Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers

A collection of intimate portraits of the small mammals that once lived alongside rural Americans. John Burroughs, the naturalist who taught a generation to see, recorded what he witnessed from years of patient observation in the fields and forests. Here are the quick darts of chipmunks, the industrious industry of muskrats, the defiant waddle of porcupines, and the ghostly stillness of foxes at dusk. These are not clinical classifications but lived encounters, moments when a weasel moved through the author's vision like a brown whisper, when a woodchuck emerged from its burrow to assess the morning. Burroughs writes with the quiet conviction of someone who knew these creatures not from books but from countless hours of watching. The prose has the unhurried rhythm of a man who had nowhere urgent to be, and it invites readers to slow down, to notice, to remember that the wild has always lived close to us, if we simply pay attention.