Read stories about the nature of Russian writers. Fairy tales and stories about nature
Mikhail Prishvin (1873 - 1954) was in love with nature. He admired its greatness and beauty, studied the habits of forest animals and knew how to write about it in a fascinating and very kind way. Short stories Prishvina for children written in simple language, understandable even to kindergarteners. Parents who want to awaken in their children a kind attitude towards all living things and teach them to notice the beauty of the world around them should read Prishvin’s stories more often to both kids and older children. Children love this kind of reading, and then they return to it several times.
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Prishvin's stories about nature
The writer loved to observe the life of the forest. “I had to find something in nature that I had not yet seen, and perhaps no one else had encountered in their life,” he wrote. In Prishvin's children's stories about nature, the rustling of leaves, the murmur of a stream, the blowing of a breeze, and forest smells are so accurately and reliably described that any little reader is involuntarily transported in his imagination to where the author has been and begins to acutely and vividly feel all the beauty of the forest world.
Prishvin's stories about animals
Since childhood, Misha Prishvin treated birds and animals with warmth and love. He made friends with them, tried to learn to understand their language, studied their lives, trying not to disturb them. Prishvin's stories about animals contain entertaining stories about the author's encounters with various animals. There are funny episodes that make the children's audience laugh and be amazed at the intelligence and intelligence of our little brothers. Is there sad stories about animals in trouble, evoking a feeling of empathy and a desire to help in the children.
In any case, all these stories are imbued with kindness and, as a rule, have a happy ending. It is especially useful for our children, growing up in dusty and noisy cities, to read Prishvin’s stories more often. So let's get started quickly and dive into the magical world of nature with them!
Georgy Skrebitsky “Forest Echo”
I was then five or six years old. We lived in the village.
One day my mother went into the forest to pick strawberries and took me with her. There were a lot of strawberries that year. She grew up right outside the village, in an old forest clearing.
I still remember this day, although more than fifty years have passed since then. It was sunny and hot like summer. But as soon as we approached the forest, suddenly a blue cloud came running and frequent heavy rain fell from it. And the sun continued to shine. Raindrops fell to the ground, splashing heavily on the leaves. They hung on the grass, on the branches of bushes and trees, and the sun was reflected and played in each drop.
Before my mother and I had time to stand under the tree, the sunny rain had already stopped.
“Look, Yura, how beautiful it is,” said my mother, coming out from under the branches.
I looked. A rainbow stretched across the entire sky in a multi-colored arc. One end of it abutted our village, and the other went far into the meadows beyond the river.
- Wow, great! - I said. - Just like a bridge. I wish I could run through it!
“You better run on the ground,” my mother laughed, and we went into the forest to pick strawberries.
We wandered through clearings near hummocks and stumps and found large ripe berries everywhere.
Light steam came from the sun-heated earth after the rain. The air smelled of flowers, honey and strawberries. If you smell this wonderful smell with your nose, it’s like you’re taking a sip of some kind of fragrant, sweet drink. And to make this even more like the truth, I picked strawberries and put them not in a basket, but directly in my mouth.
I ran through the bushes, shaking off the last raindrops. Mom wandered nearby, and therefore I was not at all afraid of getting lost in the forest.
A large yellow butterfly flew over the clearing. I grabbed the cap from my head and rushed after it. But the butterfly either descended to the grass itself, or rose up. I chased and chased after her, but I never caught her - she flew off somewhere into the forest.
Completely out of breath, I stopped and looked around. “Where is mom?” She was nowhere to be seen.
- Aw! - I shouted, as I used to shout near the house, playing hide and seek.
And suddenly, from somewhere far away, from the depths of the forest, a response was heard: “Ay!”
I even shuddered. Have I really run so far away from my mother? Where is she? How to find her? The whole forest, previously so cheerful, now seemed mysterious and scary to me.
“Mom!.. Mom!..” I screamed with all my might, already ready to cry.
“A-ma-ma-ma-ma-a-a-a!” - as if someone in the distance was imitating me. And at that very second my mother ran out from behind the neighboring bushes.
- Why are you shouting? What's happened? - she asked fearfully.
- I thought you were far away! — I immediately calmed down, I answered. “There’s someone teasing you in the forest.”
- Who's teasing? - Mom didn’t understand.
- Don't know. I scream and so does he. Listen here! - and I again, but this time bravely shouted: - Ay! Aw!
“Aw! Av! Aw!” - echoed from the distance of the forest.
- Yes, it’s an echo! - said mom.
- Echo? What is it doing there?
I listened to my mother in disbelief. “How is this so? It’s my voice that answers me, and even when I’m already silent!”
I tried to shout again:
- Come here!
“Over here!” - responded in the forest.
- Mom, maybe someone is still teasing there? - I asked hesitantly. - Let's go have a look.
- How stupid! - Mom laughed. “Well, let’s go if you want, but we won’t find anyone.”
I took my mother’s hand just in case: “Who knows what kind of echo this is!” - and we walked along the path deep into the forest. Occasionally I shouted:
- Are you here?
“Here!” - answered in front.
We crossed a forest ravine and emerged into a light birch forest. It wasn't scary at all.
I let go of my mother’s hand and ran forward.
And suddenly I saw an “echo”. It was sitting on a stump with its back to me. Everything is gray, wearing a gray shaggy hat, like a goblin from a picture from a fairy tale. I screamed and rushed back to my mother:
- Mom, mom, there’s an echo sitting on a tree stump!
- Why are you talking nonsense! - Mom got angry.
She took my hand and bravely walked forward.
-Will it not touch us? - I asked.
“Don’t be stupid, please,” my mother answered.
We entered the clearing.
- Out, out! - I whispered.
- Yes, it’s Grandpa Kuzma who grazes the cows!
—- Grandfather, I thought you were an echo! - I shouted, running up to the old man.
- Echo? - he was surprised, lowering the wooden pity pipe, which he was whittling with a knife. - Echo, my dear, is not a person. This is the voice of the forest.
- Yes. You shout in the forest, and he will answer you. Every tree, every bush gives an echo. Listen to how we talk to them.
Grandfather raised his pity pipe and began to play tenderly and drawlingly. He played as if he was humming some sad song. And somewhere far, far away in the forest, another similar voice echoed him.
Mom came up and sat down on a nearby tree stump. Grandfather finished playing, and the echo also finished.
—- So, son, have you heard me calling to the forest now? - said the old man. — Echo is the very soul of the forest. Whatever a bird whistles, whatever an animal screams, it will tell you everything, it will not hide anything.
So I didn’t understand then what an echo was. But on the other hand, I fell in love with it for the rest of my life, loved it like the mysterious voice of the forest, the song of pity, like an old children’s fairy tale.
And now, many, many years later, as soon as I hear an echo in the forest, I immediately remember: a sunny day, birches, a clearing and in the middle of it, on an old stump, something shaggy, gray. Maybe this is our village shepherd sitting, or maybe not a shepherd, but a fairy-tale grandfather-goblin.
He sits on a tree stump, whittling a maple pipe. And then he will play it in the quiet evening hour, when the trees, grass and flowers fall asleep and the horned moon slowly emerges from behind the forest and the summer night sets in.
Georgy Skrebitsky “Ivanovich the Cat”
There lived in our house a huge fat cat - Ivanovich: lazy, clumsy. He ate or slept all day long. Sometimes he would climb onto a warm bed, curl up in a ball and fall asleep. In a dream, it will spread its paws, stretch itself out, and hang its tail down. Because of this tail, Ivanovich often got it from our yard puppy Bobka. He was a very mischievous puppy. As soon as the door to the house is opened, he will rush into the rooms straight to Ivanovich. He will grab him by the tail with his teeth, drag him to the floor and carry him like a sack. The floor is smooth, slippery, Ivanovich will roll on it as if on ice. If you're awake, you won't immediately be able to figure out what's going on. Then he will come to his senses, jump up, hit Bobka in the face with his paw, and go back to sleep on the bed.
Ivanovich loved to lie down so that he was both warm and soft. Either he will lie down on his mother’s pillow, or he will climb under the blanket. And one day I did this. Mom kneaded the dough in a tub and put it on the stove. To make it rise better, I covered it with a still warm scarf. Two hours passed. Mom went to see if the dough was rising well. He looks, and in the tub, curled up like on a feather bed, Ivanovich is sleeping. I crushed all the dough and got all dirty myself. So we were left without pies. And Ivanovich had to be washed.
Mom poured warm water into a basin, put the cat in it and began to wash it. Mom washes, but he doesn’t get angry - he purrs and sings songs. They washed him, dried him and put him back to sleep on the stove.
Ivanovich was so lazy that he didn’t even catch mice. Sometimes a mouse scratches somewhere nearby, but he doesn’t pay attention to it.
One day my mother called me into the kitchen: “Look what your cat is doing!” I look - Ivanovich is stretched out on the floor and basking in the sun, and next to him a whole brood of mice is walking: very tiny ones, running around the floor, collecting bread crumbs, and Ivanovich seems to be grazing them - looking and squinting his eyes from the sun. Mom even threw up her hands:
- What is this being done?
And I say:
- Like what? Can't you see? Ivanovich is guarding the mice. Probably, the mother mouse asked to look after the children, otherwise you never know what could happen without her.
But sometimes Ivanovich liked to hunt for fun. Across the yard from our house there was a grain barn; there were a lot of rats in it. Ivanovich found out about this and went hunting one afternoon.
We were sitting by the window, and suddenly we saw Ivanovich running across the yard with a huge rat in his mouth. He jumped out the window - straight into his mother's room. He lay down in the middle of the floor, released the rat, and looked at his mother: “Here, they say, what kind of hunter I am!”
Mom screamed, jumped up on a chair, the rat scurried under the closet, and Ivanovich sat and sat and went to sleep.
Since then, Ivanovich has been gone. In the morning he will get up, wash his face with his paw, have breakfast and go to the barn to hunt. Not a minute will pass, and he is in a hurry home, dragging the rat. He will bring you into the room and let you out. Then we got along so well: when he goes hunting, now we lock all the doors and windows. Ivanovich scolds the rat around the yard and lets it go, and it runs back into the barn. Or, it happened, he would strangle a rat and let him play with it: he would throw it up, catch it with his paws, or he would put it in front of him and admire it.
One day he was playing like this - suddenly two crows came out of nowhere. They sat down nearby and began jumping and dancing around Ivanovich. They want to take the rat away from him - and it’s scary. They galloped and galloped, then one of them grabbed Ivanovich’s tail from behind with her beak! He turned head over heels and followed the crow, and the second one picked up the rat - and goodbye! So Ivanovich was left with nothing.
However, although Ivanovich sometimes caught rats, he never ate them. But he really loved to eat fresh fish. When I come back from fishing in the summer, I just put the bucket on the bench, and he’s right there. He will sit next to you, put his paw in the bucket, straight into the water, and fumble around there. He will hook a fish with his paw, throw it on the bench and eat it.
Ivanovich even got into the habit of stealing fish from the aquarium. Once I put the aquarium on the floor to change the water, and I went to the kitchen to get water. I come back, I look and can’t believe my eyes: at the aquarium, Ivanovich stood up on his hind legs, and threw his front legs into the water and caught fish, as if from a bucket. I was then missing three fish.
From that day on, Ivanovich was simply in trouble: he never left the aquarium. I had to cover the top with glass. And if you forget, now he’ll pull out two or three fish. We didn’t know how to wean him off this.
But, fortunately for us, Ivanovich himself weaned himself very soon.
One day I brought crayfish from the river instead of fish in a bucket and put it on the bench, as always. Ivanovich immediately came running and pawed right into the bucket. Yes, suddenly he screams. We look - the crayfish grabbed the paw with its claws, and after it - a second one, and after the second - a third... Everyone is dragging their paws out of the bucket, moving their mustaches and clicking their claws. Here Ivanovich’s eyes widened in fear, his fur stood on end: “What kind of fish is this?” He shook his paw, and all the crayfish fell to the floor, and Ivanovich himself tailed like a pipe - and marched out the window. After that, he didn’t even come close to the bucket and stopped climbing into the aquarium. I was so scared!
In addition to fish, we had a lot of different animals in our house: birds, guinea pigs, hedgehogs, bunnies... But Ivanovich never touched anyone. He was a very kind cat and was friends with all animals. Only at first Ivanovich could not get along with the hedgehog.
I brought this hedgehog from the forest and put it on the floor in the room. The hedgehog first lay curled up in a ball, and then turned around and ran around the room. Ivanovich became very interested in the animal. He approached him in a friendly manner and wanted to sniff him. But the hedgehog, apparently, did not understand Ivanovich’s good intentions; he spread his thorns, jumped up and stabbed Ivanovich very painfully in the nose.
After this, Ivanovich began to stubbornly avoid the hedgehog. As soon as he crawled out from under the closet, Ivanovich hurriedly jumped onto a chair or onto the window and did not want to go down.
But one day after dinner, mom poured soup into a saucer for Ivanovich and put him on the rug. The cat sat down more comfortably near the saucer and began to lap. Suddenly we see a hedgehog crawling out from under the closet. He got out, pulled his nose and went straight to the saucer. He came over and also started eating. But Ivanovich doesn’t run away - apparently he’s hungry, he glances sideways at the hedgehog, but he’s in a hurry, drinking. So the two of them lapped up the entire saucer.
From that day on, mom began to feed them together every time. And how well they adapted to it! All mother has to do is hit the ladle against the saucer, and they are already running. They sit next to each other and eat. The hedgehog will stretch out its muzzle, add thorns, and look so smooth. Ivanovich stopped being afraid of him completely, and so they became friends.
Everyone loved Ivanovich very much for his good disposition. It seemed to us that in his character and intelligence he was more like a dog than a cat. He ran after us like a dog: we go to the garden - and he follows us, mother goes to the store - and he runs after her. And when we return in the evening from the river or from the city garden, Ivanovich is already sitting on a bench near the house, as if he was waiting for us. As soon as he sees me or Seryozha, he will immediately run up, start purring, rub against his legs, and after us he will quickly hurry home.
The house where we lived stood on the very edge of the town. We lived in it for several years, and then moved to another one, on the same street.
When we moved, we were very afraid that Ivanovich would not get along in new apartment and will run away to the old place. But our fears turned out to be completely unfounded. Finding himself in an unfamiliar room, Ivanovich began to examine and sniff everything, until he finally reached his mother’s bed. At this point, apparently, he immediately felt that everything was in order, jumped onto the bed and lay down. And when there was a clatter of knives and forks in the next room, Ivanovich immediately rushed to the table and sat down, as usual, next to his mother. That same day he looked around the new yard and garden, even sat on a bench in front of the house. But he never left for the old apartment. This means that it is not always true when they say that a dog is faithful to people, and a cat to its home. For Ivanovich it turned out quite the opposite.
Konstantin Paustovsky “My House”
The small house where I live in Meshchera deserves a description. This is a former bathhouse, a log hut covered with gray planks. The house is located in a dense garden, but for some reason it is fenced off from the garden by a high palisade. This stockade is a trap for village cats who love fish. Every time I return from fishing, cats of all stripes - red, black, gray and white with tan - lay siege to the house. They scurry around, sit on the fence, on roofs, on old apple trees, howl at each other and wait for the evening. They all look, without looking away, at the kukan with fish - it is suspended from the branch of an old apple tree in such a way that it is almost impossible to get it.
In the evening, the cats carefully climb over the palisade and gather under the kukan. They rise on their hind legs, and make swift and deft swings with their front legs, trying to catch the kukan. From a distance it looks like the cats are playing volleyball. Then some impudent cat jumps up, grabs the fish with a death grip, hangs on it, swings and tries to tear the fish off. The rest of the cats hit each other's whiskered faces out of frustration. It ends with me leaving the bathhouse with a lantern. The cats, taken by surprise, rush to the stockade, but do not have time to climb over it, but squeeze between the stakes and get stuck. Then they flatten their ears, close their eyes and begin to scream desperately, begging for mercy.
In autumn, the whole house is covered with leaves, and in two small rooms it becomes light, like in a flying garden.
The stoves are crackling, there is a smell of apples and cleanly washed floors. The tits sit on the branches, pour glass balls in their throats, ring, crackle and look at the windowsill, where a piece of black bread lies.
I rarely spend the night in the house. I spend most nights at the lakes, and when I stay at home, I sleep in an old gazebo in the back of the garden. It is overgrown with wild grapes. In the mornings the sun hits it through the purple, lilac, green and lemon foliage, and it always seems to me that I wake up inside a lit tree. The sparrows look into the gazebo with surprise. They are deadly busy for hours. They tick on a round table dug into the ground. The sparrows approach them, listen to the ticking with one ear or the other, and then peck the clock hard at the dial.
It’s especially good in the gazebo during quiet times autumn nights, when a leisurely vertical rain rustles in a low voice in the garden.
The cool air barely moves the candle tongue. Angular shadows from grape leaves lie on the ceiling of the gazebo. Moth, looking like a lump of gray raw silk, sits on an open book and leaves the finest shiny dust on the page. It smells like rain - a gentle and at the same time pungent smell of moisture, damp garden paths.
At dawn I wake up. The fog rustles in the garden. Leaves are falling in the fog. I pull a bucket of water out of the well. A frog jumps out of the bucket. I douse myself with well water and listen to the shepherd’s horn - he is still singing far away, right on the outskirts.
I go to the empty bathhouse and boil tea. A cricket starts its song on the stove. He sings very loudly and does not pay attention to my steps or the clinking of cups.
It's getting light. I take the oars and go to the river. The chain dog Divny sleeps at the gate. He hits the ground with his tail, but does not raise his head. Marvelous has long been accustomed to my leaving at dawn. He just yawns after me and sighs noisily. I'm sailing in the fog. The East is turning pink. The smell of smoke from rural stoves can no longer be heard. All that remains is the silence of the water and the thickets of centuries-old willows.
Ahead is a deserted September day. Ahead - lost in this huge world fragrant foliage, grass, autumn withering, calm waters, clouds, low sky. And I always feel this confusion as happiness.
Konstantin Paustovsky “Farewell to Summer”
For several days the cold rain poured incessantly. A wet wind rustled in the garden. At four o'clock in the afternoon we were already lighting the kerosene lamps, and it involuntarily seemed that summer was over forever and the earth was moving further and further into the dull fogs, into the uncomfortable darkness and cold.
It was the end of November - the saddest time in the village. The cat slept all day, curled up on an old chair, and shuddered in his sleep when dark water rushed through the windows.
The roads were washed away. The river carried yellowish foam, similar to a shot down squirrel. The last birds hid under the eaves, and for more than a week now no one has visited us: neither grandfather Mitri, nor Vanya Malyavin, nor the forester.
It was best in the evenings. We lit the stoves. The fire was noisy, 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, having put the book aside, he was thinking about what he had read and listening to the hum of the rain on the plank roof.
The lamps burned brightly, and the disabled copper samovar sang and sang his simple song. As soon as he was brought into the room, it immediately became cozy - perhaps because the glass fogged up and it was impossible to see the lonely birch branch, knocking on the window day and night.
After tea we sat by the stove and read. On such evenings, the most pleasant thing was to read the very long and touching novels of Charles Dickens or leaf through the heavy volumes of the magazines “Niva” and “Picturesque Review” from the old years.
At night, Funtik, a small red dachshund, often cried in his sleep. I had to get up and wrap him in a warm woolen rag. Funtik thanked him in his sleep, carefully licked his hand and, sighing, fell asleep. The darkness rustled behind the walls with the splash of rain and blows of the wind, and it was scary to think about those who might have been caught in the impenetrable forests by this stormy night.
One night I woke up with a strange feeling. It seemed to me that I had gone deaf in my sleep. I was lying with eyes closed, listened for a long time and finally realized that I was not deaf, but there was simply an extraordinary silence outside the walls of the house. This kind of silence is called “dead”. The rain died, the wind died, the noisy, restless garden died. You could only hear the cat snoring in its sleep.
I opened my eyes. White and even light filled the room. I got up and went to the window - everything was snowy and silent behind the glass. In the foggy sky, a lonely 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 light that the arrows showed clearly. They showed two o'clock.
I fell asleep at midnight. This means that in two hours the earth changed so unusually, in two short hours the fields, forests and gardens were bewitched by the cold.
Through the window I saw a large gray bird land on a maple branch in the garden. The branch swayed and snow fell from it. The bird slowly rose and flew away, and the snow kept falling like glass rain falling from a Christmas tree. Then everything became quiet again.
Reuben woke up. He looked outside the window for a long time, sighed and said:
— The first snow suits the earth very well.
The earth was elegant, looking like a shy bride.
And in the morning everything crunched around: frozen roads, leaves on the porch, black nettle stems sticking out from under the snow.
Grandfather Mitri came to visit for tea and congratulated him on his first trip.
“So the earth was washed,” he said, “with snow water from a silver trough.”
- Where did you get this, Mitri, such words? - Reuben asked.
- Is there anything wrong? - the grandfather grinned. “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 faded. This happened even before Tsar Peter, my dear, when robbers ruined merchants in the local forests.
It was difficult to stay at home on the first winter day. We went to the forest lakes, and my grandfather accompanied us to the edge of the forest. He also wanted to visit the lakes, but “the ache in his bones did not let him go.”
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, going around familiar places. Flocks of bullfinches sat, ruffled, on rowan trees covered with snow.
We picked several bunches of red rowan, caught in the frost - this was the last memory of summer, of autumn.
On the small lake - it was called Larin's Pond - there was always a lot of duckweed floating around. Now the water in the lake was very black and transparent - all the duckweed had sank to the bottom by winter.
A glass strip of ice has grown along the coast. The ice was so transparent that even close up it was difficult to notice. I saw a flock of rafts 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, darted into the depths, and a white grainy trace of 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 your fingers.
Here and there in the clearings birds flew and squeaked pitifully, the sky overhead was very bright, white, and towards the horizon it thickened, and its color resembled lead, from there came slow, snowy clouds.
The forests became increasingly gloomy, quieter, and finally thick snow began to fall. He melted into black water lakes, tickled the face, powdered the forest with gray smoke.
Winter began to rule the earth, but we knew that under the loose snow, if you rake it with your hands, you could still find fresh forest flowers, we knew that the fire would always crackle in the stoves, that tits remained with us to winter, and winter seemed the same to us beautiful like summer.
Dmitry Mamin-Sibiryak “Emelya the Hunter”
Far, far away, in the northern part Ural mountains, the village of Tychki is hidden in the impassable wilderness of the forest. There are only eleven courtyards in it, actually ten, because the eleventh hut is completely separate, but right next to the forest. Around the village, an evergreen rises like a jagged wall. coniferous forest. From behind the tops of spruce and fir trees you can see several mountains, which seem to have been deliberately surrounded by Tychki on all sides with huge bluish-gray ramparts. Closest to Tychky is the humpbacked Ruchevaya Mountain, with its gray hairy peak, which in cloudy weather is completely hidden in muddy, gray clouds. Many springs and streams run down from Ruchevoy Mountain. One such stream merrily rolls towards Tychky, winter and summer, feeding everyone with icy water, clear as a tear.
The huts in Tychki were built without any plan, as anyone wanted. Two huts stand above the river itself, one is on a steep mountain slope, and the rest are scattered along the bank like sheep. In Tychki there is not even a street, and between the huts there is a well-worn path. Yes, the Tychkovsky peasants probably don’t even need a street at all, because there is nothing to ride on it: in Tychki no one has a single cart. In summer, this village is surrounded by impenetrable swamps, swamps and forest slums, so that it is barely accessible on foot only along narrow forest paths, and even then not always. In bad weather, mountain rivers play strongly, and it often happens that Tychkovo hunters wait three days for the water to subside from them.
All Tychkovsky men are dedicated hunters. In summer and winter, they almost never leave the forest, fortunately it’s just a stone’s throw away. Every season brings with it certain prey: in winter they kill bears, martens, wolves, and foxes; in autumn - squirrel; in spring - wild goats; in the summer - all kinds of birds. In short, the work is hard and often dangerous all year round.
In that hut, which stands right next to the forest, lives the old hunter Emelya with his little grandson Grishutka. Emelya’s hut has completely grown into the ground and looks at the light of God with just one window; the roof on the hut had long since rotted, all that was left of the chimney were fallen bricks. There was no fence, no gate, no barn - there was nothing at Emelina’s hut. Only under the porch made of unhewn logs does the hungry Lysko, one of the best hunting dogs in Tychki, howl at night. Before each hunt, Emelya starves the unfortunate Lysk for three days so that he can better look for game and track down every animal.
“Dedko... and Dedko!..” little Grishutka asked with difficulty one evening. — Do deer walk with calves now?
“With the calves, Grishuk,” Emelya answered, braiding new bast shoes.
- If only I could get a calf, grandpa... Eh?
- Wait, we’ll get it... The heat has arrived, the deer with their calves will be hiding from the gadflies in the thicket, then I’ll get you a calf, Grishuk!
The boy did not answer, but only sighed heavily. Grishutka was only six years old, and he was now lying for the second month on a wide wooden bench under a warm reindeer skin. The boy caught a cold in the spring, when the snow was melting, and still could not get better. His dark face turned pale and lengthened, his eyes became larger, his nose became sharper. Emelya saw how his grandson was melting by leaps and bounds, but did not know how to help the grief. He gave him some kind of herb to drink, took him to the bathhouse twice, but the patient did not feel any better. The boy didn't eat anything. He chews a crust of black bread - and that’s all. Salted goat meat remained from the spring; but Grishuk could not even look at her.
“Look for what you want: a little calf...” thought old Emelya, picking at his bast shoe. “We need to get it now...”
Emela was about seventy years old: gray-haired, hunched over, thin, with long arms. Emelya’s fingers barely straightened, as if they were wooden branches. But he still walked cheerfully and got something by hunting. Only now the old man’s eyes began to change greatly, especially in winter, when the snow sparkles and glitters all around like diamond dust. Because of Emelin’s eyes, the chimney fell apart and the roof rotted, and he himself often sits in his hut when others are in the forest.
It's time for the old man to retire, to a warm stove, but there is no one to replace him, and then Grishutka found himself in our arms, we need to take care of him... Grishutka's father died three years ago from a fever, his mother was eaten by wolves when she was with little Grishutka winter evening was returning from the village to her hut. The child was saved by some miracle. The mother, while the wolves were gnawing at her legs, covered the child with her body, and Grishutka remained alive.
The old grandfather had to raise his granddaughter, and then the disease happened. Misfortune never comes alone...
It was the last days of June, the hottest time in Tychki. Only old and small ones remained at home. Hunters have long scattered through the forest after deer. In Emelya’s hut, poor Lysko had been howling from hunger for three days now, like a wolf in winter.
“Apparently Emelya is going hunting,” the women in the village said.
It was true. Indeed, Emelya soon left his hut with a flintlock rifle in his hand, untied Lysk and headed towards the forest. He was wearing new bast shoes, a knapsack with bread on his shoulders, a torn caftan and a warm reindeer hat on his head. The old man had not worn a hat for a long time, and winter and summer wore his deer hat, which perfectly protected his bald head from the winter cold and from the summer heat.
“Well, Grishuk, get better without me...” Emelya said to his grandson goodbye. “Old woman Malanya will look after you while I go get the calf.”
- Will you bring the calf, grandpa?
“I’ll bring it,” he said.
- Yellow?
- Yellow...
- Well, I’ll wait for you... Be careful, don’t miss when you shoot...
Emelya had been planning to go after the reindeer for a long time, but he still regretted leaving his grandson alone, but now he seemed to be better, and the old man decided to try his luck. And old Malanya will look after the boy - it’s still better than lying alone in a hut.
Emelya felt at home in the forest. And how could he not know this forest when he spent his whole life wandering through it with a gun and a dog. All the paths, all the signs - the old man knew everything for a hundred miles around. And now, at the end of June, it was especially good in the forest: the grass was beautifully full of blossoming flowers, there was a wonderful aroma of fragrant herbs in the air, and the gentle summer sun looked from the sky, bathing the forest, the grass, and the river babbling in the sedge with bright light, and distant mountains. Yes, it was wonderful and good all around, and Emelya stopped more than once to take a breath and look back. The path along which he walked snaked up the mountain, passing large stones and steep ledges. large forest was cut down, and near the road there were young birch trees, honeysuckle bushes, and rowan trees spread out like a green tent. Here and there there were dense copses of young spruce trees, which stood like a green brush on the sides of the road and cheerfully puffed up their pawed and shaggy branches. In one place, from half the mountain, there was a wide view of the distant mountains and Tychki. The village was completely hidden at the bottom of a deep mountain basin, and the peasant huts seemed like black dots from here. Emelya, shielding his eyes from the sun, looked at his hut for a long time and thought about his granddaughter.
“Well, Lysko, look...,” said Emelya when they descended from the mountain and turned off the path into a dense dense spruce forest.
Lysk did not need to repeat the order. He clearly knew his business and, burying his sharp muzzle in the ground, disappeared into the dense green thicket. Only for a moment did we glimpse his back with yellow spots.
The hunt has begun.
Huge spruces rose high to the sky with their sharp tops. Shaggy branches intertwined with each other, forming an impenetrable dark vault above the hunter’s head, through which only here and there a ray of sunshine would glance cheerfully and burn yellowish moss or a wide leaf of fern like a golden spot. Grass does not grow in such a forest, and Emelya walked on the soft yellowish moss, as if on a carpet.
The hunter wandered through this forest for several hours. Lysko seemed to have sunk into the water. Only occasionally will a branch crunch under your foot or a spotted woodpecker fly over. Emelya carefully examined everything around: was there any trace somewhere, had the deer broken a branch with its antlers, had a cloven hoof imprinted on the moss, had the grass on the hummocks been eaten away. It's starting to get dark. The old man felt tired. It was necessary to think about lodging for the night. “Probably the other hunters scared the deer,” thought Emelya. But then Lysk’s faint squeal was heard, and branches crackled ahead. Emelya leaned against the spruce trunk and waited.
It was a deer. A real ten-horned deer, the noblest of forest animals. There he put his branched horns to his very back and listens attentively, sniffing the air, so that the next minute he will disappear like lightning into the green thicket. Old Emelya saw a deer, but it was too far from him to reach it with a bullet. Lysko lies in the thicket and does not dare to breathe, waiting for a shot; he hears the deer, feels its smell... Then a shot rang out, and the deer rushed forward like an arrow. Emelya missed, and Lysko howled from the hunger that was taking him away. The poor dog has already smelled the roasted venison, seen the delicious bone that the owner will throw to him, but instead he has to go to bed with a hungry belly. A very bad story...
“Well, let him take a walk,” Emelya reasoned out loud when he sat by the fire in the evening under a thick hundred-year-old spruce tree. - We need to get a calf, Lysko... Do you hear?
The dog just wagged its tail pitifully, placing its sharp muzzle between its front paws. Today she received one dry crust, which Emelya threw to her.
Emelya wandered through the forest with Lysk for three days and it was all in vain: he didn’t come across a deer with a calf. The old man felt that he was exhausted, but he did not dare to return home empty-handed. Lysko also became depressed and completely emaciated, although he managed to intercept a couple of young hares.
We had to spend the night in the forest near the fire for the third night. But even in his dreams, old Emelya kept seeing the yellow calf that Grishuk asked him for; The old man tracked his prey for a long time, took aim, but every time the deer ran away from under his nose. Lysko, too, probably raved about deer, because several times in his sleep he squealed and began to bark dully.
Only on the fourth day, when both the hunter and the dog were completely exhausted, they completely accidentally attacked the trail of a deer with a calf. It was in a thick spruce thicket on the slope of a mountain. First of all, Lysko found the place where the deer had spent the night, and then he sniffed out the tangled trail in the grass.
“A uterus with a calf,” thought Emelya, looking at the traces of large and small hooves in the grass. “I was here this morning... Lysko, look, my dear!”
The day was hot. The sun was beating down mercilessly. The dog sniffed the bushes and grass with its tongue hanging out; Emelya could barely drag his feet. But then the familiar crackling and rustling... Lysko fell on the grass and did not move. The words of her granddaughter ring in Emelya’s ears: “Dedko, get a calf... And be sure to have a yellow one.” There's the queen... It was a magnificent doe. He stood at the edge of the forest and fearfully looked straight at Emelya. A bunch of buzzing insects circled above the deer and made him flinch.
“No, you won’t deceive me...” thought Emelya, crawling out of his ambush.
The deer had long sensed the hunter, but boldly followed his movements.
“This mother is taking me away from the calf,” thought Emelya, crawling closer and closer.
When the old man wanted to take aim at the deer, he carefully ran a few yards further and stopped again. Emelya crawled up again with his rifle. Again there was a slow creep, and again the deer disappeared as soon as Emelya wanted to shoot.
“You won’t get away from the calf,” Emelya whispered, patiently tracking the animal for several hours.
This struggle between man and animal continued until the evening. The noble animal risked its life ten times, trying to take the hunter away from the hidden fawn; old Emelya was both angry and surprised at the courage of his victim. After all, she still won’t leave him... How many times did he have to kill his mother, who sacrificed herself in this way. Lysko, like a shadow, crawled behind the owner, and when he completely lost sight of the deer, he carefully poked him with his hot nose. The old man looked around and sat down. Ten fathoms away from him, under a honeysuckle bush, stood the same yellow calf he had been following for three whole days. It was a very pretty fawn, only a few weeks old, with yellow fluff and thin legs, its beautiful head was thrown back, and it stretched its thin neck forward when it tried to grab a higher branch. The hunter, with a sinking heart, cocked his rifle and took aim at the head of a small, defenseless animal...
One more moment, and the little deer would have rolled across the grass with a plaintive death cry; but it was at that moment that the old hunter remembered with what heroism his mother defended the calf, remembered how his mother Grishutka saved her son from the wolves with her life. It was as if something broke in old Emelya’s chest, and he lowered the gun. The fawn continued to walk around the bush, plucking leaves and listening to the slightest rustle. Emelya quickly stood up and whistled - the small animal disappeared into the bushes with the speed of lightning.
“Look, what a runner...” the old man said, smiling thoughtfully. - I saw only him: like an arrow... After all, Lysko, our fawn ran away? Well, he, the runner, still needs to grow up... Oh, how nimble you are!..
The old man stood in one place for a long time and kept smiling, remembering the runner.
The next day Emelya approached his hut.
- And... grandfather, did you bring the calf? - Grisha greeted him, waiting impatiently for the old man all the time.
- No, Grishuk... I saw him...
- Yellow?
- He’s yellow, but his face is black. He stands under a bush and plucks leaves... I took aim...
- And missed?
- No, Grishuk: I felt sorry for the small animal... I felt sorry for the uterus... As soon as I whistled, and he, a calf, goaded into the thicket - that’s all I saw. He ran away, shot like that...
The old man told the boy for a long time how he searched for the calf in the forest for three days and how it ran away from him. The boy listened and laughed merrily with his old grandfather.
“And I brought you a wood grouse, Grishuk,” added Emelya, finishing the story. - The wolves would have eaten this anyway.
The capercaillie was plucked and then ended up in a pot. The sick boy ate the wood grouse stew with pleasure and, falling asleep, asked the old man several times:
- So he ran away, little deer?
- He ran away, Grishuk...
- Yellow?
- All yellow, only a black muzzle and hooves.
The boy fell asleep and all night saw a little yellow fawn, who was happily walking through the forest with his mother; and the old man slept on the stove and also smiled in his sleep.
Victor Astafiev “Grandma with raspberries”
At the hundred and first kilometer, a crowd of berry pickers storms the Komarikhinskaya - Tyoplaya Gora train. The train stops here for one minute. And there are tons of berry fields, and everyone has dishes: pots, buckets, baskets, cans. And all the dishes are full. There are raspberries in the Urals - you won’t have too many.
The people are noisy, worried, dishes are rattling and cracking - the train stops for only a minute.
But if the train had stopped for half an hour, there would still have been crush and panic. This is how our passengers are designed - everyone wants to get into the carriage as quickly as possible and then grumble: “What’s it worth? What are you waiting for? Workers!”
There is especially a lot of hubbub and bustle in one carriage. About thirty children are trying to fit into the narrow door of the vestibule, and an old woman is scurrying among them. She “cuts the masses” with her sharp shoulder and reaches the footrest, clinging to it. One of the guys grabs her under the arms, trying to pull her upstairs. The grandmother jumps up like a cockerel, perches on the step, and at this time an accident occurs. What an accident - a tragedy! A real tragedy. A birch bark tube, tied on the chest with a scarf, overturns, and raspberries spill out of it - every single berry.
Tues is hanging on his chest, but upside down. The berries rolled on the gravel, along the rails, along the running board. The grandmother became numb and clutched her heart. The driver, who had already overstayed his stop by three minutes, sounded his horn and the train started moving. The last berry pickers jumped onto the step, hitting the grandmother with the dishes. She looked in shock at the floating red spot of raspberry splashed on the white gravel, and, perking up, shouted:
- Stop! Dear ones, wait! I'll collect it!..
But the train had already picked up speed. A red spot flashed like lightning and went out behind the last carriage. The conductor said sympathetically:
- What is there to collect! What fell from the cart... Grandma, you should have walked into the carriage and not hung on the step.
So, with a suit dangling from her chest, the grandmother appeared in the carriage. The shock still hadn't left her face. Dry, wrinkled lips trembled and trembled, the hands that had worked so hard and deftly that day, the hands of the old peasant woman and the berry farmer, also trembled.
They hastily made room for her - and not just a seat, but the entire bench - by quiet schoolchildren, apparently the whole class had gone out to pick berries. The grandmother sat down silently, noticed the empty container, tore the container along with the old scarf over her head and angrily pushed it under the seat with her heel.
The grandmother sits alone on the entire bench and motionlessly looks at the empty lantern bouncing on the wall. The door of the lantern opens and closes. There is no candle in the lantern. And the lantern is no longer needed. This train has been illuminated by electricity for a long time, but they simply forgot to remove the lantern, and so it remained an orphan, and its door was hanging loose. The lantern is empty. Empty in the room. Grandma's soul is empty. A. after all, just an hour ago she was completely happy. For once, I went to pick berries, climbed through thickets and forest rubble with great effort, quickly, with dexterity, picked raspberries and boasted to the children who met in the forest:
“I was agile before! Oh, she's agile! I picked two buckets of raspberries a day, and scooped up more blueberries or lingonberries with a scoop. I won’t see white light if I’m lying,” the grandmother assured the amazed children. And - once again, imperceptibly, under the tongue, she picked raspberries from the bushes. Things were going well for her, and the convenient old vessel was quickly filling up.
The grandmother is clever and surprisingly talkative. She managed to tell the guys that she was not a lonely person, she survived the entire birth. She shed tears, remembering her grandson Yurochka, who died in the war, because he was a dashing guy and rushed onto a tank, and immediately, wiping away the tears from her sparse eyelashes with a handkerchief, she began to say:
Raspberries in the garden
Grew-aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa...
And she even waved her hand smoothly. There must have been a sociable grandmother once upon a time. I walked and sang in my lifetime...
And now she’s silent, withdrawn. Grandma's grief. The schoolchildren offered her help - they wanted to take the bag and carry it into the carriage - but she didn’t give it. “I myself, little ones, somehow, blessed myself, I’m still agile, wow, agile!”
So much for being agile! So much for you! There were raspberries - and there are no raspberries.
At the Kommuna Ridge junction, three fishermen pile into the carriage. They place bundles of fishing rods with landing nets in the corner, hang duffel bags on ancient cast-iron hooks and sit down next to the grandmother, since only next to her there are free seats.
Having settled down, they immediately burst out a song to the tune of “The Nightingale, the Nightingale is a Little Bird”:
Kalino, Lyamino, Levshino!
Komarikha and Tyoplaya Gora!..
These fishermen themselves composed a song from the names of the local stations, and they apparently liked the song. They repeated it over and over again. The grandmother glanced sideways at the fishermen with annoyance. A young fisherman in a tattered straw hat shouted to the grandmother:
- Pull up, grandma!
The grandmother spat heartily, turned away and began to look out the window. One of the schoolchildren moved closer to the fisherman and whispered something in his ear.
- Oh well! - the fisherman was surprised and turned to the grandmother, who was still looking out the window aloofly and without interest: - How did this happen to you, grandma?! How awkward you are!
And then the grandmother could not stand it, she jumped up:
- Awkward?! You are very clever! I used to know what I was like! I wounded...” She shook her withered fist in front of the fisherman and just as suddenly sank as she became ruffled.
The fisherman cleared his throat awkwardly. His fellow travelers also cleared their throats and stopped singing. The one in the hat thought and thought and, having thought about something, slapped himself on the forehead as if he had killed a mosquito, moved around the carriage, looking into the dishes of the guys:
- Well, show me the trophies! Wow, well done! I picked a bunch of raspberries, well done!..” he praised the freckled girl in ski pants. - And you and your mop!.. And you!.. Well done! Well done! You know what, guys,” the fisherman squinted slyly, meaningfully, “move closer, and I’ll tell you something very interesting in your ear.”
The schoolchildren reached out to the fisherman. He whispered something to them, winking at the grandmother, and the guys’ faces lit up.
Everything in the carriage came to life at once. The schoolchildren began to fuss and talk. Grandma's cup was taken out from under the bench. The fisherman put him at his feet and gave the command:
- Come on! Rash, a handful each. Don't make yourself poor, but grandma will be happy!
And the raspberries flowed into the tub, handfuls at a time, two at a time. The girl in ski pants took the “stump” off her bucket.
Grandma protested:
- I won’t take someone else’s! I've never used someone else's!
- Shut up, grandma! — the fisherman reasoned with her. - What kind of alien thing is this? These guys are all your grandchildren. Good guys. Only their guess is still weak. Rash, boys, rash, don’t be shy!
And when the container was filled to the top, the fisherman solemnly placed it on his grandmother’s lap.
She hugged the vessel with her hands and, sniffing her nose, on which a tear danced, kept repeating:
- Yes, dear, yes, dear!.. But why is this? Why do I need so much? Yes, you are my killer whales!..
Tues was full, even with a shock. The fishermen burst into song again. The schoolchildren also picked it up:
Eh, Kalino, Lyamino, Levshino!
Komarikha and Tyoplaya Gora!..
The train was flying towards the city. The electric locomotive barked mischievously, as if shouting: “Get loose, people! I’m bringing grandma with raspberries!” The wheels of the carriages echoed: “Grandma! Grandma! With raspberries! With raspberries! I'm taking you! I'm taking you!"
And the grandmother sat, clutching a bag of berries to her chest, listened to a silly song and shook her head with a smile:
- And they’ll come up with it! They'll come up with an idea, the devils! And what kind of Eastern-speaking people have gone!..
Victor Astafiev "Belogrudka"
The village of Vereino is located on a mountain. There are two lakes under the mountain, and on their shores, an echo of a large village, there is a small village of three houses - Zuyat.
Between Zuyatami and Vereino there is a huge steep slope, visible many dozens of miles away as a dark humpbacked island. This whole slope is so overgrown with dense forest that people almost never bother there. And how do you get around? As soon as you take a few steps away from the clover field, which is on the mountain, you will immediately roll head over heels down, hitting the dead wood lying crosswise, covered with moss, elderberry and raspberry.
It’s quiet on the slope, damp and twilight. Spruce and fir support reliably bury their inhabitants - birds, badgers, squirrels, stoats - from evil eyes and raking hands. The hazel grouse and capercaillie live here, they are very cunning and cautious.
And one day, perhaps one of the most secretive animals, the white-breasted marten, settled in the thicket of the slope. She lived alone for two or three summers, occasionally appearing at the edge of the forest. The white breast trembled with sensitive nostrils, caught the nasty smells of the village and, if a person approached, pierced like a bullet into the wilderness of the forest.
In the third or fourth summer, Belogrudka gave birth to kittens, small as bean pods. The mother warmed them with her body, licked each one until it was shiny, and when the kittens grew a little older, she began to get food for them. She knew this slope very well. In addition, she was a diligent mother and provided the kittens with plenty of food.
But somehow Belogrudka was tracked down by the Vereinsky boys, followed her down the slope, and hid. The Belogrudka meandered through the forest for a long time, waving from tree to tree, then decided that the people had already left - they often pass by the slope - and returned to the nest.
Several human eyes were watching her. Belogrudka did not feel them, because she was all trembling, clinging to the kittens, and could not pay attention to anything. The white-breasted licked each of the cubs on the muzzle: they say, I’m here now, in an instant, and flew out of the nest.
It became more and more difficult to obtain food day by day. He was no longer near the nest, and the marten went from tree to tree, from fir to fir, to the lakes, then to the swamp, to a large swamp beyond the lake. There she attacked a simple jay and, joyful, rushed to her nest, carrying in her teeth a red bird with a spread blue wing.
The nest was empty. The white-breasted bird dropped its prey from its teeth, darted up the spruce, then down, then up again, to the nest, cunningly hidden in the thick spruce branches.
There were no kittens. If Belogrudka could scream, she would scream.
The kittens are gone, gone.
Belogrudka examined everything in order and discovered that people were trampling around the spruce tree and a man was clumsily climbing the tree, tearing off the bark, breaking off twigs, leaving a reeking smell of sweat and dirt in the folds of the bark.
By evening, Belogrudka definitely tracked down that her cubs were taken to the village. At night she found the house to which they were taken.
Until dawn she rushed around the house: from the roof to the fence, from the fence to the roof. I spent hours sitting on the bird cherry tree, under the window, listening for the kittens to squeak.
But in the yard a chain rattled and a dog barked hoarsely. The owner came out of the house several times and shouted angrily at her. The whitebreast was huddled in a lump on the bird cherry tree.
Now every night she sneaked up to the house, watched, watched, and the dog rattled and raged in the yard.
Once Belogrudka crept into the hayloft and stayed there until daylight, but during the day she did not dare to go into the forest. That afternoon she saw her kittens. The boy carried them out to the porch in an old hat and began to play with them, turning them upside down and flicking them on the nose. More boys came and began feeding the kittens raw meat. Then the owner appeared and, pointing to the kunyat, said:
- Why are you torturing animals? Take it to the nest. They will disappear.
Then there was that terrible day when Belogrudka again hid in the barn and again waited for the boys. They appeared on the porch and argued about something. One of them brought out an old hat and looked into it:
- Eh, I died alone...
The boy took the kitten by the paw and threw it to the dog. A fold-eared yard dog, who had been chained all his life and was accustomed to eating whatever was given, sniffed the kitten, turned it over with his paw and began to leisurely devour it from the head.
That same night, many chickens and hens were strangled in the village, and an old dog was strangled to death on a high dam after eating a kitten. Belogrudka ran along the fence and teased the stupid mongrel so much that she rushed after her, jumped over the fence, fell off and hung.
Ducklings and goslings were found strangled in gardens and on the street. In the outermost houses, which are closer to the forest, the bird has completely hatched.
And for a long time people could not find out who was robbing the village at night. But Belogrudka became completely furious and began to appear at houses even during the day and deal with everything that was within her power. The women gasped, the old women crossed themselves, the men swore:
- It's Satan! They called for an attack!
Belogrudka was waylaid and shot down from a poplar tree near old church. But Belogrudka did not die. Only two pellets got under her skin, and she hid in the nest for several days, licking her wounds.
When she cured herself, she again came to that house, where she seemed to be dragged by a leash.
Belogrudka did not yet know that the boy who took the baby birds was flogged with a belt and ordered to take them back to the nest. But the carefree boy was too lazy to climb into the forest support, threw the coonlets in a ravine near the forest and left. Here they were found and killed by a fox.
Belogrudka was orphaned. She began to recklessly crush pigeons and ducklings not only on the mountain, in Vereino, but also in Zuyaty.
She was caught in the cellar. Having opened the cellar trap, the owner of the last hut in Zuyaty saw Belogrudka.
- So there you are, Satan! - She clasped her hands and rushed to catch the marten.
All the cans, jars, and cups were knocked over and beaten before the woman grabbed the marten.
Belogrudka was imprisoned in a box. She gnawed the boards savagely, crumbling wood chips.
The owner came, he was a hunter, and when his wife told him that she had caught a marten, he said:
- Well, in vain. It is not her fault. She was offended, orphaned, and released the marten into the wild, thinking that she would never appear in Zuyaty again.
But Belogrudka began to rob even more than before. The hunter had to kill the marten long before the season.
In the garden near the greenhouse, he saw her one day, drove her onto a lonely bush and shot. The marten fell into the nettles and saw a dog running towards her with a big barking mouth. The white-breasted snake rose from the nettles, grabbed the dog’s throat and died.
The dog rolled around in the nettles, howling wildly. The hunter unclenched Belogrudka's teeth with a knife and broke two piercingly sharp fangs.
Belogrudka is still remembered in Vereino and Zuyaty. Until now, children here are strictly punished so that they do not dare touch baby animals and birds.
Squirrels, foxes, various birds and little animals now live and breed peacefully between two villages, close to housing, on a steep wooded slope. And when I visit this village and hear the deep-voiced morning hubbub of birds, I think the same thing: “If only there were more slopes like this near our villages and cities!”
Boris Zakhoder "Gray Star"
“Well,” said Papa Hedgehog, “this fairy tale is called “The Gray Star,” but from the title you would never guess who this fairy tale is about. Therefore, listen carefully and do not interrupt. All questions later.
- Are there really gray stars? - asked the Hedgehog.
“If you interrupt me again, I won’t tell you,” Hedgehog answered, but, noticing that his son was about to cry, he softened. - Actually, it doesn’t happen, although, in my opinion, it’s strange - after all grey colour the most beautiful. But there was only one Gray Star.
So, once upon a time there lived a toad - clumsy, ugly, in addition it smelled of garlic, and instead of thorns it had - can you imagine! - warts. Brr!
Fortunately, she did not know that she was so ugly, nor that she was a toad. Firstly, because she was very small and didn’t know much at all, and secondly, because no one called her that. She lived in a garden where Trees, Bushes and Flowers grew, and you should know that Trees, Bushes and Flowers only talk to those whom they really, really love. But you wouldn’t call someone you really, really love a toad.
The hedgehog snorted in agreement.
- Here you go. Trees, Bushes and Flowers loved the toad very much and therefore called it the most affectionate names. Especially Flowers.
- Why did they love her so much? — the Hedgehog asked quietly. The father frowned, and the Hedgehog immediately curled up.
“If you keep quiet, you’ll soon find out,” Hedgehog said sternly. He continued:
— When the toad appeared in the garden, the Flowers asked what its name was, and when she answered that she didn’t know, they were very happy.
“Oh, how great! - said Pansies (they were the first to see her). “Then we’ll come up with a name for you!” Do you want us to call you... let us call you Anyuta?”
“It’s better than Margarita,” said the Daisies. “This name is much more beautiful!”
Then the Roses intervened - they suggested calling her Beauty; The bells demanded that she be called Tinkerbell (this was the only word they knew how to speak), and a flower named Ivan-da-Marya suggested that she be called Vanechka-Manechka.
The Hedgehog snorted and glanced sideways at his father in fear, but the Hedgehog did not get angry, because the Hedgehog snorted at the right time. He continued calmly:
- In a word, there would be no end to the disputes if not for the Asters. And if it weren’t for the Scientist Starling.
“Let her be called Astra,” said the Asters.
“Or better yet. “A star,” said the Scientist Starling. - This means the same thing as Astra, only much more understandable. Besides, she really resembles a star - just look how radiant her eyes are! And since she is gray, you can call her Gray Star - then there will be no confusion! Seems clear?
And everyone agreed with the Scientist Starling, because he was very smart, could speak several real human words and whistled almost to the end a piece of music, which, it seems, is called Hedgehog-Pyzhik or something like that. For this, people built him a house on a poplar tree.
Since then, everyone began to call the toad Gray Star. Everyone except the Bells - they still called her Tinker Bell, but that was the only word they knew how to say.
“There’s nothing to say, little star,” hissed the fat old Slug. He crawled onto the rose bush and approached the tender young leaves. - Nice star! After all, this is the most ordinary gray..."
He wanted to say “toad,” but did not have time, because at that very moment the Gray Star looked at him with her radiant eyes - and the Slug disappeared.
“Thank you, dear Star,” said Rose, turning pale with fear. “You saved me from a terrible enemy!”
“You need to know,” explained the Hedgehog, “that Flowers, Trees and Bushes, although they do no harm to anyone, on the contrary, do only good!” - there are also enemies. A lot of them! The good thing is that these enemies are quite tasty!
- So, Star ate this fat Slug? - asked the Hedgehog, licking his lips.
“Most likely yes,” said the Hedgehog. - True, you can’t guarantee.
No one saw how the Star ate Slugs, Voracious Beetles and Harmful Caterpillars. But all the enemies of the Flowers disappeared as soon as Gray Star looked at them with her radiant eyes. Disappeared forever. And since the Gray Star settled in the garden, the Trees, Flowers and Bushes began to live much better. Especially Flowers. Because the Bushes and Trees protected the Birds from enemies, but there was no one to protect the Flowers - they were too short for Birds.
That's why the Flowers fell in love with Gray Star so much. They blossomed with joy every morning when she came to the garden. All you could hear was: “Star, come to us!” - “No, come to us first! To us!.."
The flowers spoke to her the most kind words, and thanked her, and praised her in every way, but the Gray Star was modestly silent - after all, she was very, very modest, and only her eyes were shining.
One Magpie, who loved to eavesdrop on human conversations, once even asked if it was true that she had something hidden in her head. gem and that's why her eyes shine so much.
“I don’t know,” Gray Star said embarrassedly. “In my opinion, no...”
“Well, Soroka! What a blabbermouth! - said the Scientist Starling. - Not a stone, but confusion, and not in the Star's head, but in yours! Gray Star has radiant eyes because she has clear conscience- after all, she is doing useful work! Seems clear?
- Dad, can I ask a question? - asked the Hedgehog.
- All questions later.
- Well, please, daddy, just one!
- One - so be it.
- Dad, are we useful?
“Very much,” said the Hedgehog, “you can rest assured.” But listen to what happened next.
So, as I already said, the Flowers knew that Gray Star was kind, good and useful. The Birds knew this too. Of course, People knew too, especially Smart People. And only the enemies of the Flowers did not agree with this. “Vile, harmful little bitch!” - they hissed, of course, when Zvezdochka was not around. "Freak! It's disgusting! - the Gluttonous Beetles creaked. “We must deal with her! - the Caterpillars echoed them. “There’s simply no life for her!”
True, no one paid attention to their abuse and threats, and besides, there were fewer and fewer enemies, but, unfortunately, the closest relative of the Caterpillar, the butterfly Urticaria, intervened in the matter. She looked completely harmless and even pretty, but in reality she was terribly harmful. This happens sometimes.
Yes, I forgot to tell you that Gray Star never touched the Butterflies.
- Why? - asked the Hedgehog. -Are they tasteless?
“That’s not why at all, stupid.” Most likely because butterflies look like Flowers, and Star loved Flowers so much! And she probably didn’t know that Butterflies and Caterpillars are almost the same thing. After all, Caterpillars turn into Butterflies, and Butterflies hatch new Caterpillars...
So, the cunning Nettle came up with a cunning plan - how to destroy Gray Star.
“I will soon save you from this vile toad!” - she said to her sisters, the Caterpillars, and her friends, the Beetles and Slugs. And she flew away from the garden.
And when she returned, a Very Stupid Boy was running after her.
He had a skullcap in his hand, he was waving it in the air and thought that he was about to catch the pretty Nettle. Skullcap.
And the cunning Nettle pretended that she was about to get caught: she would sit on a flower, pretend not to notice the Very Stupid Boy, and then suddenly fly up in front of his very nose and fly to the next flowerbed.
And so she lured the Very Stupid Boy into the very depths of the garden, right on the path where Gray Star was sitting and talking with the Learned Starling.
The nettle was immediately punished for her vile act: the Scientist Starling flew off the branch like lightning and grabbed her with his beak. But it was already too late, because the Very Stupid Boy noticed the Gray Star.
Gray Star at first did not understand that he was talking about her, because no one had ever called her a toad. She did not move even when the Very Stupid Boy swung a stone at her.
At that same moment, a heavy stone fell to the ground next to Gray Star. Fortunately, the Very Stupid Boy missed, and Gray Star managed to jump to the side. Flowers and Herbs hid her from view. But the Very Stupid Boy did not stop. He picked up a few more stones and continued to throw them where the grass and flowers were moving.
"Toad! Poisonous toad! - he shouted. - Beat the ugly one!
“Dur-ra-chok! Dur-ra-chok! - the Scientist Starling shouted to him. - What kind of confusion is in your head? After all, she is useful! Seems clear?
But the Very Stupid Boy grabbed a stick and climbed into the Rose Bush - where, as it seemed to him, the Gray Star was hiding.
The Rose Bush pricked him with all its might with its sharp thorns. And the Very Stupid Boy ran out of the garden roaring.
- Hurray! - Hedgehog shouted.
- Yes, brother, thorns are a good thing! - Hedgehog continued. “If Gray Star had thorns, then perhaps she would not have had to cry so bitterly that day.” But, as you know, she had no thorns, and so she sat under the roots of the Rose Bush and wept bitterly.
“He called me a toad,” she sobbed, “ugly!” That's what the Man said, but people are everything they know! So I’m a toad, a toad!..”
Everyone consoled her as best they could: Pansy said that she would always remain their sweet Gray Star; The roses told her that beauty is not the most important thing in life (this was no small sacrifice on their part). “Don’t cry, Vanechka-Manechka,” Ivan-da-Marya repeated, and the Bells whispered: “Ding-Ding, Ting-Ding,” and this also sounded very comforting.
But Gray Star cried so loudly that she did not hear any consolation. This always happens when people start consoling too early. The flowers didn’t know, but the Scientist Starling knew it very well. He let Gray Star cry as much as she could, and then said:
“I won’t console you, darling. I'll tell you only one thing: it's not about the name. And in any case, it doesn’t matter at all what some Stupid Boy, who has nothing but confusion in his head, says about you! For all your friends, you were and will be a sweet Gray Star. Seems clear?
And he whistled a piece of music about... about the Hedgehog-Fawn to cheer up Gray Star and show that he considered the conversation over.
Gray Star stopped crying.
“You’re right, of course, Skvorushka,” she said. “Of course, it’s not a matter of the name... But still... still, I probably won’t come to the garden during the day anymore, so... so as not to meet someone stupid...”
And since then, Gray Star - and not only she, but all her brothers, sisters, children and grandchildren come to the garden and do their useful work only at night.
The hedgehog cleared his throat and said:
- Now you can ask questions.
- How many? - asked the Hedgehog.
“Three,” answered the Hedgehog.
- Oh! Then... First question: is it true that Stars, that is, toads, do not eat butterflies, or is this just a fairy tale?
- Is it true.
- And the Very Stupid Boy said that toads are poisonous. This is true?
- Nonsense! Of course, I don’t advise you to put them in your mouth. But they are not poisonous at all.
- Is it true... Is this the third question?
- Yes, the third one. All.
- As everybody?
- So. After all, you already asked it. You asked: “Is this the third question?”
- Well, dad, you're always teasing.
- Look, how smart! Okay, so be it, ask your question.
- Oh, I forgot... Oh, yes... Where did all these nasty enemies disappear to?
- Well, of course, she swallowed them. She just grabs them with her tongue so quickly that no one can follow it, and they seem to just disappear. And now I have a question, my little furry one: isn’t it time for us to go to bed? After all, you and I are also useful and must also do our Useful Work at night, and now it’s morning...
Marina Moskvina “Magnifying glass”
Once upon a time there was a magnifying glass. It was lying there, lying in the forest - apparently someone had dropped it. And this is what came out of it...
A hedgehog was walking through this forest. He walked and walked and looked and there was a magnifying glass. The hedgehog lived his whole life in the forest and never saw a magnifying glass. He didn't even know that a magnifying glass was called a magnifying glass, so he said to himself:
- What is this thing lying around? Some interesting stuff, huh?
He took the magnifying glass in his paws and began to look through it at the whole world around him. And I saw that the world around me had become big, big, much bigger than before.
And there was a lot more stuff that he hadn’t noticed before. For example, small grains of sand, sticks, holes, lines and boogers.
And then he saw an ant. He had not noticed the Ants before because they were small. And now the ant was large, magnified with a magnifying glass, and it was also dragging a real log.
Although in fact it was a blade of grass, if you look without a magnifying glass.
The hedgehog really liked this ant, the way it was dragging a heavy log. And I liked his face: the ant had a good face - kind and thoughtful.
And suddenly... the ant fell into the spider's web. I gaped and - bam! - got it. I immediately got confused, and the spider was right there, dragging the ant towards itself, wanting to eat it!
The hedgehog pointed a magnifying glass at the spider and even got scared - this spider had such an angry, angry and greedy face!
Then the hedgehog said to the spider:
- Well, let the ant go, or else I’ll give it to you! There won’t be a wet spot left of you, you’re so mean and greedy!
The spider got scared because the hedgehog was much bigger and much stronger. He released the ant, pretended that it had changed for the better, and said:
- I won't do it again. From now on I will only eat mushrooms and berries. Well, I'm off...
And he thinks:
“What’s wrong with the hedgehog? In the good old days, I ate whole heaps of Ants - he never stood up for anyone. It's all the magnifying glass's fault! Well, I’ll take revenge on him, destroy him, smash him to pieces!..”
And the spider followed the hedgehog unnoticed. But the hedgehog doesn’t notice him, he walks along and looks around through a magnifying glass.
- Tell me, dear, where are you from? Who are you? - he asks everyone he meets.
- I am an aphid!
- I am a scolopendra!
- I am a forest bug!..
- Buddies! Countrymen! Brother rabbits!!! - the hedgehog is surprised. - There are so many people in the world!.. Caterpillar, stop gnawing on the leaves!
- This is my own business! - the caterpillar snapped.
- Yes! - A spider poked its head out of the bushes. “Everyone’s personal business is what and who they eat.”
- No, public! - says the hedgehog. He turned around, but the spider had disappeared.
- Comrade! - the hedgehog shouts to the centipede. - Why are you darker than a cloud?
- I twisted my ankle. As you can see, there is a fracture.
The hedgehog put down the magnifying glass and wanted to provide first aid. And how the spider throws a lasso! He threw it on a magnifying glass and dragged him into the bushes!
Fortunately, the hedgehog without glass could not tell which leg the centipede was hurting - the thirty-third or thirty-fourth. I made it on time. Otherwise, look for fistulas!..
At every step there was danger lurking with a magnifying glass.
- Friends! - the hedgehog screams. —— Single-celled brothers! Midges, insects, ciliates, slippers! I invite everyone to visit! I'll give you a feast!
He leaned the glass against a pine tree and left it unattended for a minute. Spider grab a shovel! And let’s quickly bury the magnifying glass in the ground.
And through the glass the sun began to shine on the spider, the heat turned out to be increased! Like in Africa, in the Sahara Desert. Only a tarantula or a scorpion could endure this. And this was our Central Russian spider. I barely made it, otherwise I would have been sunstroke.
The hedgehog is walking home, and behind him is a countless company that cannot be seen naked eye. They fly, crawl, swim, some jump... Shu-shu-shu! - They won’t understand what’s the matter. The hedgehog never paid any attention to them, but then suddenly - all of a sudden!
But the spider is not far behind.
“I won’t be me,” he thinks, “if I don’t hurt the hedgehog!” I won't do any harm! I won’t destroy the magnifying glass!”
Everyone comes into the house in a crowd, and he waits outside, waiting for the right moment.
The insects sat down at the table, prepared to help themselves, and heard a hoarse bass voice coming from under the table:
- Basta, I'm leaving! I will live and work on a river boat.
The hedgehog looked under the table through a magnifying glass - and there was a terrible creature. He has such a long body, long wings, long legs and long mustache. But that's not all. Lying there under the table musical instrument- saxophone.
- Who is this? - asks the hedgehog.
“Oh, you,” said the creature. “You and I have been living in the same house for ages, and you don’t even know that I’m a cricket.”
“Here the cricket’s life is full of sadness,” said the cricket. - I'm always sick. There has been no glass in the window for a year now. I’ll get a job in a street orchestra!.. Big band!.. Otherwise, the hedgehog, apparently, decided that any idiot can play jazz.
- Don't go! - says the hedgehog. - So many songs have not been sung yet!..
And he put a magnifying glass in the window.
The festive dinner has begun! The cricket warmed up and alone replaced the whole dance orchestra. He didn't even expect that it could turn out so great. The forest bug sang, the others - including a hedgehog and a centipede with a plastered leg - danced. The ciliate slipper was tap dancing!..
And the caterpillar ate without stopping. I ate six buns with jam, an apple pie, four kulebyaki, drank two liters of milk and a pot of coffee.
It got dark outside. The stars lit up in the sky. Through a magnifying glass they seemed huge and bright. And the spider is right there. I crept up to the house under the cover of darkness with a big, big soccer ball, took aim at the magnifying glass and wow!
“Yeah! - thinks. “Now it’s ding-ding and gone!”
And it stands in the frame undamaged - and enlarges, as if nothing had happened. The spider beat him, beat him, beat him with a stick, shot him with pine cones, but did not harm him in any way.
It is very thick and strong - a magnifying glass.
Mikhail Prishvin “The Forest Master”
That was on a sunny day, otherwise I’ll tell you what it was like 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 was trying to be the first and catch the first drop of rain. And so it became in the forest, as if every smallest entity had received its own, separate expression.
So I come to them at this time, and it seems to me: they all, like people, turned their faces to me and, out of their stupidity, ask me, like God, for rain.
“Come on, old man,” I ordered the rain, “you will make us all tired, go, go, start!”
But this time the rain did not listen to me, and I remembered my new straw hat: it would rain and my hat would disappear. But then, thinking about the hat, I saw an extraordinary tree. It grew, of course, in the shade, and that is why its branches were once down. Now, after selective felling, it found itself in the light, and each of its branches began to grow upward. Probably, the lower branches would have risen over time, but these branches, having come into contact with the ground, sent out roots and clung to them... So under the tree with the branches raised up, a good hut was made at the bottom. Having chopped spruce branches, I sealed it, made an entrance, and laid a seat underneath. And just sat down to start a new conversation with the rain, as I see, it’s burning very close to me a big tree. I quickly grabbed a spruce branch from the hut, gathered it into a broom and, lashing it at the burning place, little by little extinguished the fire before the flames burned through the bark of the tree all around and thereby made it impossible for the sap to move.
The area around the tree was not burned by a fire, no cows were grazed here, and there could not have been shepherds on whom everyone blames for the fires. Remembering my childhood robber years, I realized that the resin on the tree was most likely set on fire by some boy out of mischief, out of curiosity to see how the resin would burn. Going back to my childhood years, I imagined how pleasant it would be to strike a match and set fire to a tree.
It became clear to me that the pest, when the resin caught fire, suddenly saw me and immediately disappeared somewhere in the nearby bushes. Then, pretending that I was continuing on 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 didn't have to wait long for the robber. A blond boy of about seven or eight years old came out of the bush, with a reddish sunny glow, bold, with 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 it so much that he even turned around himself.
This didn't bother him; on the contrary, he, like a real owner of the forests, 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 big basket in hand.
“Zina,” said the boy, “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 man hadn’t come and put out the fire, then, perhaps, the whole forest would have burned from this tree.” If only we could have seen it then!
- You are an idiot! - said Zina.
“It’s true, Zina,” I said, “I thought of something to brag about, a real fool!”
And as soon as I said these words, the perky owner of the forests suddenly, as they say, “fled away.”
And Zina, apparently, did not even think about answering for the robber; she looked at me calmly, only her eyebrows rose a little in surprise.
Seeing such an intelligent girl, I wanted to turn this whole story into a joke, win her over, and then work on the owner of the forests together.
Just at this time, the tension of all living 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 and smiled graciously 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 and began to fall. And the girl seriously, thoughtfully focused on me and pursed her lips, as if she wanted to say: “Jokes aside, but still it started to rain.”
“Zina,” I said hastily, “tell me what you have in this big basket?”
She showed: there were two porcini mushrooms. We put my new hat in the basket, covered it with ferns and headed out of the rain to my hut. Having broken some more spruce branches, we covered it well and climbed in.
“Vasya,” the girl shouted. - He'll be fooling around, come out!
And the owner of the forests, driven by the pouring rain, was not slow 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 goo-goo!
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 tufted hazel grouse, driven by the rain, burst into the middle of our dense fir tree and sat down right above the hut. A finch nestled in full view under a branch. The hedgehog has arrived. A hare hobbled past. And for a long time the rain whispered and whispered something to our Christmas tree. And we sat for a long time, and it was as if the real owner of the forests was whispering, whispering, whispering to each of us separately...
Mikhail Prishvin “Dead tree”
When the rain stopped and everything around sparkled, we followed a path made by the feet of passers-by and emerged from the forest. Right at the exit there stood 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.”
Having looked at this tree, I said to the children:
“Perhaps a passerby, wanting to rest here, stuck an ax into this tree and hung his heavy bag on the ax.” The tree then became ill and began to heal the wound with resin. Or maybe, fleeing from a hunter, a squirrel hid in the dense crown of this tree, and the hunter, in order to drive it out of its shelter, began to bang on the trunk with a heavy log. Sometimes just one blow is enough for a tree to get sick.
And many, many things can happen to a tree, as well as to a person and to any living creature, that can cause illness. Or maybe lightning struck?
Something started, and the tree began to fill its wound with resin. When the tree began to get sick, the worm, of course, found out about it. Zakorysh climbed under the bark and began to sharpen there. In his own way, the woodpecker somehow found out about the worm and, in search of a thorn, began to chisel a tree here and there. Will you find it soon? Otherwise, it may be that while the woodpecker is chiseling and chiseling so that he could grab it, the bark will advance at this time, and the forest carpenter must chisel again. And not just one bark, and not just one woodpecker either. This is how woodpeckers peck at 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 lighting fires in the forest, collect wood and set it on fire. To make it ignite faster, they scrape off the resinous crust from the tree. So, little by little, a white ring formed around the tree from the chipping, the upward movement of sap stopped, and the tree withered. Now tell me, who is to blame for the death of a beautiful tree that stood in place for at least two centuries: disease, lightning, bark, woodpeckers?
- Zakorysh! - Vasya said quickly.
And, looking at Zina, he corrected himself:
The children were probably very friendly, and the quick Vasya was used to reading the truth from the face of the calm, smart Zina. So, he probably would have licked the truth from her face this time, but I asked her:
- And you, Zinochka, how do you think, my dear daughter?
The girl put her hand around her mouth, looked at me with intelligent eyes, like at a teacher at school, and answered:
— People are probably to blame.
“People, people are to blame,” I picked up after her.
And, like a real teacher, he told them everything, as I think for myself: that the woodpeckers and the bark are not to blame, because they have neither the human mind nor the conscience that illuminates the guilt in man; that each of us is born a master of nature, but we just have to learn a lot to understand the forest in order to gain the right to manage it and become a real master of the forest.
I didn’t forget to tell you about myself that I still study constantly and without any plan or idea, I don’t interfere with anything in the forest.
Here I did not forget to tell you about my recent discovery of fiery arrows, and how I spared even one cobweb.
After that we left the forest, and this is what happens to me now all the time: in the forest I behave like a student, but I come out of the forest like a teacher.
Mikhail Prishvin “Floors of the Forest”
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; blackbirds - even higher, on the bushes; hollow birds - woodpeckers, titmice, owls - even higher; At different heights along the tree trunk and at the very top, predators settle: hawks and eagles.
I once had the opportunity to observe in the forest that they, animals and birds, have floors that are not like our skyscrapers: with us you can always change with someone, with them each breed certainly lives in its own floor.
One day while hunting we came to a clearing with dead birches. It often happens that birch trees grow to a certain age and dry out.
Another tree, having dried up, drops its bark to the ground, and therefore the uncovered wood soon rots and the whole tree falls, but the bark of a birch does not fall; This resinous bark, white on the outside - birch bark - is an impenetrable case for a tree, and a dead tree stands for a long time as if it were alive.
Even when the tree rots and the wood turns into dust, weighed down with moisture, the white birch appears to stand as if alive. But as soon as you give such a tree a good push, it suddenly breaks into heavy pieces and falls. Cutting down such trees is a very fun activity, but also dangerous: a piece of wood, if you don’t dodge it, can hit you hard 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 nut nest. The little chicks were not injured when the tree fell; they only fell out of the hollow together with their nest. Naked chicks, covered with feathers, opened their 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 snack, they ate, swallowed and squeaked again.
Very soon the parents arrived, little chickadees, with white, plump cheeks and worms in their mouths, and sat down on nearby trees.
“Hello, dears,” we told them, “a misfortune has happened; we didn't want this.
The Gadgets couldn’t answer us, but, most importantly, they couldn’t understand what had happened, where the tree had gone, where their children had disappeared. They were not at all afraid of us, they fluttered from branch to branch in great anxiety.
- Yes, here they are! — we showed them the nest on the ground. - Here they are, listen to how they squeak, how they call you!
The Gadgets didn’t listen to anything, they fussed, worried, and didn’t want to go down and go beyond their floor.
“Or maybe,” we said to each other, “they are afraid of us.” Let's hide! - And they hid.
No! The chicks squealed, the parents squeaked, fluttered, but did not go down.
We guessed then that the birds, unlike ours in skyscrapers, cannot change floors: now it just seems to them that the entire floor with their chicks has disappeared.
“Oh-oh-oh,” said my companion, “what fools you are!”
It became pitiful and funny: 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 a neighboring birch tree and placed our piece with the nest on it exactly at the same height as the destroyed floor.
We didn't have to wait long in ambush: a few minutes later the happy parents met their chicks.
Mikhail Prishvin "Old Starling"
The starlings hatched and flew away, and their place in the birdhouse has long been taken by sparrows. But still, on a nice dewy morning, an old starling flies to the same apple tree and sings.
That's strange!
It would seem that everything is already over, the female hatched the chicks long ago, the cubs grew up and flew away...
Why does the old starling fly every morning to the apple tree where he spent his spring and sing?
Mikhail Prishvin “Spiderweb”
It was a sunny day, so bright that the rays penetrated even the darkest forest. I walked forward along such a narrow clearing that some trees on one side 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 it was still there: the aspens were babbling above, and below, as always, the ferns were swaying importantly.
Suddenly I noticed: from side to side across the clearing, from left to right, some small fiery arrows were constantly flying here and there. As always in such cases, I focused my attention on the arrows and soon noticed that the arrows were moving with the wind, from left to right.
I also noticed that on the trees, their usual shoots-legs came out of their orange shirts and the wind blew away these no longer needed shirts from each tree in a great multitude: each new paw on the tree was born in an orange shirt, and now as many paws, as many shirts flew off - thousands, millions...
I saw how one of these flying shirts met 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 that was invisible to me, and this gave me the opportunity to approach the cobweb point-blank and fully understand the phenomenon of the arrows: the wind blows the cobweb towards sunbeam, the shiny web flashes from the light, and this makes it seem 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 apart, 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 force all the forest spiders to 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 it, helped me unravel the phenomenon of the arrows.
Was I cruel, tearing apart thousands of webs?
Not at all: I didn’t see them - my cruelty was a consequence of my physical strength.
Was I merciful, bending my weary back to save the web? I don’t think so: in the forest I behave like a student, and if I could, I wouldn’t touch anything.
I attribute the salvation of this web to the action of my concentrated attention.
M.M. Prishvin
Mikhail Prishvin did not even think about purposefully writing works for children. He just lived in the village and was surrounded by all this natural beauty, something was constantly happening around him and these events formed the basis of his stories about nature, about animals, about children and their relationships with the outside world. The stories are short and easy to read, despite the fact that the author is far from our contemporary. On this page of our library you can read stories by M. Prishvin. Reading Prishvin online.
M.M. Prishvin
Stories about animals and nature
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 started tapping: knock-knock-knock. It was very similar, as if a car was walking in the distance. I touched him with the tip of my boot - he snorted terribly and pushed his needles into the boot.
Oh, you're like that with me! - I said and pushed him into the stream with the tip of my boot.
Instantly, the hedgehog turned around in the water and swam to the shore, like a small pig, only instead of bristles there were needles on its back. I took a stick, rolled the hedgehog into my hat and took it home.
I had a lot of mice. I heard that the hedgehog catches them, and I 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 kept looking at the hedgehog out of the corner of my eye. He did not lie motionless for long: as soon as I quieted down at the table, the hedgehog turned around, looked around, tried to go this way, that way, finally chose a place under the bed and became completely quiet there.
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 the moon had risen in the forest: when there is a moon, hedgehogs love to run through forest clearings.
And so he started running around the room, imagining that it was a forest clearing.
I took the pipe, lit a cigarette and blew a cloud near the moon. It became just like in the forest: both the moon and the cloud, and my legs were like tree trunks and, probably, the hedgehog really liked: 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 the candle and only noticed how the 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 stayed awake, thinking:
Why did the hedgehog need the newspaper?
Soon my tenant ran out from under the bed - and straight to the newspaper; he spun around around her, made noise, made noise, and finally managed to: somehow put a corner of a newspaper on his thorns and dragged it, huge, into the corner.
That’s when I understood him: the newspaper was like dry leaves in the forest to him, he was dragging it for his nest. And it turned out to be true: soon the hedgehog wrapped himself in newspaper and made himself a real nest out of it. Having finished this important task, he left his home and stood opposite the bed, looking at the moon candle.
I let the clouds in and ask:
What else do you need? The hedgehog was not afraid.
Do you want to drink?
I wake up. The hedgehog doesn't run.
I took a plate, put it on the floor, brought a bucket of water and then poured water into the plate, then poured it into the bucket again, and made such a noise as if it was a stream splashing.
Well, go, go, I say. - You see, I made the moon for you, and sent the clouds, and here is water for you...
I look: it’s like he’s moved forward. And I also moved my lake a little towards it. He will move, and I will move, and that’s how we agreed.
Drink, I say finally. He began to cry. And I ran my hand over the thorns so lightly, as if I was stroking them, and I kept saying:
You're a good guy, you're a good guy!
The hedgehog got drunk, I say:
Let's sleep. He lay down and blew out the candle.
I don’t know how long I slept, but I hear: I have work in my room again.
I light a candle, and what do you think? A hedgehog is running around the room, and there is an apple on its thorns. He ran to the nest, put it there and ran into the corner after another, and in the corner there was a bag of apples and it fell over. So the hedgehog ran up, curled up near the apples, twitched and ran again, dragging another apple into the nest on the thorns.
So the hedgehog settled down to live with me. And now, when drinking tea, I will certainly bring it to my table and either pour milk into a saucer for him to drink, or give him some buns for him to eat.
birch bark tube
I found an amazing birch bark tube. When a person cuts himself a piece of birch bark on a birch tree, the rest of the birch bark near the cut begins to curl into a tube. The tube will dry out and 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, grabbed so tightly that it was difficult to push it out with a stick. There were no hazel trees around the birch tree. How did he get there?
“The squirrel probably hid it there, making its winter supplies,” I thought. “She knew that the tube would roll up tighter and tighter and grab the nut tighter and tighter so that it wouldn’t fall out.”
But later I realized that it was not a squirrel, but a nutcracker bird that stuck the nut, maybe stealing it from the 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 were covered with its web.
Fox bread
One day I walked in the forest all day and in the evening I returned home with rich booty. He took the heavy bag off his shoulders and began to lay out his belongings on the table.
What kind of bird is this? - Zinochka asked.
Terenty,” I answered.
And he told her about the black grouse: how it lives in the forest, how it mutters in the spring, how it pecks at birch buds, collects berries in the swamps in the fall, and warms itself from the wind under the snow in winter. He also told her about the hazel grouse, showed her that it was gray with a tuft, and whistled into the pipe in the hazel grouse style and let her whistle. I also poured a lot of porcini mushrooms, both red and black, onto the table. I also had a bloody boneberry in my pocket, and a blue blueberry, and a red lingonberry. I also brought with me a fragrant lump of pine resin, gave it to the girl to smell and said that trees are treated with this resin.
Who treats them there? - Zinochka asked.
They are treating themselves,” I answered. “Sometimes a hunter comes and wants to rest, he’ll stick an ax into a tree and hang his bag on the ax, and lie down under the tree.” He'll sleep and rest. He takes an ax out of the tree, puts on a bag, and leaves. And from the wound from the wood ax this fragrant resin will run and heal the wound.
Also on purpose for Zinochka, I brought various wonderful herbs, one leaf at a time, a root at a time, a flower at a time: cuckoo’s tears, valerian, Peter’s cross, hare’s 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 surprising here? After all, there is cabbage there!
Hare…
And the bread is chanterelle bread. Taste it. I tasted it carefully and started eating:
Good chanterelle bread!
And she ate all my black bread clean. And so it went with us: Zinochka, such a copula, often won’t even take white bread, but when I bring fox bread from the forest, she will always eat it all and praise it:
Chanterelle bread is much better than ours!
Guys and ducklings
A small wild teal duck finally decided to move 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 only be found about three miles away, on a hummock, in a swamp forest. And when the water subsided, we had to travel all three miles to the lake.
In places open to the eyes of man, fox and hawk, the mother walked behind so as not to let the ducklings out of sight for a minute. And near the forge, when crossing the road, she, of course, let them go ahead. That’s where the guys saw them and threw their hats at them. All the time while they were catching the ducklings, the mother ran after them with an open beak or flew several steps in different directions in the greatest excitement. The guys were just about to throw hats at their mother and catch her like ducklings, but then I approached.
What will you do with the ducklings? - I asked the guys sternly.
They chickened out and replied:
Let’s “let it go”! - I said very angrily. - Why did you need to catch them? Where is mother now?
And there he sits! - the guys answered in unison.
And they pointed me to a nearby hillock of a fallow field, where the duck was actually sitting with her mouth open in excitement.
Quickly,” I ordered the guys, “go and return all the ducklings to her!”
They even seemed to be delighted at my order and ran straight up the hill with the ducklings. The mother flew away a little and, when the guys left, rushed to save her sons and daughters. In her own way, she quickly said something to them and ran to the oat field. Five ducklings ran after her. And so, through the oat field, bypassing the village, the family continued its journey to the lake.
I joyfully took off my hat and, waving it, shouted:
Bon voyage, ducklings!
The guys laughed at me.
Why are you laughing, you fools? - I told the guys. - Do you think it’s so easy for ducklings to get into the lake? Quickly take off all your hats and shout “goodbye”!
And the same hats, dusty on the road while catching ducklings, rose into the air, and the guys all shouted at once:
Goodbye, ducklings!
Forest Doctor
We wandered in the forest in the spring and observed the life of hollow birds: woodpeckers, owls. Suddenly, in the direction where we had previously identified an interesting tree, we heard the sound of a saw. It was, as we were told, the collection of firewood from dead wood for a glass factory. We were afraid for our tree and hurried towards the sound of the saw, but it was too late: our aspen lay there, and there were many empty fir cones around its stump. The woodpecker peeled all this off over the long winter, collected it, carried it to this aspen tree, laid it between two branches of his workshop and chiseled it. Near the stump, on our cut aspen, two boys were resting. All these two boys were doing was sawing the wood.
Oh you pranksters! - we said and pointed them to the cut aspen. - You were ordered to cut dead trees, but what did you do?
“The woodpecker made a hole,” the guys answered. - We looked and, of course, cut it down. It will still be lost.
Everyone began to examine the tree together. It was completely fresh, and only in a small space, no more than a meter in length, did a worm pass inside the trunk. The woodpecker apparently listened to the aspen like a doctor: he tapped it with his beak, realized the emptiness left by the worm, and began the operation of extracting the worm. And the second time, and the third, and the fourth... The thin trunk of the aspen looked like a pipe with valves. The “surgeon” made seven holes and only on the eighth he caught the worm, pulled out and saved the aspen.
We cut this piece out as a wonderful exhibit for a museum.
You see, we told the guys, the woodpecker is a forest doctor, he saved the aspen, and it would live and live, and you cut it down.
The boys were amazed.
Golden Meadow
My brother and I always had fun with them when dandelions ripened. It used to be that we would go somewhere on our business - he was ahead, I was at the heel.
Seryozha! - I’ll call him in a businesslike manner. He will look back, and I will blow a dandelion right in his face. For this, he begins to watch for me and, like a gape, he also makes a fuss. And so we picked these uninteresting flowers just for fun. But once I managed to make a discovery.
We lived in a village, in front of our window there was a meadow, all golden with 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 on the side of your palm were yellow and, clenching into a fist, we would close the yellow one. In the morning, when the sun rose, I saw the dandelions opening their palms, and this made the meadow turn golden again.
Since then, dandelion has become one of the most interesting colors, because dandelions went to bed with us children, and got up with us.
The earth appeared
Comp. part of the chapter "Spring" of the book "Calendar of Nature"
There was no frost for three days, and the fog moved invisibly over the snow. Petya said:
Come out, dad, look, listen, how nicely the oatmeal sings.
I went out and listened - really, very well - and the breeze was so gentle. The road became completely red and humpbacked.
It seemed as if someone had been running after spring for a long time, catching up and finally touching her, and she stopped and thought... Roosters crowed from all sides. Blue forests began to appear from the fog.
Petya peered into the thinning fog and, noticing something dark in the field, shouted:
Look, the ground has appeared!
He ran into the house, and I heard him shout:
Leva, come quickly and look, the ground has appeared!
The mother could not stand it either, she came out, covering her eyes from the light with her palm:
Where did the land appear?
Petya stood in front and pointed with his hand into the snowy distance, like Columbus at sea, and repeated:
Earth, earth!
Upstart
Our hunting dog, the Laika, came to us from the banks of the Biya, and in honor of this Siberian river we named it Biya. But soon this Biya for some reason turned into Biyushka, everyone began to call Biyushka Vyushka.
We didn't hunt much with her, but she served us well as a watchman. You go hunting, and be sure: Vyushka will not let anyone else in.
Everyone likes this cheerful dog Vyushka: ears like horns, a tail like a ring, teeth as white as garlic. She got two bones from lunch. Receiving the gift, Vyushka unwrapped the ring of her tail and lowered it down like a log. For her, this meant anxiety and the beginning of vigilance necessary for protection - it is known that in nature there are many hunters for bones. With her tail lowered, Vyushka went out onto the ant-grass and took care of one bone, placing the other next to her.
Then, out of nowhere, the magpies: hop, hop! - and to the very nose of the dog. When Vyushka turned her head towards one - grab it! Another magpie on the other hand to grab! - and took away the bone.
It was late autumn, and the magpies hatched this summer were fully grown. They stayed here as a brood of seven, and from their parents they learned all the secrets of theft. Very quickly they pecked at the stolen bone and, without thinking twice, were going to take the second one from the dog.
They say that every family has its black sheep, and the same turned out to be true in the magpie family. Out of seven, forty-one came out not so much as completely stupid, but somehow with a streak and with pollen in their heads. Now it was the same: all six forty launched the correct attack, in a large semicircle, looking at each other, and only one Upstart galloped like a fool.
Tra-ta-ta-ta-ta! - all the magpies chirped.
This meant to them:
Jump back, gallop as you should, as the whole magpie society should!
Tra-la-la-la-la! - answered the Upstart.
This meant to her:
Download it the way you want, and I’ll download it the way I want.
So, at her own peril and risk, the Upstart galloped up to Vyushka herself in the expectation that Vyushka, stupid, would rush at her, throw away the bone, but she would contrive and take the bone away.
Vyushka, however, understood the Upstart's plan well and not only did not rush at her, but, noticing the Upstart with a sidelong eye, freed the bone and looked in the opposite direction, where in a regular semicircle, as if reluctantly - they would think - six smart magpies were advancing.
It was this moment, when View turned her head away, that Upstart seized for her attack. She grabbed the bone and even managed to turn in the other direction, managed to hit the ground with her wings, and raise dust from under the grass. And just one more moment to rise into the air, just one more moment! Just as the magpie was about to rise, Vyushka grabbed it by the tail and the bone fell out...
The upstart escaped, but the entire rainbow-colored long magpie tail remained in Vyushka’s teeth and stuck out of her mouth like a long, sharp dagger.
Has anyone seen a magpie without a tail? It’s hard to even imagine what this brilliant, motley and agile egg thief turns into if its tail is cut off.
It happens that mischievous village boys catch a horsefly, stick a long straw in its backside and let this large, strong fly fly with such long tail, - terrible muck! Well, so, this is a fly with a tail, and here is a magpie without a tail; whoever was surprised by a fly with a tail will be even more surprised by a magpie without a tail. Nothing magpie-like then remains in this bird, and you will never recognize it not only as a magpie, but also as any bird: it is just a motley ball with a head.
The tailless Upstart sat down on the nearest tree, and all the other six magpies flew to her. And it was clear from all the magpie’s chirping, from all the bustle, that there is no greater shame in a magpie’s life than to lose a magpie’s tail.
Chicken on poles
In the spring, our neighbors gave us four goose eggs, and we placed them in the nest of our black hen, nicknamed the Queen of Spades. The prescribed days for hatching have passed, and the Queen of Spades brought out four yellow geese. They squeaked and whistled in a completely different way than the chickens, but the Queen of Spades, important and unkempt, did not want to notice anything and treated the goslings with the same maternal care as the chickens.
Spring passed, summer came, dandelions appeared everywhere. Young geese, if their necks are extended, become almost taller than their mother, but still follow her. Sometimes, however, the mother digs up the ground with her paws and calls the geese, and they tend to the dandelions, nudge them with their noses and blow fluff in the wind. Then the Queen of Spades begins to glance in their direction, as it seems to us, with some degree of suspicion. Sometimes, fluffed up and cackling, she digs for hours, but they don’t care: they just whistle and peck at the green grass. It happens that the dog wants to go somewhere past her - where can he go? He will rush at the dog and drive him away. And then he looks at the geese, sometimes he looks thoughtfully...
We began to watch the chicken and wait for such an event - after which she would finally realize that her children did not even look like chickens at all and it was not worth throwing herself at the dogs because of them, risking her life.
And then one day this event happened in our yard. A sunny June day, rich in the scent of flowers, arrived. Suddenly the sun darkened and the rooster crowed.
Kwok, kwok! - the hen answered the rooster, calling her goslings under the canopy.
Fathers, what a cloud is coming! - the housewives shouted and rushed to save the hanging laundry. Thunder struck and lightning flashed.
Kwok, kwok! - insisted the chicken Queen of Spades.
And the young geese, raising their necks high, like four pillars, followed the chicken under the shed. It was amazing for us to watch how, at the hen’s order, four decent goslings, tall as the hen itself, folded into little things, crawled under the hen, and she, fluffing her feathers, spreading her wings over them, covered them and warmed them with her maternal warmth.
But the thunderstorm was short-lived. The cloud cleared, went away, and the sun shone again over our little garden.
When the rain stopped pouring from the roofs and various birds began to sing, the goslings under the hen heard it, and they, the young ones, of course, wanted to be free.
Free, free! - they whistled.
Kwok, kwok! - answered the chicken. And that meant:
Sit a little, it’s still very fresh.
Here's another! - the goslings whistled. - Free, free! And suddenly they stood up on their feet and raised their necks, and the chicken rose as if on four pillars and swayed in the air high from the ground. It was from this time that everything ended for the Queen of Spades with the goslings: she began to walk separately, and the geese separately; Apparently, only then did she understand everything, and the second time she no longer wanted to get on the pillars.
Inventor
In one swamp, on a hummock under a willow, wild mallard ducklings hatched. Soon after this, their mother led them to the lake along a cow path. I noticed them from a distance, hid behind a tree, and the ducklings came right to my feet. I took three of them into my care, the remaining sixteen went further along the cow path.
I kept these black ducklings with me, and they soon all turned gray. Then a handsome multi-colored drake and two ducks, Dusya and Musya, emerged from the gray ones. We clipped their wings so they wouldn’t fly away, and they lived in our yard along with poultry: we had chickens and geese.
With the onset of a new spring, we made hummocks for our savages out of all sorts of rubbish in the basement, like in a swamp, and nests on them. Dusya laid sixteen eggs in her nest and began to hatch the ducklings. Musya put down fourteen, but didn’t want to sit on them. No matter how we fought, the empty head did not want to be a mother.
And we planted our important black hen, the Queen of Spades, on duck eggs.
The time has come, our ducklings have hatched. We kept them warm in the kitchen for a while, crumbled eggs for them, and looked after them.
A few days later it was very good, warm weather, and Dusya led her little ones to the pond, and the Queen of Spades led hers to the garden for worms.
Hang out! - ducklings in the pond.
Crack-crack! - the duck answers them.
Hang out! - ducklings in the garden.
Kwok-kwok! - the chicken answers them.
The ducklings, of course, cannot understand what “kwoh-kwoh” means, but what is heard from the pond is well known to them.
“Svis-svis” means: “friends to friends.”
And “quack-quack” means: “you are ducks, you are mallards, swim quickly!”
And they, of course, look there towards the pond.
Ours to ours!
Swim, swim!
And they float.
Kwok-kwok! - the important hen on the shore rests.
They keep swimming and swimming. They whistled, swam together, and Dusya joyfully accepted them into her family; According to Musa, they were her own nephews.
All day a large duck family swam on the pond, and all day the Queen of Spades, fluffy, angry, clucked, grumbled, kicked worms on the shore, tried to attract the ducklings with worms and clucked to them that there were so many worms, so good worms!
Rubbish, rubbish! - 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, little black, with large duck noses; no one even looked at such a mother.
We collected them all in one high basket and left them to spend the night in the warm kitchen near the stove.
In the morning, when we were still sleeping, Dusya crawled out of the basket, walked around the floor, screamed, and called the ducklings to her. The whistlers answered her cry in thirty voices. To the duck cry of the walls of our house, made of sonorous pine forest, responded in their own way. And yet, in this confusion, we heard the voice of one duckling separately.
Do you hear? - I asked my guys. They listened.
We hear! - they shouted.
And we went to the kitchen.
There, it turned out, Dusya was not alone on the floor. One duckling was running next to her, very worried and whistling 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 began to guess about this, and then he appeared new question: Did the duckling himself come up with some way to get out of the basket after his mother, or did she accidentally touch him with her wing and throw him out? I tied this duckling's leg with a ribbon and released it into the general herd.
We slept through the night, and in the morning, as soon as the morning duck cry was heard in the house, we went into the kitchen.
A duckling with a bandaged paw was running on the floor with Dusya.
All the ducklings, imprisoned in the basket, whistled, were eager to be free and could not do anything. This one got out. I said:
He came up with something.
He's an inventor! - Leva shouted.
Then I decided to see how this “inventor” solved the most difficult problem: to climb a steep wall on his duck webbed feet. I got up the next morning before light, when both my boys and ducklings were fast asleep. In the kitchen, I sat down near the switch so that, when necessary, I could turn on the light and look at the events in the depths of the basket.
And then the window turned white. It was getting light.
Crack-crack! - said Dusya.
Hang out! - answered the only duckling. And everything froze. The boys slept, the ducklings slept. A beep sounded in the factory. The light has increased.
Crack-crack! - Dusya repeated.
No one answered. I realized: the “inventor” has no time now - now, probably, he is solving his most difficult problem. And I turned on the light.
Well, that's how I knew it! The duck had not yet stood up, 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 climbed up the mother’s feathers, like bricks, onto her back. When Dusya stood up, she raised it high, level with the edge of the basket.
The duckling, like a mouse, ran along her back to the edge - and somersaulted down! Following him, the mother also fell to the floor, and the usual morning chaos began: screaming, whistling throughout the 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 quacked in the morning, all the ducklings would land on her back and then fall down.
And my children called the first duckling, who paved the way for others, the Inventor.
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; blackbirds - even higher, on bushes; hollow birds - woodpeckers, titmice, owls - even higher; At different heights along the tree trunk and at the very top, predators settle: hawks and eagles.
I once had the opportunity to observe in the forest that they, animals and birds, have floors that are not like our skyscrapers: with us you can always change with someone, with them each breed certainly lives in its own floor.
One day while hunting we came to a clearing with dead birch trees. It often happens that birch trees grow to a certain age and dry out.
Another tree, having dried up, drops its bark to the ground, and therefore the uncovered wood soon rots and the whole tree falls; The birch bark does not fall off; This resinous bark, white on the outside - birch bark - is an impenetrable case for a tree, and a dead tree stands for a long time as if it were alive.
Even when the tree rots and the wood turns into dust, weighed down by moisture, the white birch tree appears to stand as if alive. But as soon as you give such a tree a good push, it suddenly breaks into heavy pieces and falls. Cutting down such trees is a very fun activity, but also dangerous: a piece of wood, if you don’t dodge it, can hit you hard on the head. But still, we hunters are not very afraid, and when we get to such birch trees, we begin to destroy them in front of each other.
So we came to a clearing with such birch trees and brought down a rather tall birch tree. Falling, in the air it broke into several pieces, and in one of them there was a hollow with a nut nest. The little chicks were not injured when the tree fell; they only fell out of the hollow together with their nest. Naked chicks, covered with foam, opened their 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 snack; they ate, swallowed and squeaked again.
Very soon the parents arrived and the chickadees, with white, plump cheeks and worms in their mouths, sat on nearby trees.
“Hello, dears,” we told them, “a misfortune happened: we didn’t want this.”
The Gadgets couldn’t answer us, but, most importantly, they couldn’t understand what had happened, where the tree had gone, where their children had disappeared.
They were not at all afraid of us, they fluttered from branch to branch in great anxiety.
Yes, here they are! - we showed them the nest on the ground. - Here they are, listen to how they squeak, how they call you!
The Gadgets didn’t listen to anything, they fussed, worried, and didn’t want to go down and go beyond their floor.
Or maybe,” we said to each other, “they are afraid of us.” Let's hide! - And they hid.
No! The chicks squealed, the parents squeaked, fluttered, but did not go down.
We guessed then that the birds, unlike ours in skyscrapers, cannot change floors: now it simply seems to them that the entire floor with their chicks has disappeared.
Oh-oh-oh,” said my companion, “what fools you are!”
It became pitiful and funny: 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 a neighboring birch tree and placed our piece with the nest on it exactly at the same height as the destroyed floor. We didn't have to wait long in ambush: a few minutes later the happy parents met their chicks.
Queen of Spades
A hen is invincible when she, disregarding danger, rushes to protect her chick. My Trumpeter had only to lightly press his jaws to destroy it, but the huge messenger, who knows how to stand up for himself in a fight and with wolves, with his tail between his legs, runs into his kennel from an ordinary chicken.
We call our black hen for her extraordinary parental malice in protecting children, for her beak - a pike on her head - the Queen of Spades. Every spring we put her on eggs wild ducks(hunting), and she hatches and nurses ducklings for us instead of chickens. This year, we happened to overlook something: the hatched ducklings were exposed to cold dew prematurely, got their navels wet, and died, except for the only one. All of us noticed that this year the Queen of Spades was a hundred times angrier than always.
How to understand this?
I don’t think a chicken is capable of being offended by the fact that they turned out to be ducklings instead of chickens. And since the hen has sat on the eggs without noticing, then she has to sit, and she has to sit, and then she has to care for the chicks, she has to protect her from enemies, and she has to bring everything to the end. So she leads them around and does not even allow herself to look at them with doubt: “Are these chickens?”
No, I think this spring the Queen of Spades was annoyed not by deception, but by the death of the ducklings, and her especially concern for the life of the only duckling is understandable: everywhere parents worry more about the child when he is the only one...
But my poor, my poor Grashka!
This is a rook. With a broken wing, he came to my garden and began to get used to this wingless life on earth, terrible for a bird, and had already begun to run up to my call “Grashka,” when suddenly one day, in my absence, the Queen of Spades suspected him of an attempt on the life of her duckling and drove him away. the boundaries of my garden, and he never came to me after that.
What a rook! Good-natured, now elderly, my cop Lada spends hours looking out of the door, choosing a place where she could safely go from chicken to wind. And Trumpeter, who knows how to fight wolves! He will never leave the kennel without checking with his sharp eye whether the path is clear, whether there is a scary black chicken somewhere nearby.
But what can we say about dogs - I’m good myself! The other day I took my six-month-old puppy Travka out of the house for a walk and, just as I turned around the barn, I saw a duckling standing in front of me. There was no chicken nearby, but I imagined it and, terrified that it would peck out Travka’s most beautiful eye, I started running, and how happy I was later - just think! - I was glad that I escaped the chicken!
Last year, too, there was a remarkable incident with this angry chicken. At a time when we began to mow hay in the meadows on cool, light-twilight nights, I decided to give my Trumpeter a little workout and let him chase a fox or a hare in the forest. In a dense spruce forest, at the intersection of two green paths, I gave free rein to the Trumpeter, and he immediately poked into a bush, chased out the young hare and, with a terrible roar, drove him along the green path. At this time it is forbidden to kill hares, I was without a gun and was preparing to indulge in the pleasure of the most kind music for a hunter for several hours. But suddenly, somewhere near the village, the dog broke down, the rut stopped, and very soon Trumpeter returned, very embarrassed, with his tail drooping, and there was blood on his light spots (he was a yellow-piebald with rouge).
Everyone knows that a wolf will not touch a dog when you can pick up a sheep everywhere in the field. And if not a wolf, then why is the Trumpeter covered in blood and in such extraordinary embarrassment?
A funny thought occurred to me. It seemed to me that of all the hares, so timid everywhere, there was only one real and truly brave one in the world, who was ashamed to run away from the dog. “I’d rather die!” - thought my hare. And, turning himself right in the heel, he rushed at Trumpeter. And when the huge dog saw that the hare was running towards him, he rushed back in horror and ran, unconscious, through the thicket and tore his back until it bled. So the hare brought the Trumpeter to me.
Is it possible?
No! This could happen to a person.
This doesn't happen with hares.
Along the same green path where the hare was running from the Trumpeter, I went down from the forest to the meadow and then I saw that the mowers were laughing, talking animatedly and, seeing me, they began to call me to their place, as all people call when the soul is full and I want make it easier.
Gee!
So what are these things?
Oh oh oh!
Gee! Gee!
And this is how things turned out. The young hare, flying out of the forest, rolled along the road to the barns, and after him the Trumpeter flew out and ran at a stretch. It happened that in a clear place the Trumpeter would catch up with an old hare, but it was very easy for him to catch up with a young one. Rusaks love to hide from hounds near villages, in sweeps of straw, in barns. And the Trumpeter overtook the hare near the barn. Queen of Spades Prishvin read: The mowers saw how, at the turn to the barn, Trumpeter opened his mouth to grab the bunny...
The trumpeter would just have had enough, but suddenly a large black chicken flies out of the barn at him - and right into his eyes. And he turns back and runs. And the Queen of Spades is on his back - and pecks and pecks him with her pike.
Gee!
And that’s why the yellow-piebald had blood in his rouge on the light spots: the messenger was pecked by an ordinary chicken.
A sip of milk
Lada got sick. A cup of milk stood near her nose, she turned away. They called me.
Lada,” I said, “we need to eat.”
She raised her head and beat with the rod. I stroked her. From the affection, life began to sparkle in her eyes.
Eat, Lada,” I repeated and moved the saucer closer.
She stretched out her nose to the milk and began to cry.
This means that through my affection she gained more strength. Maybe it was those few sips of milk that saved her life.
Stories by Konstantin Ushinsky about the seasons: summer, winter, autumn, spring. On the behavior of children and animals in different times of the year. Stories about the beauty of nature.
Four wishes. Author: Konstantin Ushinsky
Mitya sledded down an icy mountain and skated on a frozen river, ran home rosy, cheerful and said to his father:
- How fun it is in winter! I wish it were all winter!
“Write your wish in my pocket book,” said the father.
Mitya wrote it down.
Spring came. Mitya ran to his heart’s content in the green meadow after colorful butterflies, picked flowers, ran to his father and said:
- What a beauty this spring is! I wish it were still spring.
The father again took out the book and ordered Mitya to write down his wish.
Summer has come. Mitya and his father went to haymaking. The boy had fun all long day: he fished, picked berries, tumbled in the fragrant hay, and in the evening he said to his father:
- I 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. Fruits were collected in the garden - ruddy apples and yellow pears. Mitya was delighted and said to his father:
— Autumn is the best time of the year!
Then the father took out his notebook and showed the boy that he had said the same thing about spring, and winter, and summer.
Children in the grove. Author: Konstantin Ushinsky
Two children, brother and sister, went to school. They had to pass by a beautiful, shady grove. It was hot and dusty on the road, but cool and cheerful in the grove.
- Do you know what? — the brother said to his sister. “We’ll still have time for school.” The school is now stuffy and boring, but the grove should be a lot of fun. Listen to the birds screaming there, and the squirrels, how many squirrels are jumping on the branches! Shouldn't we go there, sister?
The sister liked her brother's proposal. The children threw the alphabet into the grass, held hands and disappeared between the green bushes, under the curly birches. It was definitely fun and noisy in the grove. The birds fluttered constantly, sang and shouted; squirrels jumped on the branches; insects scurried about in the grass.
First of all, the children saw a golden bug.
“Come play with us,” the children said to the bug.
“I would love to,” answered the beetle, “but I don’t have time: I have to get myself lunch.”
“Play with us,” the children said to the yellow, furry bee.
“I don’t have time to play with you,” answered the bee, “I need to collect honey.”
-Won't you play with us? - the children asked the ant.
But the ant had no time to listen to them: he dragged a straw three times his size and hurried to build his cunning home.
The children turned to the squirrel, inviting it to also play with them, but the squirrel waved its fluffy tail and answered that it must stock up on nuts for the winter. The dove said: “I am building a nest for my little children.”
The little gray bunny ran to the stream to wash his face. White flower There was also no time to take care of the children: he took advantage of the beautiful weather and was in a hurry to prepare his juicy, tasty berries on time.
The children became bored that everyone was busy with their own business and no one wanted to play with them. They ran to the stream. A stream ran through the grove, babbling over the stones.
“You really have nothing to do,” the children told him. “Come play with us.”
- How! I have nothing to do? - the stream gurgled angrily. - Oh, you lazy children! Look at me: I work day and night and don’t know a minute of peace. Am I not the one who sings to people and animals? Who, besides me, washes clothes, turns mill wheels, carries boats and puts out fires? “Oh, I have so much work that my head is spinning,” the stream added and began to murmur over the stones.
The children became even more bored, and they thought that it would be better for them to go to school first, and then, on their way from school, go into the grove. But at this very time the boy noticed a tiny, beautiful robin on a green branch. She sat, it seemed, very calmly and, having nothing to do, whistled a joyful song.
- Hey you, cheerful singer! - the boy shouted to the robin. “It seems like you have absolutely nothing to do: just play with us.”
- How? - whistled the offended robin. - I have nothing to do? Didn’t I catch midges all day to feed my little ones! I am so tired that I cannot raise my wings, and even now I lull my dear children to sleep with a song. What did you do today, little sloths? You didn’t go to school, you didn’t learn anything, you’re running around the grove, and even preventing others from doing their work. Better go where you were sent, and remember that only those who have worked and done everything that was obliged to do are pleased to rest and play.
The children felt ashamed; They went to school and although they arrived late, they studied diligently.
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