do they know?

- What do you think?

- I think, - answered Mikhal Mikhalych, - animals read.

- Do they read?

- Well, yes, they read with their noses. This can be seen in dogs as well. It is known how they leave their notes everywhere on the posts, on the bushes, others then go and take everything apart. So the fox, the wolf constantly read; We have eyes, they have a nose. The second thing for animals and birds, I think, is the voice. A raven flies and screams, at least we have something. And the fox pricked up its ears in the bushes, hurries into the field. A raven flies and cries above, and below, following the cry of a raven, a fox rushes at full speed. The raven descends on the carrion, and the fox is right there. What a fox! Haven't you ever guessed something from the call of a magpie?

Of course, like any hunter, I had to use the magpie's call, but Mikhal Mikhalych told a special case. Once he had dogs in a hare race. The hare suddenly seemed to have fallen through the ground. Then a magpie tickled in the other direction. The huntsman, stealthily, goes to the magpie so that she does not notice him. And this was in winter, when all the hares had already turned white, only all the snow had melted, and the white ones on the ground became far visible. The huntsman looked under the tree on which the magpie was tickling, and he sees: the white one simply lies on the green midge, and the little eyes, black as two bobbins, are looking ...

The magpie betrayed a hare, but she gives a man to a hare and to every animal, if only she would notice someone first.

“Do you know,” said Mikhal Mikhalych, “there is a small yellow swamp porridge.” When you enter the swamp for ducks, you begin to steal quietly. Suddenly, out of nowhere, this same yellow bird sits down on a reed in front of you, swings on it and squeaks. You go further, and she flies to another reed and squeaks and squeaks. It is she who lets know the entire swamp population; you look - there the ducks guessed the approach of the hunter and flew away, and there the cranes waved their wings, there snipes began to break out. And it's all her, it's all her. So the birds say differently, and the animals read the tracks more.

Birds under the snow

A hazel grouse in the snow has two salvations: the first is to spend the night warm under the snow, and the second is that the snow drags with it various seeds from the trees to the ground for food for the hazel grouse. Under the snow, the hazel grouse looks for seeds, makes moves there and windows up for air. Sometimes you go skiing in the forest, you look - a head appeared and hid: this is a hazel grouse. Not even two, but three rescues for a hazel grouse under the snow: warmth, food, and you can hide from a hawk.

The black grouse does not run under the snow, he would only have to hide from the weather.

Black grouse does not have big moves, like hazel grouses under the snow, but the arrangement of the apartment is also neat: in the back and a latrine, in front there is a hole above the head for air.

The gray partridge does not like to burrow in the snow and flies to spend the night in the village on the threshing floor. The partridge will spend the night in the village with the peasants and in the morning flies to feed on the same place. Partridge, according to my signs, has either lost her wildness, or is naturally stupid. The hawk notices her flights, and sometimes she is just about to fly out, and the hawk is already waiting for her on a tree.

Black grouse, I think, is much smarter than partridge. Once it was with me in the forest.

I'm going skiing red day, good frost. A large clearing opens before me, there are tall birches in the clearing, and on the birches the black grouse feed on their kidneys. I admired for a long time, but suddenly all the black grouse rushed down and buried themselves in the snow under the birches. At the same moment, a hawk appears, hits the place where the black grouse burrowed, and entered. But here he walks right above the black grouse, but he cannot guess and dig with his foot and grab it. I was very curious about this, I think: “If he walks, it means that he feels them under him, and the hawk has a great mind, but there is no such thing as to guess and dig with his paw on some inch or two in the snow, which means that it’s not for him.” given."

Walks and walks.

I wanted to help the black grouse, and I began to hide the hawk. The snow is soft, the ski does not make noise, but as soon as I started to go around the clearing with bushes, I suddenly fell into the mush up to my ear. I got out of the hole, of course, not without noise, and thought: "The hawk heard this and flew away." I got out and I don’t even think about the hawk, but when I drove around the clearing and looked out from behind the tree, the hawk right in front of me walks for a short shot over the heads of the black grouse. I fired. He lay down. And the black grouse are so frightened by the hawk that they were not afraid of the shot. I approached them, shied away with my ski, and they, one after another, began to fly out from under the snow; who has never seen - will die.

I've seen enough of everything in the forest, it's all simple for me, but I'm still amazed at the hawk: he's so smart, but in this place he turned out to be such a fool. But I consider the partridge the most foolish of all. She spoiled herself among people on the threshing floors, she doesn’t have, like a black grouse, to, seeing a hawk, throw herself into the snow with all her might. A partridge from a hawk will only hide its head in the snow, and its tail is all in sight. The hawk takes her by the tail and drags her like a cook in a frying pan.

squirrel memory

What a miracle You can't think that she could smell a nut through a thick layer of snow and ice. So, since the fall, she remembered her nuts and the exact distance between them.

But the most amazing thing is that she could not measure centimeters, as we do, but directly by eye with accuracy determined, dived and pulled out. Well, how could one not envy the squirrel's memory and ingenuity!

Forest floors

Birds and animals in the forest have their own floors: mice live in the roots - at the very bottom; different birds like the nightingale make their nests right on the ground; thrushes - even higher, on bushes; hollow birds - woodpecker, titmouse, owls - even higher; at different heights along the tree trunk and at the very top, predators settle: hawks and eagles.

I once had to observe in the forest that they, animals and birds, with floors are not like ours in skyscrapers: we can always change with someone, with them each breed certainly lives on its own floor.

Once, while hunting, we came to a clearing with dead birches. It often happens that birch trees grow to a certain age and dry up.

Another tree, having dried up, drops its bark on the ground, and therefore the bare wood soon rots and the whole tree falls; the bark of a birch does not fall; this resinous, white bark on the outside - birch bark - is an impenetrable case for a tree, and a dead tree stands for a long time, as if alive.

Even when the tree rots and the wood turns into dust, heavy with moisture, the white birch looks like it is alive. But it is worth, however, to give such a tree a good push, when suddenly it will break everything into heavy pieces and fall. Felling such trees is a very fun activity, but also dangerous: with a piece of wood, if you don’t dodge it, it can really hit you on the head. But still, we, hunters, are not very afraid, and when we get to such birches, we begin to destroy them in front of each other.

So we came to a clearing with such birches and brought down a rather tall birch. Falling, in the air it broke into several pieces, and in one of them there was a hollow with a nest of a Gadget. Little chicks were not injured when the tree fell, only fell out of the hollow together with their nest. Naked chicks, covered with feathers, opened wide red mouths and, mistaking us for parents, squeaked and asked us for a worm. We dug up the ground, found worms, gave them a bite to eat; they ate, swallowed and squeaked again.

Very soon, parents flew in, titmouse, with white puffy cheeks and worms in their mouths, sat on nearby trees.

“Hello, dear ones,” we said to them, “it’s a misfortune: we didn’t want this.

The Gadgets could not answer us, but, most importantly, they could not understand what had happened, where the tree had gone, where their children had disappeared.

They were not at all afraid of us, fluttering from branch to branch in great alarm.

- Yes, here they are! We showed them the nest on the ground. - Here they are, listen how they squeak, what your name is!

Gadgets did not listen to anything, fussed, worried and did not want to go downstairs and go beyond their floor.

“Maybe,” we said to each other, “they are afraid of us. Let's hide! - And they hid.

No! The chicks squeaked, the parents squeaked, fluttered, but did not go down.

We guessed then that the birds are not like ours in skyscrapers, they cannot change floors: now it just seems to them that the whole floor with their chicks has disappeared.

“Oh-oh-oh,” said my companion, “well, what fools you are! ..

It became a pity and funny: they are so nice and with wings, but they don’t want to understand anything.

Then we took that big piece, in which the nest was located, they broke the top of the neighboring birch and put our piece with the nest on it just at the same height as the destroyed floor. We did not have long to wait in ambush: in a few minutes happy parents met their chicks.

birch bark tube

I found an amazing birch bark tube. When a person cuts a piece of birch bark for himself on a birch, the rest of the birch bark near the cut begins to curl up into a tube. The tube will dry out, curl up tightly. There are so many of them on birch trees that you don’t even pay attention.

But today I wanted to see if there was anything in such a tube.

And in the very first tube I found a good nut, stuck so tightly that I could hardly push it out with a stick.

There was no hazel around the birch. How did he get there?

“Probably the squirrel hid it there, making its winter supplies,” I thought. “She knew that the pipe would curl up tighter and tighter and grab the nut tighter and tighter so it wouldn’t fall out.”

But later I guessed that it was not a squirrel, but a nutlet bird stuck a nut, maybe stealing from a squirrel's nest.

Looking at my birch bark tube, I made another discovery: I settled under the cover of a walnut - who would have thought? - the spider and the entire inside of the tube tightened with its cobweb.

Mikhail Prishvin "My Motherland" (From childhood memories)

My mother got up early, before the sun. Once I also got up before the sun, in order to place snares on quails at dawn. My mother treated me to tea with milk. This milk was boiled in an earthenware pot and was always covered with a ruddy froth on top, and under this froth it was unusually tasty, and tea from it became excellent.

This treat decided my life in good side: I started getting up before the sun to drink delicious tea with my mother. Little by little, I got so used to this morning rising that I could no longer sleep through the sunrise.

Then I got up early in the city, and now I always write early, when the whole animal and vegetable world awakens and also begins to work in its own way. And often, often I think: what if we rose like this for our work with the sun! How much health, joy, life and happiness would then come to people!

After tea, I went hunting for quails, starlings, nightingales, grasshoppers, turtledoves, butterflies. I didn’t have a gun then, and even now a gun is not necessary in my hunting.

My hunting was then and now - in the finds. It was necessary to find in nature something that I had not yet seen, and maybe no one else had ever met with this in their life ...

My farm was large, the paths were countless.

My young friends! We are the masters of our nature, and for us it is the pantry of the sun with the great treasures of life. Not only do these treasures need to be protected - they must be opened and shown.

Fish need clean water - we will protect our reservoirs.

There are various valuable animals in the forests, steppes, mountains - we will protect our forests, steppes, mountains.

Fish - water, bird - air, beast - forest, steppe, mountains. And a man needs a home. And to protect nature means to protect the homeland.

Mikhail Prishvin "Hot Hour"

It is melting in the fields, but in the forest there is still snow untouched by dense pillows on the ground and on the branches of trees, and the trees are in snow captivity. Thin trunks crouched to the ground, froze and are waiting any hour for release. At last this hot hour comes, the happiest for the motionless trees and the most terrible for animals and birds.

A hot hour has come, the snow is imperceptibly melting, and in complete forest silence, as if by itself, a spruce branch moves and sways. And just under this tree, covered with its wide branches, a hare is sleeping. In fear, he gets up and listens: the twig cannot move by itself. The hare was scared, and then before his eyes another, third branch moved and, freed from snow, jumped. The hare darted, ran, again sat down in a column and listened: where did the trouble come from, where should he run?

And as soon as he stood on his hind legs, he just looked around, how he jumped up in front of his very nose, how he straightened up, how a whole birch swayed, how a tree branch waved nearby!

And it went, and it went: branches jump everywhere, escaping from snow captivity, the whole forest moves around, the whole forest has gone. And the mad hare rushes about, and every beast gets up, and the bird flies out of the forest.

Mikhail Prishvin "The conversation of trees"

The buds open, chocolate-colored, with green tails, and a large transparent drop hangs on each green beak. You take one kidney, rub it between your fingers, and then for a long time everything smells like the fragrant resin of birch, poplar or bird cherry.

You sniff a bird cherry bud and immediately remember how you used to climb up a tree for berries, shiny, black and lacquered. I ate them in handfuls right with the bones, but nothing but good came from this.

The evening is warm, and such silence, as if something should happen in such silence. And now the trees begin to whisper among themselves: a white birch with another white birch from afar echoes; a young aspen came out into the clearing like a green candle, and calls to itself the same green candle - aspen, waving a twig; bird cherry gives the bird cherry a branch with open buds. If you compare with us, we echo with sounds, and they have a fragrance.

Mikhail Prishvin "Forest Master"

That was on a sunny day, otherwise I’ll tell you how it was in the forest just before the rain. There was such silence, there was such tension in anticipation of the first drops, that it seemed that every leaf, every needle tried to be the first and catch the first drop of rain. And so it became in the forest, as if each smallest essence received its own, separate expression.

So I go in to them at this time, and it seems to me: they all, like people, turned their faces to me and, out of their stupidity, they ask me, like a god, for rain.

“Come on, old man,” I ordered the rain, “you will torment us all, go, go, start!”

But the rain did not listen to me this time, and I remembered my new straw hat: it will rain - and my hat is gone. But then, thinking about the hat, I saw an unusual Christmas tree. She grew up, of course, in the shade, and that is why her branches were once lowered down. Now, after selective felling, she found herself in the light, and each branch of her began to grow upwards. Probably, the lower boughs would have risen over time, but these branches, having touched the ground, released their roots and clung ... So, under the tree with the branches raised up below, a good hut turned out. Having cut the spruce branches, I compacted it, made an entrance, and laid the seat below. And as soon as I sat down to start a new conversation with the rain, as I see it, it is burning very close against me. a big tree. I quickly grabbed a spruce branch from the hut, gathered it into a broom and, quilting over the burning place, little by little extinguished the fire before the flame burned through the bark of the tree around and thus made it impossible for the juice to flow.

Around the tree, the place was not burned by a fire, cows were not grazed here, and there could not be undershepherds on which everyone blamed for the fires. Remembering my childhood robber years, I realized that the tar on the tree was most likely set on fire by some boy out of mischief, out of curiosity to see how the tar would burn. As I descended into my childhood years, I imagined how pleasant it was to strike a match and set fire to a tree.

It became clear to me that the pest, when the tar caught fire, suddenly saw me and disappeared immediately somewhere in the nearest bushes. Then, pretending that I was continuing my way, whistling, I left the place of the fire and, having taken several dozen steps along the clearing, jumped into the bushes and returned to the old place and also hid.

I did not have long to wait for the robber. A fair-haired boy of seven or eight years old came out of the bush, with a reddish sunny bake, bold, open eyes, half-naked and with an excellent build. He looked hostilely in the direction of the clearing where I had gone, picked up a fir cone and, wanting to throw it at me, swung so hard that he even turned over around himself. This didn't bother him; on the contrary, he is real owner scaffolding, put both hands in his pockets, began to look at the place of the fire and said:

- Come out, Zina, he's gone!

A girl came out, a little older, a little taller, and with a large basket in her hand.

“Zina,” the boy said, “you know what?

Zina looked at him with large calm eyes and answered simply:

— No, Vasya, I don't know.

- Where are you! said the owner of the forests. “I want to tell you: if that person hadn’t come, if he hadn’t put out the fire, then, perhaps, the whole forest would have burned down from this tree.” If only we could have a look!

- You are an idiot! Zina said.

“True, Zina,” I said, “I thought of something to brag about, a real fool!”

And as soon as I said these words, the perky master of the forests suddenly, as they say, "flee away."

And Zina, apparently, did not even think of answering for the robber, she calmly looked at me, only her eyebrows rose a little in surprise.

At the sight of such a reasonable girl, I wanted to turn the whole story into a joke, win her over and then work together on the master of the forests.

Just at this time, the tension of all sentient beings waiting for rain reached its extreme.

“Zina,” I said, “look how all the leaves, all the blades of grass are waiting for the rain. There, the hare cabbage even climbed onto the stump to capture the first drops.

The girl liked my joke, she graciously smiled at me.

- Well, old man, - I said to the rain, - you will torment us all, start, let's go!

And this time the rain obeyed, went. And the girl seriously, thoughtfully focused on me and pursed her lips, as if she wanted to say: “Jokes are jokes, but still it started to rain.”

“Zina,” I said hurriedly, “tell me, what do you have in that big basket?”

She showed: there were two white mushrooms. We put my new hat in the basket, covered it with a fern, and headed out of the rain to my hut. Having broken another spruce branch, we covered it well and climbed in.

“Vasya,” the girl shouted. - It will fool, come out!

And the owner of the forests, driven by the pouring rain, did not hesitate to appear.

As soon as the boy sat down next to us and wanted to say something, I raised my index finger and ordered the owner:

- No hoo-hoo!

And all three of us froze.

It is impossible to convey the delights of being in the forest under a Christmas tree during a warm summer rain. A crested hazel grouse, driven by the rain, burst into the middle of our thick Christmas tree and sat down right above the hut. Quite in sight under a branch, a finch settled down. The hedgehog has arrived. A hare hobbled past. And for a long time the rain whispered and whispered something to our tree. And we sat for a long time, and everything was as if the real owner of the forests was whispering to each of us separately, whispering, whispering ...

Mikhail Prishvin "Dead Tree"

When the rain passed and everything around sparkled, we went out of the forest along the path broken by the feet of passers-by. At the very exit, there was a huge and once mighty tree that had seen more than one generation of people. Now it stood completely dead, it was, as the foresters say, "dead."

Looking around this tree, I said to the children:

“Perhaps a passer-by, wanting to rest here, stuck an ax into this tree and hung his heavy bag on the ax. After that, the tree got sick and began to heal the wound with resin. Or maybe, fleeing from the hunter, a squirrel hid in the dense crown of this tree, and the hunter, in order to drive it out of the shelter, began to knock on the trunk with a heavy log. Sometimes just one blow is enough to make a tree sick.

And many, many things can happen to a tree, as well as to a person and to any living creature, from which the disease will be taken. Or maybe lightning struck?

It started with something, and the tree began to fill its wound with resin. When the tree began to fall ill, the worm, of course, found out about it. The bark climbed under the bark and began to sharpen there. In its own way, the woodpecker somehow found out about the worm and, in search of a stub, began to hollow out a tree here and there. Will you find it soon? And then, perhaps, it’s so that while the woodpecker is hammering and gouging so that it could be grabbed by him, the stump will advance at that time, and the forest carpenter needs to hammer again. And not just one shorthand, and not one woodpecker too. This is how woodpeckers hammer a tree, and the tree, weakening, fills everything with resin. Now look around the tree at the traces of fires and understand: people walk along this path, stop here to rest and, despite the ban on making fires in the forest, they collect firewood and set it on fire. And in order to quickly kindle, they cut off a resinous crust from a tree. So, little by little, from the cutting, a white ring formed around the tree, the upward movement of the juices stopped, and the tree withered. Now tell me, who is to blame for the death of a beautiful tree that has stood for at least two centuries in its place: disease, lightning, stalks, woodpeckers?

- A shorthand! Vasya said quickly.

And, looking at Zina, he corrected himself:

The children were probably very friendly, and fast Vasya was used to reading the truth from the face of the calm, clever Zina. So, probably, he would have licked the truth from her face this time, but I asked her:

- And you, Zinochka, what do you think, my dear daughter?

The girl put her hand around her mouth, looked at me with intelligent eyes, as at school at a teacher, and answered:

“Maybe people are to blame.

“People, people are to blame,” I picked up after her.

And, like a real teacher, I told them about everything, as I think for myself: that the woodpeckers and the squiggle are not to blame, because they have neither a human mind nor a conscience that illuminates the guilt in a person; that each of us will be born a master of nature, but only has to learn a lot to understand the forest in order to get the right to dispose of it and become a real master of the forest.

I didn’t forget to tell about myself that I still study constantly and without any plan or idea, I don’t interfere in anything in the forest.

Here I did not forget to tell about my recent discovery of fiery arrows, and about how I spared even one cobweb. After that, we left the forest, and it always happens to me now: in the forest I behave like a student, and I leave the forest as a teacher.

Mikhail Prishvin "Forest floors"

Birds and animals in the forest have their own floors: mice live in the roots - at the very bottom; various birds, like the nightingale, build their nests right on the ground; thrushes - even higher, on bushes; hollow birds - woodpecker, titmouse, owls - even higher; at different heights along the tree trunk and at the very top, predators settle: hawks and eagles.

Once, while hunting, we came to a clearing with dead birches. It often happens that birch trees grow to a certain age and dry up.

Another tree, having dried up, drops its bark on the ground, and therefore the uncovered wood soon rots and the whole tree falls, while the bark of a birch does not fall; this resinous, white bark on the outside - birch bark - is an impenetrable case for a tree, and a dead tree stands for a long time, like a living one.

Even when the tree rots and the wood turns into dust, heavy with moisture, the white birch looks like it is alive.

But it is worthwhile, however, to give such a tree a good push, when suddenly it will break everything into heavy pieces and fall. Cutting down such trees is a very fun activity, but also dangerous: with a piece of wood, if you don’t dodge it, it can really hit you on the head.

But still, we, hunters, are not very afraid, and when we get to such birches, we begin to destroy them in front of each other.

Naked chicks, covered with feathers, opened wide red mouths and, mistaking us for parents, squeaked and asked us for a worm. We dug up the earth, found worms, gave them a snack, they ate, swallowed and squeaked again.

Very soon, the parents flew in, titmouse, with white puffy cheeks and worms in their mouths, sat on nearby trees.

“Hello, dear ones,” we said to them, “misfortune has come; we didn't want that.

The Gadgets could not answer us, but, most importantly, they could not understand what had happened, where the tree had gone, where their children had disappeared. They were not at all afraid of us, fluttering from branch to branch in great alarm.

- Yes, here they are! We showed them the nest on the ground. - Here they are, listen how they squeak, what your name is!

Gadgets did not listen to anything, fussed, worried and did not want to go downstairs and go beyond their floor.

“Maybe,” we said to each other, “they are afraid of us. Let's hide! - And they hid.

No! The chicks squeaked, the parents squeaked, fluttered, but did not go down.

We guessed then that the birds are not like ours in skyscrapers, they cannot change floors: now it just seems to them that the whole floor with their chicks has disappeared.

“Oh-oh-oh,” said my companion, “well, what fools you are! ..

It became a pity and funny: they are so nice and with wings, but they don’t want to understand anything.

Then we took that large piece in which the nest was located, broke the top of the neighboring birch and put our piece with the nest on it just at the same height as the destroyed floor.

We did not have to wait long in ambush: in a few minutes, happy parents met their chicks.

Mikhail Prishvin "Old Starling"

The starlings hatched and flew away, and their place in the birdhouse has long been occupied by sparrows. But until now, on the same apple tree, on a good dewy morning, an old starling flies and sings.

That's strange! It would seem that everything is already over, the female brought out the chicks a long time ago, the cubs grew up and flew away ... Why does the old starling fly every morning to the apple tree where his spring passed, and sing?

Mikhail Prishvin "Spider web"

It was a sunny day, so bright that the rays penetrated even into the darkest forest. I walked forward along such a narrow clearing that some trees on one side were bent over to the other, and this tree whispered something with its leaves to another tree on the other side. The wind was very weak, but still it was: and aspens babbled above, and below, as always, the ferns swayed importantly. Suddenly I noticed: from side to side across the clearing, from left to right, some small fiery arrows constantly fly here and there. As always in such cases, I concentrated my attention on the arrows and soon noticed that the movement of the arrows was in the wind, from left to right.

I could see how one of these flying shirts met with one of the flying arrows and suddenly hung in the air, and the arrow disappeared. I realized then that the shirt was hanging on a cobweb invisible to me, and this gave me the opportunity to go point-blank to the cobweb and fully understand the phenomenon of arrows: the wind blows the cobweb to the sunbeam, the brilliant cobweb flares up from the light, and from this it seems as if the arrow is flying. At the same time, I realized that there were a great many of these cobwebs stretched across the clearing, and, therefore, if I walked, I tore them, without knowing it, by the thousands.

Was I cruel, tearing thousands of cobwebs? Not at all: I did not see them - my cruelty was the result of my physical strength.

Was I merciful in bending my weary back to save the gossamer? I don’t think: in the forest I behave like a student, and if I could, I wouldn’t touch anything.

I attribute the salvation of this cobweb to the action of my concentrated attention.

Mikhail Prishvin "Slappers"

Grow, grow green pipes; come, come from the swamps here heavy mallards, waddling, and after them, whistling, black ducklings with yellow paws between the bumps behind the uterus, as between mountains.

We are sailing in a boat across the lake into the reeds to check whether there will be many ducks this year and how they, young, grow: what they are now - they fly, or are still just diving, or running away on the water, flapping their short wings. These slappers are a very entertaining audience. To the right of us, in the reeds, there is a green wall and to the left a green one, but we are driving along a narrow lane free from aquatic plants. Ahead of us, two of the smallest chiren whistlers in black fluff swim out into the water from the reeds and, seeing us, begin to run away with all their might. But, strongly resting on the bottom of the oar, we gave our boat a very fast move and began to overtake them. I was already stretching out my hand to grab one, but suddenly both chirenka disappeared under the water. We waited a long time for them to emerge, when we suddenly noticed them in the reeds. They crouched there, sticking their noses out between the reeds. Their mother, the teal-whistle, flew around us all the time, and very quietly - sort of like it happens when a duck, deciding to go down into the water, at the very last moment before contact with the water, as it were, stands in the air on its paws.

After this incident, with small chiryats in front, on the nearest stretch, a mallard duck appeared, quite large, almost the size of a uterus. We were sure that such a big one could fly perfectly, so we hit the oar to make it fly. But, it’s true, he hasn’t tried to fly yet and started clapping away from us.

We also set off after him and quickly overtook him. His situation was much worse than those little ones, because the place was so shallow that there was nowhere for him to dive. Several times, in his last despair, he tried to peck at the water with his nose, but there the land appeared to him, and he only lost time. In one of these attempts, our boat caught up with him, I extended my hand ...

At this moment of the last danger, the duckling gathered his strength and suddenly flew away. But this was his first flight, he still did not know how to manage. He flew exactly the same way as we, having learned to sit on a bicycle, start it with the movement of our legs, but we are still afraid to turn the steering wheel, and therefore the first trip is all straight, straight, until we stumble on something - and bang to one side. So the duckling flew straight ahead, and in front of him was a wall of reeds. He did not yet know how to soar over the reeds, caught on his paws and cheburahnuls down.

It was exactly the same with me when I jumped, jumped on a bicycle, fell, fell, and suddenly sat down and rushed straight at the cow with great speed ...

Mikhail Prishvin "Golden Meadow"

My brother and I, when dandelions ripen, had constant fun with them. We used to go somewhere to our trade - he was in front, I was in the heel.

"Seryozha!" - I will call him in a businesslike manner. He'll look back, and I'll blow a dandelion right in his face. For this, he begins to watch for me and, as you gape, he also fuknet. And so we plucked these uninteresting flowers just for fun. But once I managed to make a discovery. We lived in the village, in front of the window we had a meadow, all golden from many blooming dandelions. It was very beautiful. Everyone said: “Very beautiful! Golden Meadow. One day I got up early to fish and noticed that the meadow was not golden, but green. When I returned home around noon, the meadow was again all golden. I began to observe. By evening the meadow turned green again. Then I went and found a dandelion, and it turned out that he squeezed his petals, as if our fingers were yellow on the side of the palm of our hand and, clenched into a fist, we would close the yellow. In the morning, when the sun rose, I saw how dandelions open their palms, and from this the meadow becomes golden again.

Since then, the dandelion has become one of the most interesting flowers for us, because dandelions went to bed with us children and got up with us.

Sergey Aksakov "Nest"

Noticing the nest of some bird, most often the dawn or redstart, we each time went to see how the mother sits on the eggs.

Sometimes, by negligence, we scared her away from the nest, and then, carefully parting the thorny branches of the barberry or gooseberry, we looked at how small, small, motley eggs lay in the nest.

When the bird was safely hatching its testicles, despite our interference, and we suddenly found instead of them naked cubs, with a mournful quiet squeak, constantly opening huge mouths, we saw how the mother flew in and fed them flies and worms ...

My God, what joy we had!

We never stopped watching how the little birds grew up, gave gifts and finally left their nest.

Konstantin Paustovsky "Gift"

Thick, bound volumes of this magazine lay in the closet, along with oars, lanterns, and an old beehive. The hive was painted with white adhesive paint. It fell off the dry wood in large pieces, and the wood smelled of old wax under the paint. One day Vanya brought a small birch dug up by the roots. He overlaid the roots with damp moss and wrapped in matting.

“This is for you,” he said, and blushed. - Present. Plant it in a wooden tub and put it in a warm room - it will be green all winter.

"Why did you dig it up, weirdo?" Reuben asked.

“You said that you feel sorry for the summer,” Vanya answered. “Grandfather made me think. “Run away, he says, to last year’s burnt-out place, where two-year-old birch trees grow like grass, there is no passage from them. Dig it up and take it to Rum Isaevich (as my grandfather called Reuben). He worries about the summer, so he will have a summer memory for the icy winter. It is, of course, fun to look at a green leaf when the snow is falling like a sack in the yard.

- I'm not only about summer, I regret autumn even more, - said Reuben and touched the thin leaves of a birch.

We brought a box from the barn, filled it to the top with earth and transplanted a small birch into it. The box was placed in the brightest and warmest room by the window, and a day later the drooping branches of the birch tree rose, all of it cheered up, and even its leaves were already rustling when a through wind rushed into the room and slammed the door in their hearts. Autumn settled in the garden, but the leaves of our birch remained green and alive.

The maples burned with a dark purple, the euonymus turned pink, the wild grapes dried up on the arbor. Even in some places yellow strands appeared on the birches in the garden, like the first gray hair of a still young person. But the birch in the room seemed to be growing younger. We did not notice any signs of wilting in her.

One night the first frost came. He breathed cold on the windows in the house, and they fogged up, sprinkled grainy frost on the roof, crunched underfoot.

Only the stars seemed to rejoice at the first frost and sparkled much brighter than on warm summer nights. That night I woke up from a long and pleasant sound - a shepherd's horn sang in the dark. Outside the windows, the dawn was barely perceptible.

I got dressed and went out into the garden. The sharp air washed his face with cold water - the dream immediately passed. Dawn broke out. The blue in the east was replaced by a crimson haze, like the smoke of a fire.

This haze brightened, became more and more transparent, through it the distant and tender countries of golden and pink clouds were already visible.

There was no wind, but the leaves kept falling and falling in the garden. During that one night the birch trees turned yellow to the very tops, and the leaves fell from them in a frequent and sad rain.

I returned to the rooms: they were warm, sleepy. In the pale light of dawn, a small birch stood in a tub, and I suddenly noticed that almost all of it had turned yellow that night, and several lemon leaves were already lying on the floor.

Room warmth did not save the birch. A day later, she flew around all over, as if she did not want to lag behind her adult friends, crumbling in cold forests, groves, in spacious glades damp in autumn. Vanya Malyavin, Reuben and all of us were upset. We have already gotten used to the idea that on winter snowy days the birch will turn green in rooms lit by the white sun and the crimson flame of cheerful stoves. The last memory of summer is gone.

A familiar forester chuckled when we told him about our attempt to save the green foliage on the birch.

And grandfather Mitriy, nicknamed "Ten Percent", having learned about this little story with a birch, interpreted it in his own way.

“Maybe,” Reuben replied.

“Maybe, maybe!” his grandfather teased. - Did you see this electric current? How did you see him when he has no visibility, sort of like air? You hear about the birch. Is there friendship between people or not? That is what is. And people get carried away. They think that friendship alone is given to them, they boast in front of every living being. And friendship is, brother, everywhere you look. What can I say, a cow is friends with a cow and a chaffinch with a chaffinch. Kill the crane, so the crane will wither away, cry, it will not find a place for itself. And every grass and tree, too, must have friendship sometimes. How can your birch not fly around when all its companions in the forests flew around? With what eyes will she look at them in the spring, what will she say when they suffered in the winter, and she warmed herself by the stove, warm, but full, and clean? You also need to have a conscience.

“Well, it’s you, grandfather, who turned it down,” said Reuben. “You don’t run into.

Grandpa giggled.

- Weak? he asked caustically. - Are you giving up? You don't start with me, it's useless.

Grandfather left, tapping with a stick, very pleased, confident that he had won all of us in this dispute and, along with us, the forester.

We planted the birch in the garden, under the fence, and collected its yellow leaves and dried them between the pages of Around the World.

Konstantin Paustovsky "Collection of Miracles"

Everyone, even the most serious person, not to mention, of course, boys, has his own secret and slightly funny dream. I also had such a dream - be sure to get to Borovoye Lake.

It was only twenty kilometers from the village where I lived that summer to the lake. Everyone tried to dissuade me from going - and the road was boring, and the lake was like a lake, all around there was only forest, dry swamps and lingonberries. Famous painting!

— Have you been there?

- And why did he surrender to me, this lake! I don't have anything else to do, do I? That's where they sit, all my business! Semyon tapped his brown neck with his fist. - On the hump!

But I still went to the lake. Two village boys, Lyonka and Vanya, followed me.

Before we had time to go beyond the outskirts, the complete hostility of the characters of Lenka and Vanya was immediately revealed. Lyonka estimated everything that he saw around in rubles.

“Here, look,” he said to me in his booming voice, “the gander is coming.” How much do you think he pulls?

- How do I know!

- Rubles for a hundred, perhaps, it pulls, - Lyonka said dreamily and immediately asked: - But how much will this pine tree pull? Rubles for two hundred? Or all three hundred?

— Accountant! Vanya remarked contemptuously and sniffled. - At the very brains of a dime are pulled, but he asks the price of everything. My eyes would not look at him.

After that, Lyonka and Vanya stopped, and I heard a well-known conversation - a harbinger of a fight. It consisted, as is customary, of only questions and exclamations.

- Whose brains are they pulling on a dime? My?

- Probably not mine!

— You look!

— See for yourself!

- Don't grab it! They did not sew a cap for you!

“Oh, how I wouldn’t push you in my own way!”

- Don't be scared! Don't poke me in the nose!

The fight was short but decisive.

Lyonka picked up his cap, spat, and went, offended, back to the village. I began to shame Vanya.

- Why so?

We climbed the izvolok and entered the oak copse. Immediately, red ants began to seize us. They clung to the legs and fell from the branches by the scruff of the neck. Dozens of ant roads strewn with sand stretched between oaks and junipers. Sometimes such a road passed, as if through a tunnel, under the knotty roots of an oak tree and again rose to the surface. Ant traffic on these roads was continuous. In one direction, the ants ran empty, and returned with the goods - white grains, dry paws of beetles, dead wasps and hairy caterpillars.

Behind the oak copse, on the edge, at the edge of the loose sandy road, stood a lopsided cross with a black tin icon. Red, flecked with white, ladybugs crawled along the cross.

A gentle wind blew in your face from the oat fields. Oats rustled, bent, a gray wave ran over them.

Behind the oat field we passed through the village of Polkovo. I noticed a long time ago that almost all regimental peasants differ from the neighboring inhabitants by their high growth.

- Stately people in Polkovo! our Zaborevskys said with envy. — Grenadiers! Drummers!

In Polkovo, we went to rest in the hut of Vasily Lyalin, a tall, handsome old man with a piebald beard. Gray tufts stuck out in disorder in his black shaggy hair.

When we entered the hut to Lyalin, he shouted:

- Keep your heads down! Heads! All of my forehead on the lintel smash! It hurts in Polkovo tall people, but slow-witted - the huts are put on a short stature.

During the conversation with Lyalin, I finally found out why the regimental peasants were so tall.

- Story! Lyalin said. "Do you think we've gone up in the air for nothing?" In vain, even the Kuzka-bug does not live. It also has its purpose.

Vanya laughed.

- You're laughing! Lyalin observed sternly. — Not enough learned yet to laugh. You listen. Was there such a foolish tsar in Russia - Emperor Pavel? Or was not?

“I was,” Vanya said. - We studied.

— Yes, he swam. And he made such business that we still hiccup. The gentleman was fierce. The soldier at the parade squinted his eyes in the wrong direction - he is now inflamed and begins to thunder: “To Siberia! To hard labor! Three hundred ramrods!” That's what the king was like! Well, such a thing happened - the grenadier regiment did not please him. He shouts: “Step march in the indicated direction for a thousand miles! Campaign! And after a thousand versts to stand forever! And he shows the direction with his finger. Well, the regiment, of course, turned and marched. What will you do! They walked for three months and walked to this place. Around the forest is impassable. One hell. They stopped, began to cut huts, knead clay, lay stoves, dig wells. They built a village and called it Polkovo, as a sign that a whole regiment built it and lived in it. Then, of course, liberation came, and the soldiers settled down to this area, and, read it, everyone stayed here. The area, you see, is fertile. There were those soldiers - grenadiers and giants - our ancestors. From them and our growth. If you don't believe me, go to the city, to the museum. They will show you the papers. Everything is written in them. And just think, if they had to walk another two versts and come out to the river, they would have stopped there. So no, they did not dare to disobey the order - they just stopped. People are still surprised. “Why are you, they say, regimental, burrowed into the forest? Didn't you have a place by the river? Terrible, they say, tall, but guesswork in the head, you see, is not enough. Well, explain to them how it was, then they agree. “Against the order, they say, you can’t trample! It is a fact!"

- Great forest! Lyalin sighed. - The wind will blow, and these pines will hum like bells.

Then the pines gave way to birch trees, and water glistened behind them.

— Borovoye? I asked.

- No. Before Borovoye still walk and walk. This is Larino Lake. Let's go, look into the water, look.

The sun shone in the dark water. Beneath it lay ancient oak trees, as if cast from black steel. And above the water, reflected in it with yellow and purple petals, butterflies flew.

Lyalin led us to a deaf road.

“Go straight ahead,” he pointed, “until you run into msharas, into a dry swamp.” And the path will go along the msharams to the very lake. Just go carefully - there are a lot of pegs.

He said goodbye and left. We went with Vanya along the forest road. The forest grew taller, more mysterious and darker. Gold resin froze in streams on the pines.

At first, the ruts, long overgrown with grass, were still visible, but then they disappeared, and the pink heather covered the whole road with a dry, cheerful carpet.

A narrow path led through the mshary. She walked around high bumps. At the end of the path, the water shone with a black blue — Borovoye Lake.

A heavy capercaillie jumped out from behind a bump and ran into the undergrowth, breaking dry wood.

The water in Borovoye was black and clean. Islands of white lilies bloomed on the water and smelled sickly. The fish struck and the lilies swayed.

- That's a blessing! Vanya said. Let's live here until our crackers run out.

I agreed.

We stayed at the lake for two days. We saw sunsets and twilight and the tangle of plants that appeared before us in the firelight. We heard the calls of wild geese and the sound of night rain. He walked for a short time, about an hour, and tinkled softly across the lake, as if stretching thin, like cobweb, trembling strings between the black sky and the water.

That's all I wanted to tell.

But since then, I will not believe anyone that there are places on our earth that are boring and do not give any food to either the eye, or hearing, or imagination, or human thought.

Konstantin Paustovsky "Farewell to Summer"

For several days it poured down, without ceasing, cold rain. A damp wind blew in the garden. At four o'clock in the afternoon we were already lighting kerosene lamps, and it involuntarily seemed that the summer was over forever and the earth was moving farther and farther into dense fogs, into uncomfortable darkness and cold.

It was the end of November - the saddest time in the village. The cat slept all day, curled up in an old armchair, and shuddered in his sleep when dark water lashed at the windows.

The roads were washed out. A yellowish foam, like a downed squirrel, was carried along the river. The last birds hid under the eaves, and for more than a week no one has visited us: neither grandfather Mitriy, nor Vanya Malyavin, nor the forester.

The best time was in the evenings. We fired up the stoves. The fire roared, crimson reflections trembled on the log walls and on the old engraving - a portrait of the artist Bryullov.

Leaning back in his chair, he looked at us, and it seemed, just like us, putting down the open book, thinking about what he had read and listening to the hum of rain on the boarded roof. The lamps burned brightly, and the invalid copper samovar sang and sang its simple song. As soon as it was brought into the room, it immediately became comfortable in it - perhaps because the glasses were fogged up and one could not see the lone birch branch that knocked on the window day and night.

After tea we sat by the stove and read. On such evenings, it was most pleasant to read very long and touching novels by Charles Dickens or leaf through the heavy volumes of the Niva and Picturesque Review magazines from the old years.

At night, Funtik, a little red dachshund, often cried in his sleep. I had to get up and wrap him up with a warm woolen rag. Funtik thanked through a dream, carefully licked his hand and, sighing, fell asleep. The darkness rustled behind the walls with the splashing of rain and the blows of the wind, and it was terrible to think of those who might have been caught by this rainy night in the impenetrable forests.

One night I woke up with a strange sensation.

I thought I went deaf in my sleep. I lay with eyes closed, listened for a long time and, finally, realized that I had not gone deaf, but simply an unusual silence had come outside the walls of the house. Such silence is called "dead". The rain died, the wind died, the noisy, restless garden died. All you could hear was the cat snoring in his sleep.

I opened my eyes. White and even light filled the room. I got up and went to the window - behind the panes everything was snowy and silent. In the foggy sky, a lone moon stood at a dizzying height, and a yellowish circle shimmered around it.

When did the first snow fall? I approached the walkers. It was so bright that the arrows were clearly black. They showed two hours.

I fell asleep at midnight. This means that in two hours the earth has changed so unusually, in two short hours the fields, forests and gardens have been fascinated by the cold.

Through the window, I saw a large gray bird perched on a maple branch in the garden. The branch swayed, snow fell from it. The bird slowly got up and flew away, and the snow continued to fall like glass rain falling from a Christmas tree. Then everything was quiet again.

Reuben woke up. He looked out the window for a long time, sighed and said:

— The first snow is very befitting the earth.

The earth was ornate, like a shy bride.

And in the morning everything crunched around: frozen roads, leaves on the porch, black nettle stalks sticking out from under the snow.

Grandfather Mitriy came to tea and congratulated me on the first trip.

- So the earth was washed, - he said, - with snow water from a silver trough.

— Where did you get that, Mitriy, such words? Reuben asked.

- Is there something wrong? grandfather chuckled. - My mother, the deceased, told me that in ancient times, beauties washed themselves with the first snow from a silver jug, and therefore their beauty never withered. It was before Tsar Peter, my dear, when robbers ruined merchants through the local forests.

It was hard to stay at home on the first winter day. We went to the forest lakes. Grandfather walked us to the edge. He also wanted to visit the lakes, but "did not let the bones ache."

It was solemn, light and quiet in the forests.

The day seemed to be dozing. Lonely snowflakes occasionally fell from the cloudy high sky. We carefully breathed on them, and they turned into pure drops of water, then became cloudy, froze and rolled to the ground like beads.

We wandered through the forests until dusk, walked around familiar places. Flocks of bullfinches sat, ruffled, on snow-covered mountain ash.

We plucked several bunches of red rowan, caught in the frost - this was the last memory of summer, of autumn. On a small lake - it was called Larin's Pond - there was always a lot of duckweed swimming. Now the water in the lake was very black, transparent - all the duckweed sank to the bottom by winter.

A glass strip of ice has grown along the coast. The ice was so transparent that even up close it was hard to see. I saw a flock of boats in the water near the shore and threw a small stone at them. The stone fell on the ice, rang, the rafts, flashing with scales, rushed into the depths, and a white granular trace from the impact remained on the ice. That's the only reason we guessed that a layer of ice had already formed near the shore. We broke off individual pieces of ice with our hands. They crunched and left a mixed smell of snow and lingonberries on the fingers.

Here and there in the meadows birds flew and chirped plaintively. The sky overhead was very bright, white, and towards the horizon it thickened, and its color resembled lead. From there were slow, snow clouds.

It grew darker and quieter in the forests, and finally, thick snow began to fall. He melted into black water lakes, tickled his face, powdered the gray smoke of the forest.

Winter began to take over the land, but we knew that under the loose snow, if you rake it with your hands, you can still find fresh forest flowers, we knew that fire would always crackle in the ovens, that tits stayed with us to winter, and winter seemed to us the same as beautiful as summer.

Konstantin Ushinsky "The Leprosy of the Old Woman-Winter"

The old woman-winter got angry, she decided to kill every breath from the world. First of all, she began to get to the birds: they bothered her with their cry and squeak. Winter blew cold, tore the leaves from the forests and oak forests and scattered them along the roads. There is nowhere for the birds to go; they began to gather in flocks, to think a thought. They gathered, shouted and flew over high mountains, over blue seas, into warm countries. There was a sparrow, and he huddled under the eaves.

Winter sees that she cannot catch up with the birds: she attacked the animals. She covered the fields with snow, covered the forests with snowdrifts, dressed the trees with ice crust and sends frost after frost. The frosts are getting worse one another, they jump from tree to tree, crackle and click, scare the animals. The animals were not afraid: some have warm fur coats, others hid in deep holes; a squirrel in a hollow gnaws nuts, a bear in a den sucks its paw; a hare, jumping, warms up, and horses, cows, lambs have long been chewing ready-made hay in warm barns, drinking warm swill.

Winter is more angry - it gets to the fish: it sends frost after frost, one more fiercely than the other. Frosts run briskly, they tap loudly with hammers: without wedges, without shackles on lakes, bridges are built along rivers.

Rivers and lakes froze, but only from above, and the fish all went deeper: under the ice roof it is even warmer.

- Well, wait, - thinks winter, - I will catch people, and frost after frost will send, one more angrier than the other. The frosts have clouded the patterns of the windows in the windows; they knock on the walls and on the doors, so that the logs burst. And people flooded the stoves, baked hot pancakes for themselves, and laughed at the winter. It happens that someone goes to the forest for firewood - he will put on a sheepskin coat, felt boots, warm mittens, and how he starts waving an ax, even sweat will break through. Along the roads, as if laughing at winter, the carts stretched: steam pours from the horses, cabbies stamp their feet, pat their mittens. They twitch their shoulders, praise the frosts.

It seemed most offensive to winter that even small children - and they are not afraid of it!

They skate and sled, play snowballs, make women, build mountains, pour water on them, and even cry out in the cold: “Come help!”

Winter will pinch with the anger of one boy by the ear, another by the nose, they will even turn white, and the boy will grab the snow, let's rub it - and his face will flare up like fire.

Winter sees that she can’t take anything, she cried with anger.

From the eaves, winter tears dripped ... it can be seen that spring is not far away!

Konstantin Ushinsky "Four Wishes"

Mitya rode on a sledge from an icy mountain and skated on a frozen river, ran home ruddy, cheerful and said to his father:

How fun in winter! I wish it were all winter.

“Write down your wish in my pocket book,” said the father.

Mitya wrote.

Spring came.

Mitya ran plenty of colorful butterflies across the green meadow, picked flowers, ran to his father and said:

What a beauty this spring is! I wish it were all spring.

Father again took out a book and ordered Mitya to write down his wish.

It's summer. Mitya and his father went to haymaking.

The boy had fun all day long: he fished, picked berries, tumbled in fragrant hay, and in the evening he said to his father:

"I've had a lot of fun today!" I wish there was no end to summer.

And this desire of Mitya was written down in the same book.

Autumn has come. In the garden they picked fruits - ruddy apples and yellow pears.

Mitya was delighted and said to his father:

Autumn is the best of all seasons!

Then the father took out his notebook and showed the boy that he said the same thing about spring, and about winter, and about summer.

The tree with its upper whorl, like a palm, took away the falling snow, and such a lump grew from this that the top of the birch began to bend. And it happened that during the thaw snow fell again and stuck to that coma, and the upper branch with a lump arched the whole tree, until, finally, the top with that huge lump sank into the snow on the ground and was thus fixed until spring itself. Animals and people occasionally skied under this arch all winter. Nearby, proud firs looked down on the bent birch, as people born to command look at their subordinates.

In the spring, the birch returned to those firs, and if this one especially snowy winter she did not bend, then in winter and summer she would remain among the fir trees, but since she was bent, now with the smallest snow she leaned over and in the end, without fail every year, leaned over the path like an arch.

It is terrible to enter a young forest in a snowy winter: but it is impossible to enter. Where in the summer I walked along a wide path, now bent trees lie across this path, and so low that only a hare can run under them ...

Chanterelle bread

Once I walked in the forest all day and returned home in the evening with rich booty. He took off his heavy bag from his shoulders and began to spread his belongings on the table.

What is this bird? - asked Zinochka.

Terenty, I replied.

And he told her about the black grouse: how he lives in the forest, how he mumbles in the spring, how he pecks at birch buds, picks berries in the swamps in autumn, warms himself from the wind under the snow in winter. He also told her about the hazel grouse, showed her that he was grey, with a tuft, and whistled into a pipe in a hazel grouse and let her whistle. I also poured a lot of porcini mushrooms, both red and black, on the table. I also had a bloody boneberry in my pocket, and blueberries, and red lingonberries. I also brought with me a fragrant lump of pine resin, gave the girl a sniff and said that trees are treated with this resin.

Who is treating them? - asked Zinochka.

Healing himself, I replied. - It happens that a hunter will come, he wants to rest, he will stick an ax into a tree and hang a bag on an ax, and he will lie down under a tree. Sleep, rest. He will take out an ax from a tree, put on a bag, and leave. And from the wound from the ax made of wood, this fragrant tar will run and this wound will be tightened.

Where did the bread come from in the forest?

What is surprising here? After all, there is cabbage there!

Hare...

And the bread is chanterelle. Taste. Carefully tasted and began to eat:

Good fox bread!

Chanterelle's bread is much better than ours!

blue shadows

Silence resumed, frosty and bright. Yesterday's powder lies on the crust, like powder with sparkling sparkles. Nast does not fall anywhere and on the field, in the sun, it holds even better than in the shade. Each bush of the old wormwood, burdock, blade of grass, blade of grass, as in a mirror, looks into this sparkling powder and sees itself as blue and beautiful.

quiet snow

They say about silence: "Quieter than water, lower than grass..." But what could be quieter than falling snow! It snowed all day yesterday, and as if it had brought silence from heaven ... And every sound only intensified it: the rooster bellowed, the crow called, the woodpecker drummed, the jay sang with all voices, but the silence from all this grew. What silence, what grace.

clear ice

It is good to look at that transparent ice, where the frost did not make flowers and did not cover the water with them. Seen like a stream underneath that the thinnest ice drives a huge herd of bubbles, and drives them out from under the ice into open water, and rushes them with great speed, as if he really needs them somewhere and needs to have time to drive them all to one place.

Zhurka

Once we had it, we caught a young crane and gave it a frog. He swallowed it. Gave another - swallowed. The third, fourth, fifth, and then we didn’t have more frogs at hand.

Good girl! - said my wife and asked me; How much can he eat? Ten maybe?

Ten, I say, maybe.

What if twenty?

Twenty, I say, hardly...

We clipped the wings of this crane, and he began to follow his wife everywhere. She is milking a cow - and Zhurka is with her, she is in the garden - and Zhurka needs to go there ... His wife has got used to him ... and without him she is already bored, without him nowhere. But only if it happens - he is not there, only one thing will shout: “Fru-fru!”, And he runs to her. Such a smart one!

This is how the crane lives with us, and its clipped wings keep growing and growing.

Once the wife went down to the swamp for water, and Zhurka followed her. A small frog sat by the well and jumped from Zhurka into the swamp. Zhurka is behind him, and the water is deep, and you can’t reach the frog from the shore. Mach-mach wings Zhurka and suddenly flew. The wife gasped - and after him. Swing your arms, but you can't get up. And in tears, and to us: “Ah, ah, what a grief! Ahah!" We all ran to the well. We see - Zhurka is far away, sitting in the middle of our swamp.

Fru fru! I scream.

And all the guys behind me are also screaming:

Fru fru!

And so smart! As soon as he heard this our “frou-frou”, now he flapped his wings and flew in. Here the wife does not remember herself for joy, she tells the guys to run after the frogs as soon as possible. This year there were a lot of frogs, the guys soon scored two caps. The guys brought frogs, began to give and count. They gave five - he swallowed, they gave ten - he swallowed, twenty and thirty, - and so he swallowed forty-three frogs at a time.

squirrel memory

What a miracle You can't think that she could smell a nut through a thick layer of snow and ice. So, since the fall, she remembered her nuts and the exact distance between them.

forest doctor

We wandered in the spring in the forest and observed the life of hollow birds: woodpeckers, owls. Suddenly, in the direction where we had previously planned an interesting tree, we heard the sound of a saw. It was, we were told, cutting firewood from deadwood for a glass factory. We were afraid for our tree, hurried to the sound of the saw, but it was too late: our aspen was lying, and around its stump there were many empty fir cones. The woodpecker peeled all this over the long winter, collected it, wore it on this aspen, laid it between two bitches of his workshop and hollowed it out. Near the stump, on our cut aspen, two boys were only engaged in sawing the forest.

Oh you pranksters! - we said and pointed them to the cut aspen. - You were ordered dead trees, and what did you do?

The woodpecker made holes, - the guys answered. - We looked and, of course, sawed off. It will still disappear.

We carved this piece as a wonderful exhibit for the museum.

You see, - we told the guys, - a woodpecker is a forest doctor, he saved the aspen, and it would live and live, and you cut it off.

The boys marveled.

white necklace

I heard in Siberia, near Lake Baikal, from one citizen about a bear and, I confess, I did not believe it. But he assured me that in the old days, even in a Siberian magazine, this incident was published under the title: "A Man with a Bear Against Wolves."

There lived one watchman on the shore of Lake Baikal, he caught fish, shot squirrels. And once, as if this watchman sees through the window - a big bear runs straight to the hut, and a pack of wolves is chasing him. That would be the end of the bear. He, this bear, don’t be bad, in the hallway, the door behind him closed itself, and he also leaned on her paw himself. The old man, realizing this matter, took the rifle from the wall and said:

- Misha, Misha, hold on!

The wolves climb on the door, and the old man aims the wolf out the window and repeats:

- Misha, Misha, hold on!

So he killed one wolf, and another, and a third, all the while saying:

- Misha, Misha, hold on!

After the third flock fled, and the bear remained in the hut to spend the winter under the protection of the old man. In the spring, when the bears come out of their dens, the old man seemed to put a white necklace on this bear and ordered all the hunters not to shoot this bear - with a white necklace - this bear is his friend.

Belyak

Direct wet snow pressed down on the branches all night in the forest, broke off, fell, rustled.

By dawn the whole field was covered, and both the white hare and the white skull disappeared into the white immensity.

We were a little late, and when the hound was released, the tracks had already begun to blur.

We gave up on hunting and began to return home at the edge of the forest.

“Look through binoculars,” I said to my friend, “that it is whitening there on a black field and so bright.

“Horse skull, head,” he replied.

I took the binoculars from him and also saw the skull.

“Something is still whitening there,” said the comrade, “look to the left.”

Swamp

I know that few people sat in the swamps in early spring, waiting for the grouse current, and I have few words to even hint at all the splendor of the bird concert in the swamps before sunrise. Often I noticed that the first note in this concerto, far from the very first hint of light, is taken by the curlew. This is a very thin trill, completely different from the well-known whistle. Later, when the white partridges cry, the black grouse and the current grouse chirp, sometimes near the hut, it starts its muttering, then it’s not up to the curlew, but then at sunrise at the most solemn moment you will certainly pay attention to the new curlew song, very cheerful and similar to dancing: this dancing is as necessary for meeting the sun as the cry of a crane.

Once I saw from a hut how, among the black mass of rooster, a gray curlew, a female, settled down on a tussock; a male flew up to her and, supporting himself in the air with the flapping of his large wings, touched the back of the female with his feet and sang his dance song. Here, of course, the whole air trembled from the singing of all the swamp birds, and, I remember, the puddle, in complete calm, was all agitated by the multitude of insects that had awakened in it.

The sight of the curlew's very long and crooked beak always transports my imagination to a bygone time, when there was no man on earth yet. Yes, and everything in the swamps is so strange, the swamps are little studied, not at all touched by artists, in them you always feel as if a person on earth has not yet begun.

One evening I went out into the swamps to wash the dogs. Very steamy after the rain before the new rain. The dogs, with their tongues out, ran and from time to time lay down, like pigs, on their belly in the swamp puddles. Apparently, the youth had not yet hatched and had not climbed out of the supports into the open, and in our places, overflowing with marsh game, now the dogs could not get used to anything and, in idleness, were even agitated by flying crows. Suddenly a large bird appeared, began to scream in alarm and describe large circles around us. Another Curlew flew in and also began to circle with a cry, the third, obviously from another family, crossed the circle of these two, calmed down and disappeared. I needed to get a curlew egg into my collection, and, counting on the fact that the circles of birds would certainly decrease if I approached the nest, and increase if I moved away, I began, as in a blindfolded game, to wander through the swamp by sounds. So little by little, when the low sun became huge and red in the warm, abundant marsh vapors, I felt the proximity of the nest: the birds screamed intolerably and rushed so close to me that in the red sun I clearly saw their long, crooked, open for a constant alarming screaming noses. Finally, both dogs, grabbing with their upper senses, made a stance. I went in the direction of their eyes and noses and saw two large eggs lying right on a yellow dry strip of moss, near a tiny bush, without any adaptations or cover. Having ordered the dogs to lie down, I happily looked around me, the mosquitoes were biting hard, but I got used to them.

How good it was for me in impregnable marshes, and how far away the earth blew from these big birds with long crooked noses, on bent wings crossing the disk of the red sun!

I was about to bend down to the ground in order to take one of these large beautiful eggs for myself, when I suddenly noticed that in the distance, through the swamp, a man was walking straight towards me. He had neither a gun, nor a dog, and even a stick in his hand, there was no way for anyone from here, and I did not know people like me, who, like me, could wander through the swamp with pleasure under a swarm of mosquitoes. I felt as unpleasant as if, combing my hair in front of a mirror and making some special face at the same time, I suddenly noticed someone else's studying eye in the mirror. I even stepped aside from the nest and did not take the eggs, so that this man would not frighten me with his questions, I felt this, dear moment of life. I told the dogs to get up and led them to the hump. There I sat down on a gray stone so covered with yellow lichens that it did not sit down coldly. The birds, as soon as I moved away, increased their circles, but I could no longer follow them with joy. Anxiety was born in my soul from the approach stranger. I could already see him: elderly, very thin, walking slowly, carefully watching the flight of birds. I felt better when I noticed that he changed direction and went to another hill, where he sat down on a stone, and also turned to stone. I even felt pleased that there was sitting there just like me, a man reverently listening to the evening. It seemed that we understood each other perfectly without any words, and there were no words for this. With redoubled attention I watched the birds cross the red disk of the sun; At the same time, my thoughts about the terms of the earth and about such a short history of mankind were strangely disposed; how, however, everything soon passed.

The sun has set. I looked back at my friend, but he was no longer there. The birds calmed down, obviously, sat on their nests. Then, having ordered the dogs to slink back, I began to approach the nest with inaudible steps: would it be possible, I thought, to see interesting birds up close. From the bush, I knew exactly where the nest was, and I was very surprised how close the birds let me. Finally, I got close to the bush itself and froze in surprise: behind the bush everything was empty. I touched the moss with my palm: it was still warm from the warm eggs lying on it.

I just looked at the eggs, and the birds, afraid of the human eye, hurried to hide them away.

Verkhoplavka

A golden net trembles on the water sunbeams. Dark blue dragonflies in reeds and horsetail herringbones. And each dragonfly has its own horsetail tree or reed: it will fly off and will certainly return to it.

Crazy crows brought out the chicks and now they are sitting and resting.

The smallest leaf, on a cobweb, went down to the river and now it is spinning, it is spinning.

So I ride quietly down the river in my boat, and my boat is a little heavier than this leaf, made of fifty-two sticks and covered with canvas. There is only one paddle for it - a long stick, and at the ends there is a spatula. Dip each spatula alternately on both sides. Such a light boat that no effort is needed: he touched the water with a spatula, and the boat floats, and floats so inaudibly that the fish are not at all afraid.

What, what you just don’t see when you quietly ride on such a boat along the river!

Here a rook, flying over the river, dropped into the water, and this lime-white drop, tapping on the water, immediately attracted the attention of small top-melting fish. In an instant, a real bazaar gathered from top melters around a rook drop. Noticing this gathering, a large predator - the shelesper fish - swam up and grabbed the water with its tail with such force that the stunned topfins turned upside down. They would have come to life in a minute, but the shelesper is not some kind of fool, he knows that it does not happen so often that a rook will drip and so many fools will gather around one drop: grab one, grab another - he ate a lot, and which ones managed to get out , henceforth they will live like scientists, and if something good drips from above, they will look both ways, something bad would not come to them from below.

talking rook

I will tell you an incident that happened to me in a hungry year. A yellow-mouthed young rook got into the habit of flying to me on the windowsill. Apparently, he was an orphan. And at that time I kept a whole bag of buckwheat. I ate buckwheat porridge all the time. Here, it happened, a rook would fly in, I would sprinkle cereals on him and ask;

Do you want some porridge, fool?

It pecks and flies away. And so every day, all month. I want to ensure that my question: "Do you want porridge, fool?", He would say: "I want."

And he only opens his yellow nose and shows his red tongue.

Well, okay, - I got angry and abandoned my studies.

By autumn I was in trouble. I climbed into the chest for grits, but there was nothing there. This is how the thieves cleaned it: half a cucumber was on a plate, and that one was taken away. I went to bed hungry. Spinning all night. In the morning I looked in the mirror, my face was all green.

"Knock, knock!" - someone at the window.

On the windowsill, a rook hammers at the glass.

"Here comes the meat!" - I had a thought.

I open the window - and grab it! And he jumped from me to a tree. I'm out the window behind him to the bitch. He is taller. I'm climbing. He is taller and on top of his head. I can't go there; swings a lot. He, the rogue, looks at me from above and says:

Ho-chesh, porridge-ki, du-rush-ka?

Hedgehog

Once I was walking along the bank of our stream and noticed a hedgehog under a bush. He also noticed me, curled up and mumbled: knock-knock-knock. It was very similar, as if a car was moving in the distance. I touched him with the tip of my boot - he snorted terribly and pushed his needles into the boot.

Ah, you are so with me! - I said and pushed him into the stream with the tip of my boot.

I have had many mice. I heard - the hedgehog catches them, and decided: let him live with me and catch mice.

So I put this prickly lump in the middle of the floor and sat down to write, while I myself looked at the hedgehog out of the corner of my eye. He did not lie motionless for a long time: as soon as I calmed down at the table, the hedgehog turned around, looked around, tried to go there, here, finally chose a place for himself under the bed and there it completely calmed down.

When it got dark, I lit the lamp, and - hello! - the hedgehog ran out from under the bed. He, of course, thought to the lamp that it was the moon that had risen in the forest: in the moonlight, hedgehogs like to run through the forest clearings.

And so he started running around the room, imagining that it was a forest clearing.

I picked up the pipe, lit a cigarette and let a cloud near the moon. It became just like in the forest: the moon and the cloud, and my legs were like tree trunks and, probably, the hedgehog really liked it: he darted between them, sniffing and scratching the backs of my boots with needles.

After reading the newspaper, I dropped it on the floor, went to bed and fell asleep.

I always sleep very lightly. I hear some rustling in my room. He struck a match, lit a candle, and only noticed how a hedgehog flashed under the bed. And the newspaper was no longer lying near the table, but in the middle of the room. So I left the candle burning and I myself do not sleep, thinking:

“Why did the hedgehog need a newspaper?” Soon my tenant ran out from under the bed - and straight to the newspaper; spun around her, made noise, made noise, finally managed: he somehow put a corner of the newspaper on the thorns and dragged it, huge, into corner.

Then I understood him: the newspaper was like dry leaves in the forest, he dragged it to himself for a nest. And it turned out to be true: soon the hedgehog all turned into a newspaper and made a real nest out of it. Having finished this important business, he went out of his dwelling and stood opposite the bed, looking at the candle-moon.

I let the clouds in and I ask:

What else do you need? The hedgehog was not afraid.

Do you want to drink?

I wake up. The hedgehog does not run.

I took a plate, put it on the floor, brought a bucket of water, and then I poured water into the plate, then poured it into the bucket again, and I made such a noise as if it were a brook splashing.

Well, go, go. - I say. - You see, I arranged for you the moon and clouds, and here's water for you ...

I look like I'm moving forward. And I also moved my lake a little towards it. He will move, and I will move, and so they agreed.

Drink, - I say finally. He began to cry. And I so lightly ran my hand over the thorns, as if stroking, and I keep saying:

You are good, little one! The hedgehog got drunk, I say:

Let's sleep. Lie down and blow out the candle.

I don’t know how much I slept, I hear: again I have work in my room.

I light a candle and what do you think? The hedgehog runs around the room, and he has an apple on his thorns. He ran to the nest, put it there and after another runs into the corner, and in the corner there was a bag of apples and collapsed. Here the hedgehog ran up, curled up near the apples, twitched and runs again, on the thorns he drags another apple into the nest.

And so the hedgehog got a job with me. And now I, like drinking tea, will certainly put it on my table and either I will pour milk into a saucer for him - he will drink it, then I will eat the ladies' buns.

golden meadow

My brother and I, when dandelions ripen, had constant fun with them. We used to go somewhere to our trade - he was ahead, I was in the heel.

Seryozha! - I will call him busily. He'll look back, and I'll blow a dandelion right in his face. For this, he begins to watch for me and, as you gape, he also fuknet. And so we plucked these uninteresting flowers just for fun. But once I managed to make a discovery.

We lived in the village, in front of the window we had a meadow, all golden from many blooming dandelions. It was very beautiful. Everyone said: Very beautiful! The meadow is golden.

Since then, the dandelion has become one of the most interesting flowers for us, because dandelions went to bed with us children and got up with us.

blue bast shoes

Highways run through our large forest with separate paths for cars, trucks, carts and pedestrians. So far, for this highway, only the forest has been cut down by a corridor. It is good to look along the clearing: two green walls of the forest and the sky at the end. When the forest was cut down, large trees were taken away somewhere, while small brushwood - rookery - was collected in huge piles. They also wanted to take away the rookery for heating the factory, but they could not manage it, and the heaps all over the wide clearing remained for the winter.

In the fall, the hunters complained that the hares had disappeared somewhere, and some associated this disappearance of hares with deforestation: they chopped, knocked, chattered and scared away. When the powder came up and it was possible to unravel all the tricks of the hare by the tracks, the tracker Rodionich came and said:

- The blue bast shoe is all under the heaps of Grachevnik.

Rodionich, unlike all hunters, did not call the hare "slash", but always "blue bast shoes"; there is nothing to be surprised about: after all, a hare is no more like a devil than a bast shoe, and if they say that there are no blue bast shoes in the world, then I will say that there are no slash devils either.

The rumor about the hares under the heaps instantly ran around our entire town, and on the day off the hunters, led by Rodionich, began to flock to me.

Early in the morning, at the very dawn, we went hunting without dogs: Rodionich was such a master that he could catch a hare on a hunter better than any hound. As soon as it became so visible that it was possible to distinguish between fox and hare tracks, we took hare footprint, followed him, and, of course, he led us to one heap of rookery, as high as our wooden house with a mezzanine. A hare was supposed to lie under this heap, and we, having prepared our guns, became all around.

“Come on,” we said to Rodionich.

"Get out, you blue bastard!" he shouted and thrust a long stick under the pile.

The hare didn't get out. Rodionich was taken aback. And, thinking, with a very serious face, looking at every little thing in the snow, he went around the whole pile and once again went around in a large circle: there was no exit trail anywhere.

“Here he is,” said Rodionich confidently. "Get in your seats, kids, he's here." Ready?

- Let's! we shouted.

"Get out, you blue bastard!" - Rodionich shouted and stabbed three times under the rookery with such a long stick that the end of it on the other side almost knocked one young hunter off his feet.

And now - no, the hare did not jump out!

There had never been such embarrassment with our oldest tracker in his life: even his face seemed to have fallen a little. With us, the fuss has gone, everyone began to guess something in his own way, stick his nose into everything, walk back and forth in the snow and so, erasing all traces, taking away any opportunity to unravel the trick of a clever hare.

And now, I see, Rodionich suddenly beamed, sat down, contented, on a stump at some distance from the hunters, rolled up a cigarette for himself and blinked, then winked at me and beckoned me to him. Having realized the matter, unnoticed by everyone I approach Rodionich, and he points me upstairs, to the very top of a high pile of rookery covered with snow.

“Look,” he whispers, “what a blue bast shoe is playing with us.”

Not immediately on the white snow I saw two black dots - the eyes of a hare and two more small dots - the black tips of long white ears. It was the head sticking out from under the rookery and turning in different directions after the hunters: where they are, the head goes there.

As soon as I raised my gun, the life of a smart hare would end in an instant. But I felt sorry: how many of them, stupid, lie under heaps! ..

Rodionich understood me without words. He crushed a dense lump of snow for himself, waited until the hunters crowded on the other side of the heap, and, having well outlined, let the hare go with this lump.

I never thought that our ordinary hare, if he suddenly stands on a heap, and even jumps two arshins up, and appears against the sky, that our hare might seem like a giant on a huge rock!

What happened to the hunters? The hare, after all, fell directly to them from the sky. In an instant, everyone grabbed their guns - it was very easy to kill. But each hunter wanted to kill the other before the other, and each, of course, had enough without aiming at all, and the lively hare set off into the bushes.

- Here is a blue bast shoe! - Rodionich said admiringly after him.

Hunters once again managed to grab the bushes.

- Killed! - shouted one, young, hot.

But suddenly, as if in response to the "killed", a tail flashed in the distant bushes; for some reason hunters always call this tail a flower.

The blue bast shoe only waved its "flower" to hunters from distant bushes.