Physics 11th grade
Gennady Snegirev is a wild beast. Gennady Snegirev Smart porcupine. Stories and novellas. Visualization summarizing information about the book

Gennady Snegirev is a wild beast. Gennady Snegirev Smart porcupine. Stories and novellas. Visualization summarizing information about the book

- If everyone tears the feathers of a peacock...

There was no one in the cage where the beavers live. Tanya stood for a long time, waiting, maybe the beaver would come out of the hole, but she never did. Beavers do not come out during the day.

And in one cage it was completely dark. Tanya thought that there was no one there, she took a closer look - two yellow eyes were burning in the darkness. It was an owl.

Tanya got scared, and she and her mother quickly went to the elephant.

The elephant lived in a large house with steps, it was hot, dark inside and smelled like a barn where cows live.

The elephant was having lunch. The watchman piled a whole heap of hay on him and brought him a bucket of carrots. The elephant carefully sniffed the carrot with its trunk and put it into its mouth. First he ate all the carrots, and then started eating the hay.

The watchman began to sweep away the remains of the hay, and the elephant pressed him against the wall. He asked him for carrots.

- Well, well, don’t spoil! - the watchman shouted and hit the elephant with a broom.

The elephant curled up its trunk and walked away.

Tanya was returning home with her mother.

– Why aren’t the elephants allowed into the kindergarten? He wants to take a walk in the sun.

“The elephant is old, and there are cold puddles in the garden.” “He’ll get his feet wet and catch a cold,” Mom said.

- What about the yaks?

– Yaks live high in the snowy mountains, they are accustomed to the cold. And the elephant was born in India, where it is always warm.

Tanya went to the window every morning and looked to see if there were still puddles in the yard.

And one day in May, when green leaves bloomed on the black trees, the ground dried up and a nettle butterfly flew into the yard, Tanya shouted:

- Mom, mom, the elephant is already walking!

There is sand around the station, and pine trees grow on the sand. The road here turns sharply to the north, and the locomotive always unexpectedly flies out from behind the hills.

Lubricants on duty are waiting for the train.

But the dog Zhulka comes out to meet him first. She sits on the sand and listens. The rails begin to hum, then tap. Zhulka runs to the side. The duty officer looks at Zhulka. He coughs and adjusts his red cap. The greasers clink the lids of their oil cans.

If the train comes from the north, Zhulka hides: people go on vacation on northern trains. The sailors jump out of the carriages with loud laughter and try to drag Zhulka to them. Zhulka is uncomfortable: she wags her tail, presses her ears and growls quietly.

Zhulka really wants to eat. There is chewing all around and it smells delicious. Zhulka is worried - the locomotive has already started humming, but she hasn’t been given anything yet. Often Zhulka was taken so far that she spent the whole day running home.

She ran past the houses where the switchmen live. They waved their flags goodbye to her. Then a big black dog chased her. In the forest, a girl was herding a goat and two kids. The kids were playing on the rails and did not obey the girl. After all, they can be crushed. The crook showed her teeth to them and growled, and the stupid goat wanted to butt her.

But the worst thing was running across the bridge. In the middle stood a soldier with a gun. He was guarding the bridge. Zhulka came closer to the soldier and began to suck up: she tucked her tail and crawled up to him on her belly. The soldier angrily stamped his foot on her. And Zhulka ran to her station without looking back.

“No,” she thought, “I’ll never go near a train again.”

But soon Zhulka forgot all this and began begging again.

One day she was taken very far, and she did not return back.

Wild animal

Vera had a baby squirrel. His name was Ryzhik. He ran around the room, climbed onto the lampshade, sniffed the plates on the table, climbed on the back, sat on the shoulder and unclenched Vera’s fist with his claws - looking for nuts.

Ryzhik was tame and obedient.

But one day, on New Year, Vera hung toys, nuts, and candies on the tree and just left the room, she wanted to bring candles, Ryzhik jumped onto the tree, grabbed the nut, and hid it in his galosh. I put the second nut under the pillow. The third nut was immediately chewed...

Vera entered the room, and there was not a single nut on the tree, only silver pieces of paper were lying on the floor.

She shouted at Ryzhik:

- What have you done, you are not a wild animal, but a domesticated, tame one!

Ryzhik no longer ran around the table, did not roll on the door, and did not unclench Vera’s fist. He stocked up from morning to evening. If he sees a piece of bread, he’ll grab it; if he sees the seeds, he’ll stuff his cheeks full, and he’ll hide everything.

Ryzhik also put sunflower seeds in the guests’ pockets in reserve.

Nobody knew why Ryzhik was stocking up.

And then my father’s acquaintance came from the Siberian taiga and said that pine nuts did not grow in the taiga, and the birds flew away over the mountain ranges, and the squirrels gathered in countless flocks and followed the birds, and even hungry bears did not lie down in dens for the winter.

Vera looked at Ryzhik and said:

– You are not a tame animal, but a wild one!

It’s just not clear how Ryzhik found out that there was famine in the taiga.

The potatoes are ripe in our garden. And every night, wild boars - wild pigs - began to come to our hut from the forest.

As soon as it got dark, my father put on a padded jacket and went to the garden with a frying pan.

He hit the frying pan and scared the wild boars.

But the wild boars were very cunning: dad rattled a frying pan at one end of the garden, and the wild boars ran to the other side and there they ate our potatoes. Yes, they will not so much eat as they will trample, crush into the ground.

The father was very angry. He took a gun from one hunter and glued a strip of white paper to the barrel. This is so that at night you can see where to shoot. But the wild boars didn’t come to our garden at all that night. But the next day they ate even more potatoes.

Then I also began to think about how to drive away the wild boars.

We have a cat, Murka, and I showed the guys different tricks with her.

Take and soak one piece of meat with valerian and the other with kerosene. Which smells like valerian, Murka will immediately eat, but from the kerosene she ran into the yard. The guys were very surprised. And I told the guys that the second piece was enchanted.

And so I decided to drive away the wild boars with kerosene too.

In the evening, I poured kerosene into a watering can and began walking around the garden with the watering can, watering the ground with kerosene. It turned out to be a kerosene path.

That night I didn’t sleep, I kept waiting for them to come. But the boars did not come that night or the next day. They were completely scared. No matter where you approach the potatoes, there is a smell of kerosene everywhere.

I learned from the tracks how the wild boars immediately rushed into the forest - they chickened out. I told my father that our potatoes are now enchanted. And he talked about kerosene. My father laughed because wild boars are not afraid of guns, but they were afraid of kerosene.

Who plants the forest

There were only fir trees across the river. But then oak trees appeared among the fir trees. They are still very small, only three leaves stick out from the ground.

And oak trees grow far from here. But the acorns couldn’t have flown in with the wind? They are very heavy. So someone is planting them here.

It took me a long time to guess.

One day in the fall I was walking from hunting, and I saw a jay fly low and low past me.

I hid behind a tree and began to spy on her. The jay hid something under a rotten stump and looked around: did anyone see it? And then she flew to the river.

I approached the stump, and between the roots in the hole lay two acorns: the jay hid them for the winter.

So this is where the young oak trees came from among the fir trees!

A jay will hide an acorn, and then forget where it hid it, and it will sprout.

In the fall, I was picking lingonberries in the taiga and came across moss, which for some reason was growing with its roots upward. Someone brought in some fresh soil and planted it like this.

“Who is it,” I think, “that planted moss?”

I saw that a hole had been dug under a fallen pine tree and there were many traces around, as if a barefoot man had walked, only with claws.

I had a friend, a hunter. And then one day he got ready to go hunting and asked me:

What should I bring you? Tell me, I'll bring it.

I thought: “Look, he’s bragging! I’ll come up with something smarter,” and said:

Bring me a live wolf. That's what!

The friend thought for a moment and said, looking at the floor:

And I thought: “That’s it! How I cut you off! Don't brag."

Two years have passed. I forgot about this conversation of ours. And then one day I come home, and in the hallway they say to me:

They brought you a wolf there. Some person came and asked you. “He asked for a wolf,” he says, “so pass it on.” And he goes to the door.

Without taking off my hat, I shout:

Where, where is he? Where is the wolf?

It's locked in your room.

I was young, and I felt ashamed to ask how he was sitting there: tied up or just on a rope. They'll think I'm a coward. And I myself think: “Maybe he walks around the room as he wants - in freedom?”

And I was ashamed to be a coward. He took a deep breath and ran into his room. I thought: “He won’t rush at me right away, and then... then somehow...” But my heart was beating strongly. With quick eyes I looked around the room - no wolf. I was already angry - they had cheated me, so they were joking - when suddenly I heard something moving under the chair. I carefully bent down, looked with caution and saw a big-headed puppy.

I say, I saw a puppy, but it was immediately clear that it was not a dog puppy. I realized that I was a wolf cub, and I was terribly happy: I would tame it, and I would have a tame wolf.

The hunter didn't cheat, well done! Brought me a live wolf.

I approached carefully. The wolf cub stood on all four paws and became alert. I looked at him: what a freak he was! It consisted almost entirely of a head - like a muzzle on four legs, and this muzzle consisted entirely of a mouth, and the mouth consisted of teeth. He bared his teeth at me, and I saw that his mouth was full of white teeth sharp as nails. The body was small, with sparse brown fur, like stubble, and a rat's tail at the back.

“After all, wolves are gray... And then, puppies are always pretty, but this is some kind of rubbish: just a head and a tail. Maybe not a wolf cub at all, but just something for fun. The hunter cheated, that’s why he ran away right away.”

I looked at the puppy, and he backed under the bed. But at that time my mother came in, sat down by the bed and called:

Wolf! Wolf!

I looked - the wolf cub crawled out, and the mother picked him up in her arms and stroked him - such a monster! She, it turns out, had already given him milk from a saucer twice, and he immediately fell in love with her. He smelled of a pungent animal odor. He smacked his lips and stuck his muzzle under mom’s armpit. Mother says:

If you want to keep it, you need to wash it, otherwise it will stink throughout the whole house.

And she carried him into the kitchen. When I went out into the dining room, everyone laughed that I rushed into the room like a hero, as if there was a terrible beast in there, and a puppy there. In the kitchen, the mother washed the wolf cub with green soap and warm water, and he stood quietly in the trough and licked her hands.

The world of human discoveries is completely immeasurable - from the thorn of a simple burdock clinging to a sleeve, to the hot geyser of Kamchatka, which imparts a special comfort and at the same time some kind of mystery to the air of this country. It is difficult to convey the feeling of peace in the empty room of a Kamchatka hut, when right there, behind the tinkling thin glass, behind the slightly foggy window, the edge of the earth rumbles - the Pacific Ocean.

It is incredibly rich, this region and this world, and even its last edge. And I'm sure that you can write about the burdock thorn individual books, research, fairy tales, while experiencing many lively and funny incidents and stories.

Anyone who is tempted to write such a book should sit down at the table and write it without delay. In five to ten years, interesting literature will have been collected, an extraordinary library full of rare observations and knowledge - from the sound of hail on a plank roof (by the way, it cannot be confused with anything) to the pink rainbow barely visible over Ayu-Dag - a harbinger of rains that do not fall to the ground, and flying up from the ground. Recently I saw such a pink rainbow and for a very long time I could not understand what it was.

Knowledge is a bunch of unexpected and majestic poetry. We must become catchers and guardians of this fleeting poetry of nature, which adorns the world and gives it meaning.

Nature does not choose or appoint singers and minstrels for herself. She is devoid of stupid and impudent human arrogance. Singers come to nature themselves, their ranks do not dry out from Homer to Lucretius, from Jules Verne to the poet Zabolotsky, from Charles Darwin to the scientist Obruchev.

Recently, another one has been added to the wonderful galaxy of things about nature - an amazing, in my opinion, work by Gennady Snegirev, which will soon be published as a separate book.

Snegirev is a very keen writer. He has the secret of a fresh, almost youthful perception of life. Not a single poetic feature from the life of nature, from the life of the taiga, animals, birds and plants escapes him. Therefore, Snegirev’s stories, written by experienced, kind and a simple person, contain a lot of knowledge and observations - always new and genuine - in other words, they are educational in the broadest sense of the word.

Essentially, many of Snegirev’s stories are closer to poetry than to prose - to pure, laconic poetry that infects the reader with love for his native country and nature in all its manifestations, both small and large.

Absolutely real and accurate things in Snegirev’s stories are sometimes perceived as a fairy tale, and Snegirev himself as a guide through a wonderful country whose name is Russia.

These stories will certainly cause joyful excitement among our naturalists, true friends of animals. And if animals - deer, bears, arctic foxes, and seals - understood human language, then the appearance of this book would be a great holiday for all animals that are destroyed cruelly and sometimes senselessly - there is so much tender love for these animals in the book, caring for them, an unusually subtle understanding and knowledge of their entire joyless life.

Books, endowing us with knowledge and love for nature, teach us to treat it as a living creature close to us, encourage us to indignantly stop people who are destroying the last beautiful and helpless inhabitants of the Earth.

Judging by many data, now this very topic should occupy a very large place in our literature, in our journals. We have all read and know the magnificent essays in defense of nature, the most talented essay by Yuri Kazakov about Solovki, the stories of Lev Krivenko and Yuri Kuranov.

I think that there is no particular need to even encourage people to write about this - about nature, and about our Motherland, and about all its corners - there is no special need to encourage people to write about this themselves, because the topic protecting nature is now, I would say, a state necessity.

Konstantin Paustovsky

Aral

I heard that there are so many fish in the Aral Sea that if you throw a boot to the bottom and then pull it out, the boot will be full of gobies.

The train is rushing in the desert. There are dunes on the right and on the left. Brown thorns grow on the dunes, big like umbrellas and round like plush pillows, moving in the wind, crawling...

These are not thorns, but camel humps. A herd of camels is grazing. In winter they become emaciated, the tops of the humps hang to one side and sway. The desert is brown, and camel hair is brown, and saxaul is brown from afar.

Between the sleepers, poppies bloom on thin stems. The train rushes over them - the poppies are pressed to the ground. The last carriage rushes by - they raised their heads again.

Only the petals, torn off by the whirlwind, slowly fall onto the rails.

The black dog stopped, sniffed the petal and... without taking a breath, rushed to catch up with the train.

This black dog is Tazy's greyhound, she runs after the train, not falling behind.

Someone threw a bone through the window, oiled paper flashed. Tazy grabbed and ate them on the fly.

Passengers look out the window and point at the black dog with their fingers:
- Look how skinny the dog is!

They do not know that the greyhound Tazy with a toned belly and thin legs will run tens of kilometers in the desert after a saiga antelope and will not get tired.

Among the yellow sands the Aral Sea flashed, blue as a kingfisher’s feather.
At the station, boys sell bundles of smoked bream. They opened the window and immediately smelled fish.

In Aralsk there are camels in the yards. Above the clay fences, only camel heads and the tops of humps are visible. The camel looks from above and chews the cud. If there is a baby camel behind the clay wall, the camel may spit, so don’t come close. Here camels carry saxaul for firewood.

Beyond the Aral Sea there is a fishing camp on the shore. Camels, walking heavily, pull the net. The water in the cauldron is boiling over the fire. Soon the fish soup will be made from huge sea carp. You can barely lift one carp, but there are hundreds of them in the net; only camels can lift that much.

After eating fish soup, one fisherman told how he met a tiger in the reed jungle in the Amu Darya delta:

The boat hit the shore, I looked, it was lying on the shore and looking at me, not moving, only the tip of its tail was playing. The hair on my head went up out of fear. I wanted to push the boat away with my pole - I was afraid.

He was so dumbfounded and did not move until the boat was carried away in the rapids. And I don’t need catfish - just go home quickly... Since then I haven’t gone fishing in the reeds without a gun!

And the catfish in the Amu Darya are huge. The fisherman drags him on his back, and the catfish’s tail drags in the dust. This monster swallows wild ducks.

There are scorpions sitting on the shore under the stones, and in the sand I found a fossilized shell, shiny and blue. This shell is millions of years old. Previously, a long time ago, where the desert used to be, there was a sea. If you look, you will find shark teeth. Each tooth is the size of a palm. Brown, sharp and jagged at the edges, like a saw.

In the evening, over the desert, in the place where the sun had gone out, a green ray lit up. The black sand tornado swirled like a column. It's getting closer and closer. When the camels saw this pillar, they immediately lay down. Otherwise it will swoop in, spin you around, lift you up and throw you to the ground.

Anything can happen in the desert.

Wild animal

Vera had a baby squirrel. His name was Ryzhik. He ran around the room, climbed onto the lampshade, sniffed the plates on the table, climbed up the back, sat on the shoulder and unclenched Vera’s fist with his claws - looking for nuts. Ryzhik was tame and obedient.

But one New Year, Vera hung toys, nuts, and candies on the tree and just left the room, wanted to bring candles, Ryzhik jumped onto the tree, grabbed one nut, and hid it in his galosh. I put the second nut under the pillow. The third nut was immediately chewed...

Vera entered the room, and there were not a single nut on the tree, only silver pieces of paper were lying on the floor.
Vera shouted at Ryzhik:
- What have you done, you are not a wild animal, but a domesticated, tame one! Ryzhik no longer ran around the table, did not roll on the door, and did not unclench Vera’s fist. He stocked up from morning to evening. If he sees a piece of bread, he will grab it; if he sees the seeds, he will stuff his cheeks full and hide everything.

Dad began to put on his coat - in his pocket there was an apple and a cracker. I put on my hat and the seeds fell on the floor.

Ryzhik also put sunflower seeds in the guests’ pockets in reserve. Nobody knew why Ryzhik was stocking up. And then my father’s acquaintance came from the Siberian taiga and said that pine nuts did not grow in the taiga, and the birds flew away over the mountain ranges, and the squirrels gathered in countless flocks and followed the birds, and even hungry bears did not lie down in dens for the winter.

Vera looked at Ryzhik and said:
- You are not a tame animal, but a wild one!
It’s just not clear how Ryzhik found out that there was famine in the taiga.

Zhulka

There is sand around the station, and pine trees grow on the sand. The road here turns sharply to the north, and the locomotive always unexpectedly flies out from behind the hills.
Lubricants on duty are waiting for the train.
But the dog Zhulka comes out to meet him first. She sits on the sand and listens. The rails begin to hum, then tap. Zhulka runs to the side.

The duty officer looks at Zhulka. He coughs and adjusts his red cap, and the greasers clink their grease caps.

Zhulka really wants to eat. People are chewing around and it smells delicious. Zhulka is worried - the locomotive has already started humming, but she hasn’t been given anything yet. Often Zhulka was taken so far that she spent the whole day running home.

She ran past the houses where the switchmen live. They waved their flags goodbye to her. Then a big black dog chased her. In the forest, a girl was herding a goat and two kids. The kids were playing on the rails and did not obey the girl. After all, they could be run over, Zhulka showed them her teeth and growled, and the stupid goat wanted to butt her.

But the worst thing was running across the bridge. In the middle stood a soldier with a gun. He was guarding the bridge. Zhulka came closer to the soldier and began to suck up: she tucked her tail and crawled up to him on her belly. The soldier stamped his foot angrily at her. And Zhulka ran to her station without looking back.

“No,” she thought, “I will never approach the train again.” But soon Zhulka forgot all this and began begging again. One day she was taken very far away, and she never returned.

Gennady Snegirev

To narrow down the search results, you can refine your query by specifying the fields to search for. The list of fields is presented above. For example:

You can search in several fields at the same time:

Logical operators

The default operator is AND.
Operator AND means that the document must match all elements in the group:

research development

Operator OR means that the document must match one of the values in the group:

study OR development

Operator NOT excludes documents containing this element:

study NOT development

Search type

When writing a query, you can specify the method in which the phrase will be searched. Four methods are supported: search taking into account morphology, without morphology, prefix search, phrase search.
By default, the search is performed taking into account morphology.
To search without morphology, just put a “dollar” sign in front of the words in the phrase:

$ study $ development

To search for a prefix, you need to put an asterisk after the query:

study *

To search for a phrase, you need to enclose the query in double quotes:

" research and development "

Search by synonyms

To include synonyms of a word in the search results, you need to put a hash " # " before a word or before an expression in parentheses.
When applied to one word, up to three synonyms will be found for it.
When applied to a parenthetical expression, a synonym will be added to each word if one is found.
Not compatible with morphology-free search, prefix search, or phrase search.

# study

Grouping

In order to group search phrases you need to use brackets. This allows you to control the Boolean logic of the request.
For example, you need to make a request: find documents whose author is Ivanov or Petrov, and the title contains the words research or development:

Approximate word search

For approximate search you need to put a tilde " ~ " at the end of a word from a phrase. For example:

bromine ~

When searching, words such as "bromine", "rum", "industrial", etc. will be found.
You can additionally specify maximum amount possible edits: 0, 1 or 2. For example:

bromine ~1

By default, 2 edits are allowed.

Proximity criterion

To search by proximity criterion, you need to put a tilde " ~ " at the end of the phrase. For example, to find documents with the words research and development within 2 words, use the following query:

" research development "~2

Relevance of expressions

To change the relevance of individual expressions in the search, use the " sign ^ " at the end of the expression, followed by the level of relevance of this expression in relation to the others.
The higher the level, the more relevant the expression is.
For example, in this expression, the word “research” is four times more relevant than the word “development”:

study ^4 development

By default, the level is 1. Valid values are a positive real number.

Search within an interval

To indicate the interval in which the value of a field should be located, you should indicate the boundary values in parentheses, separated by the operator TO.
Lexicographic sorting will be performed.

Such a query will return results with an author starting from Ivanov and ending with Petrov, but Ivanov and Petrov will not be included in the result.
To include a value in a range, use square brackets. To exclude a value, use curly braces.

Current page: 3 (book has 6 pages in total) [available reading passage: 1 pages]

Wild animal

Ryzhik was tame and obedient.

But one day, on New Year’s Day, Vera hung toys, nuts, and candies on the tree, and as soon as she left the room, she wanted to bring candles, Ryzhik jumped onto the tree, grabbed a nut, and hid it in his galoshes. I put the second nut under the pillow. The third nut was immediately chewed...

Vera entered the room, and there was not a single nut on the tree, only silver pieces of paper were lying on the floor.

She shouted at Ryzhik:

- What have you done, you are not a wild animal, but a domesticated, tame one!

Ryzhik also put sunflower seeds in the guests’ pockets in reserve.

Nobody knew why Ryzhik was stocking up.

Vera looked at Ryzhik and said:

– You are not a tame animal, but a wild one!

It’s just not clear how Ryzhik found out that there was famine in the taiga.

Boars

The potatoes are ripe in our garden. And every night, wild boars - wild pigs - began to come to our hut from the forest.

As soon as it got dark, my father put on a padded jacket and went to the garden with a frying pan.

He hit the frying pan and scared the wild boars.

Then I also began to think about how to drive away the wild boars.

We have a cat, Murka, and I showed the guys different tricks with her.

And so I decided to drive away the wild boars with kerosene too.

In the evening, I poured kerosene into a watering can and began walking around the garden with the watering can, watering the ground with kerosene. It turned out to be a kerosene path.

Who plants the forest

There were only fir trees across the river. But then oak trees appeared among the fir trees. They are still very small, only three leaves stick out from the ground.

And oak trees grow far from here. But the acorns couldn’t have flown in with the wind? They are very heavy. So someone is planting them here.

It took me a long time to guess.

One day in the fall I was walking from hunting, and I saw a jay fly low and low past me.

I hid behind a tree and began to spy on her. The jay hid something under a rotten stump and looked around: did anyone see it? And then she flew to the river.

I approached the stump, and between the roots in the hole lay two acorns: the jay hid them for the winter.

So this is where the young oak trees came from among the fir trees!

A jay will hide an acorn, and then forget where it hid it, and it will sprout.

Bear

In the fall, I was picking lingonberries in the taiga and came across moss, which for some reason was growing with its roots upward. Someone brought in some fresh soil and planted it like this.

“Who is it,” I think, “that planted moss?”

I saw that a hole had been dug under a fallen pine tree and there were many traces around, as if a barefoot man had walked, only with claws.

I was very scared: after all, it was a bear that had raked the earth out of the den and covered it with moss, he wanted to hide the earth so that the den would not be found. I quickly ran to my grandfather and told him everything.

Grandfather was happy:

“This bear came running here when the taiga across the river was burning.

My grandfather told me to stay at home, while he took a gun and went to the village to gather people. I've been waiting for him for a long time. It became dark. “What,” I think, “if a bear killed my grandfather?”

I'm scared and sorry for my grandfather. I wanted to get dressed and look for him. I heard a cart come into the yard and stop.

Grandfather came in and hung the gun on the wall.

“Well,” he says, “go see the bear!”

I went out into the yard and saw a dead bear lying on the cart. Big, head hung down, teeth bared.

The hunters threw him to the ground, the horse snorted and wanted to run away, but they only restrained him. I touched the bear’s fangs, they were all yellow.

Grandfather tells me:

“The old bear, however, made a mistake, confused the roots with the tops, and so he got caught!”

Restless Ponytail

I found a forest tent. Old spruce branches were woven together, and below there was a soft litter of yellow needles. It is dark and stuffy, and smells of resin.

A squirrel once dined here. She left behind a whole heap of plucked cones.

I began to stir up the cones. I look, there is a lump of red fur lying there. The squirrel was probably eaten by a marten, and only the tip of the squirrel's tail is lying around.

A silvery spider wrapped a web around it and made a nook for itself out of squirrel fur.

I touched the spider with my finger. He got scared, quickly climbed up and swung on the cobweb.

I picked up the tail and stuck it in the empty cartridge case. It all fit in there.

At home, when I was sorting out the cartridges, I took out the tail and put it on my table.

This tail turned out to be restless: when I look at it, I am drawn to wander again, looking for forest tents!

Cedar

As a child, I was given a pine cone.

I loved to pick it up and look at it, and I was always amazed at how big and heavy it was - a real chest of nuts.

Many years later I got to the Sayan Mountains and immediately found cedar.

It grows high in the mountains, the winds tilt it to one side, trying to bend it to the ground, twist it.

And the cedar clings to the ground with its roots and stretches higher and higher, all shaggy with green branches.

Cedar cones hang at the ends of the branches: in some places there are three, and in others there are five at once. The nuts are not yet ripe, but many animals and birds live around.

The cedar feeds them all, so they wait for the nuts to ripen.

The squirrel will knock the pine cone to the ground, take out the nuts, but not all of them - just one will remain. This nut will drag a mouse into its hole. She doesn’t know how to climb trees, but she also wants nuts.

The tits jump on the cedar all day. If you listen from afar, the whole cedar is chirping.

In autumn, even more animals and birds live on the cedar tree: nutcrackers and chipmunks sit on the branches. In winter they are hungry, so they hide pine nuts under stones and bury them in the ground as a reserve.

When the first snowflakes begin to fall from the sky, there will be no cones left on the cedar.

But the cedar doesn’t mind. It stands all alive and stretches its green branches higher and higher towards the sun.

Chipmunk

Forest animals and birds are very fond of pine nuts and store them for the winter.

The chipmunk is especially trying. This is an animal like a squirrel, only smaller, and has five black stripes on its back.

When I first saw him, I couldn’t make out at first who it was sitting on the cedar cone - such a striped mattress! The cone sways in the wind, but the chipmunk is not afraid, just know that it is shelling the nuts.

He doesn’t have pockets, so he’s stuffed his cheeks with nuts and is going to drag them into the hole.

He saw me, cursed, muttered something: go on your way, don’t bother me, it’s a long winter, you can’t stock up now - you’ll end up hungry!

I don’t leave, I think: “I’ll wait until he carries the nuts and find out where he lives.” But the chipmunk doesn’t want to show his holes, he sits on a branch, folds his paws on his stomach and waits for me to leave.

I walked away - the chipmunk descended to the ground and disappeared, I didn’t even notice where he had disappeared to.

It was the bear who taught the chipmunk to be careful: he would come, dig up the chipmunk’s hole and eat all the nuts. The chipmunk doesn’t show his hole to anyone.

Sly Chipmunk

I built myself a tent in the taiga. This is not a house or a forest hut, but simply long sticks folded together. There is bark on the sticks, and logs on the bark so that pieces of bark are not blown away by the wind.

I began to notice that someone was leaving pine nuts in the tent.

I couldn’t guess who was eating nuts in my chum without me. It even became scary.

But then one day a cold wind blew, drove up the clouds, and during the day it became completely dark.

I quickly climbed into the tent, but my place was already taken.

A chipmunk sits in the darkest corner. A chipmunk has a sack of nuts behind each cheek.

Thick cheeks, slitted eyes. He looks at me, afraid to spit out the nuts on the ground: he thinks that I will steal them.

The chipmunk endured it, endured it, and spat out all the nuts. And immediately his cheeks became thinner.

I counted seventeen nuts on the ground. The chipmunk was afraid at first, but then he saw that I was sitting calmly and began to stuff nuts into the cracks and under the logs.

When the chipmunk ran away, I looked - nuts were stuffed everywhere, large, yellow. Apparently, the chipmunk has built a storage room in my tent.

How cunning this chipmunk is! In the forest, squirrels and jays will steal all his nuts. And the chipmunk knows that not a single thieving jay will get into my tent, so he brought his supplies to me. And I was no longer surprised if I found nuts in the plague. I knew that a cunning chipmunk lived with me.

Crow

In spring there is snow in the mountains, and edelweiss blossoms, and the blue feather of a jay flickers in the green cedars. And the sun shines brighter here than down in the valley.

A black raven silently flies around the mountains. The sound of its wings can be heard far away; even a mountain stream cannot drown them out. A raven flies slowly from one peak to another: is there a sick little hare somewhere? Or maybe the little chicken has fallen behind its mother?

A little hare hid in the grass, a little chicken pressed itself even tighter to the ground. Everyone is afraid of the raven, even the deer flinches from its croaking and looks around anxiously.

The raven returns empty-handed: he is very old. He sits on a rock and warms his sore wing. The raven froze him off a hundred years ago, maybe two hundred years ago. It's spring all around, and he's all alone.

Butterfly in the snow

When I left the hut, I loaded the gun with small shot. I thought if I met a hazel grouse, I’d shoot it for lunch.

I walk quietly, trying so that the snow under my felt boots doesn’t creak. Around the tree they are covered with shaggy frost, like a beard.

I went out into the clearing and looked - there was something black under the tree ahead.

I came closer - and this was a brown butterfly sitting on the snow.

There are snowdrifts all around, the frost is crackling - and suddenly a butterfly!

I hung the gun on my shoulder, took off my hat and began to approach even closer, I wanted to cover it with my hat.

And then the snow exploded under my feet - flutter-flutter! - and three hazel grouse flew out.

While I was taking off the gun, they disappeared into the fir trees. All that was left of the hazel grouse were holes in the snow.

I walked around the forest, looked, but now you’ll find them.

They were hiding on the Christmas trees, sitting and laughing at me.

How did I mistake a hazel grouse for a butterfly?

It was this hazel grouse that poked its head out from under the snow to spy on me.

Next time I won’t catch butterflies in winter.

Night bells

I really wanted to see the deer: to see how it eats grass, how it stands motionless and listens to the silence of the forest.

One day I approached a doe with a fawn, but they sensed me and ran away into the red autumn grasses. I recognized this from the tracks: the tracks in the swamp were filling with water before my eyes. I heard deer trumpeting at night. Somewhere far away a deer will trumpet, but it echoes along the river, and it seems very close.

Finally, in the mountains I came across a deer trail. The deer trampled it to a lonely cedar. The ground near the cedar was salty, and deer came at night to lick the salt.

I hid behind a rock and waited. At night the moon was shining and there was frost. I dozed off.

I woke up from a quiet ringing. It was as if glass bells were ringing. A deer walked past me along the path. I never got a good look at the deer, I only heard how the ground rang under his hooves with every step.

Overnight, thin ice stalks grew from the frost. They grew straight from the ground. The deer smashed them with his hooves, and they rang like glass bells.

When the sun rose, the ice stalks melted.

Beaver keeper

In winter, when the water was frozen, I found a beaver hut on a forest river. It was covered with snow.

It stands like a big snowdrift. At the very top the snow has melted, and there is a veiny smell coming from the vent. There are many wolf tracks around.

Apparently, the wolves came and sniffed, but left with nothing. And they scratched the hut with their claws, they wanted to catch the beavers.

But how can you get to the beavers: the hut is covered in mud, and the mud has turned to stone in the cold.

In the spring I was wandering around with a gun and decided to look at the beavers. When I got to the hut, the sun was already low. Near the hut, the river is blocked by various sticks and branches - a real dam. And a whole lake filled with water.

I quietly approached closer to see the beavers when they swim out at the evening dawn, but that was not the case - a small wren bird jumped out of the brushwood, lifted its tail up and chirped: “Tick-tick-tick-tick!”

I approached from the other side - a wren jumped over there, chirping again, disturbing the beavers.

If you come closer, he ducks into the branches and somewhere inside he screams, strains himself.

The beavers heard his cry and swam away, only a path of bubbles followed along the water.

So I didn’t see any beavers. And all because of the wren. He built a nest for himself in a beaver hut and lives with the beavers as a watchman: if he notices an enemy, he begins to scream and scare the beavers.

Beaver lodge

A hunter I knew came to see me.

“Come on,” he says, “I’ll show you the hut.” A beaver family lived in it, but now the hut is empty.

I've been told about beavers before. I wanted to take a better look at this hut.

The hunter took his gun and went. I'm behind him.

We walked for a long time through the swamp, then made our way through the bushes.

Finally we came to the river. On the shore there is a hut, like a haystack, only made of branches, tall, taller than a man.

“Do you want,” asks the hunter, “to climb into the hut?”

“But how,” I say, “can you fit into it if the entrance is under water?”

We began to break it apart from above - it did not give in: it was all coated with clay.

They barely made a hole.

I climbed into the hut, sat bent over, the ceiling was low, twigs were sticking out everywhere, and it was dark.

I felt something with my hands, it turned out to be wood shavings. The beavers made their bedding from the shavings. Apparently I ended up in the bedroom.

I climbed lower - there were twigs there. The beavers gnawed the bark off them, and the branches were all white. This is their dining room, and on the side, lower, there is another floor, and a hole goes down. Water splashes in the hole.

On this floor the floor is earthen and smooth. Here the beavers have a canopy.

A beaver climbs into a hut, and water flows from it into three streams.

The beaver in the canopy wrings out all the fur dry, combs it with its paw, and only then goes to the dining room.

Then the hunter called me.

I crawled out and shook myself off the ground.

“Well,” I say, “and the hut!” I would have stayed alive myself, but there wasn’t enough stove!

Beaver

In the spring, the snow quickly melted, the water rose and flooded the beaver's hut.

The beavers dragged the beaver cubs onto dry leaves, but the water rose even higher, and the beaver cubs had to swim away in different directions.

The smallest beaver was exhausted and began to drown.

I noticed him and pulled him out of the water. I thought it was a water rat, and then I saw a tail like a spatula, and I guessed that it was a beaver.

At home, he spent a long time cleaning and drying himself, then he found a broom behind the stove, sat down on his hind legs, took a twig from the broom with his front legs and began to gnaw on it.

After eating, the beaver collected all the sticks and leaves, tucked it under itself and fell asleep.

I listened to the little beaver snoring in his sleep. “Here,” I think, “what a calm animal - you can leave him alone, nothing will happen!”

He locked the little beaver in the hut and went into the forest.

All night I wandered through the forest with a gun, and in the morning I returned home, opened the door, and...

What is it? It was like I was in a carpentry shop!

There are white shavings lying all over the floor, and the table has a thin, thin leg: a beaver has gnawed it from all sides. And he hid behind the stove.

During the night the water subsided. I put the beaver in a bag and quickly took it to the river.

Ever since I see a tree felled by beavers in the forest, I immediately remember the beaver cub that chewed up my table.

In the nature reserve

There is a beaver reserve near the city of Voronezh. There, beavers live on forest rivers. They block rivers with dams and build huts on the banks of ponds.

You cannot cut down trees or hunt in the reserve so as not to scare the beavers.

The reserve is set up for beavers, but deer, wild boars and other animals know that hunters will not touch them here, and they also live in the reserve forest.

I arrived at the reserve in June and began to live in a hut with a forester. Once I took his bike for a ride along the forest paths.

I drove far from home, turned back, drove slowly, listened to the oriole screaming across the river...

Suddenly a badger jumped out of the bushes, wanted to run across the path, sneak through, but landed right under the wheel. I fell into the bushes, stood up, and picked up the bike. “No,” I think, “I’d better go on foot, here the animals are not at all afraid of people.”

Indeed, they are not afraid at all. In the morning a switchman came running from the railway.

“Take away,” he shouts, “your pest, he’s digging under the bridge!”

It turns out that a young beaver was swimming up the river, and he liked the place under the railway bridge. He decided to dig a hole here. The trains rumble above him, and he keeps digging, deeper and deeper.

The beaver was caught and brought back to the reserve in a bag. He puffed angrily in the bag until he was released into the river, away from the railway.

It's good in the forest in June.

A blue kingfisher will fly over the river, sit on a twig and freeze. Looks into the water. Suddenly he dives, emerges with a fish in his beak, and flies off to feed the chicks.

The kingfisher's nest is a cave in a cliff above the river.

In the evening, as the sun sets, bats fly out of the hollow to hunt, flutter over forest clearings, and grab cockchafers.

In June, the bat flies with the mice. She has two or three of them sitting on her stomach, clinging to her fur, waiting for the mother mouse to catch the beetle. They are gluttonous. When a mouse catches a beetle, the little mice open their mouths and squeal. I kept wondering how the little mice weren’t afraid to fly over the forest with their mother mouse, because they could fall off, and their wings were still weak.

At dawn, when the roosters crow, the bat returns to the hollow. He folds his wings, hangs upside down and sleeps with the mice all day until the evening.

Blueberry jam

Animals and birds in the taiga feed near the cedar tree; even a bear eats its fill of pine nuts in the fall and goes to sleep in a den all winter.

But this autumn the pine nuts did not bear fruit, and hungry bears wandered around the village.

In the morning the housewife will go out to the garden, and all the beds will be trampled by bear paws.

A hungry bear can even break into a hut. Well, whoever has a dog, it will bark and wake everyone up.

I lived in an empty hut on the very edge of the village. Outside the window the taiga immediately began, but I didn’t have a gun.

In the evening, a hunter I knew came to me and calmly said:

- If a bear breaks into the door, jump out the window and run into the village, and if he climbs in the window, hit him on the head with a bench!

“Can you tell in the dark where his head is?”

Hunter says:

“Then rattle the bucket louder, the bear is afraid of the iron roar!”

I didn't have a bucket.

I placed an iron pot with a spoon next to me and immediately fell asleep.

I don’t know how long I slept, but in my sleep I heard someone tapping, claws scratching on the wall.

I jumped up - he was scraping along the log! I banged on the pot with a spoon and it stopped. A little later it scratched again.

And it’s already dawn outside.

I looked out the window - there was no one.

I opened the door, went out into the street, and this nuthatch was crawling upside down around the hut, tapping the logs with its beak, looking for bugs.

I even yelled at him out of anger. He squeaked and flew off into the taiga.

In the afternoon I took a gun from a hunter in the village, loaded it with an explosive bullet and walked along the bank of the river into the taiga.

There is silence in the taiga. The wind will blow, a branch will creak, and a black woodpecker will cry sadly. I keep my gun ready, walk slowly, don’t touch the branches, so as not to make noise.

In one place, all the bark from a birch tree was peeled off: a hungry bear was picking out ants with its claws.

One turn of the river has passed, the second - there is no bear anywhere. And suddenly, around the third turn, where the black spruce trees are so tall that it’s dark under them, someone roars and squeals!

I put my gun forward, parted the bushes - I looked: a fire was burning on the stones, and a red dog was spinning around the fire, smoke coming out of its tail. A girl with a bucket ran up to the dog, poured water on its tail, saw me and was not at all surprised, but began to complain about the dog:

- Masha is very lazy, she sleeps by the fire all the time, and in her sleep she puts her tail on the fire. The whole tail was burned... Uncle, are you a hunter?

- Yes, I’m walking, well, maybe I’ll meet a bear!

- Uncle, uncle, he walks around here, doesn’t let me make jam! Would you like me to treat you to some blueberry jam? Then will you send him away?

The girl took the saucepan with jam from the coals, stirred it with a spoon and gave it to me to try. The jam is sugar-free, sour-sour. I eat it, and try not to wince.

- Very tasty jam! Aren’t you the only one scared? Aren’t you afraid of a bear?

– I’m not alone, I’m with Masha. The bear kept walking around, rustling in the bushes. Masha barked at him, and I threw a stone. He got scared and ran away.

- What is your name?

- Tanya. I'm in second grade now.

Tanya told me that her father went to the mountains to visit the reindeer herders. That soon all the deer will be driven down to the village, and big “real bears” will come down from the mountains after the deer. Then it will be scary: deer hunters will disperse across the taiga to get sick, and “real bears” will remain around the village.

I asked Tanya:

– What are they, “real bears”?

Tanya closed her eyes and thought:

- Big, big and black. I’m not afraid of them anyway, we have guns at school!

And Tanya told me that in winter the boys would go to the taiga with teacher Pyotr Ivanovich: they would get sick and get sick, learn to make a fire when the snow was falling and all the wood was wet, recognize the tracks of animals...

While Tanya was telling the story, Masha fell asleep again and in her sleep crawled up to the fire itself, but the fire had already gone out, the wind blew from the river, and a gray cloud covered half of the sky.

- Tanya, it’s almost evening, we need to go home and do our homework!

We filled the fire with water and went to the village. In front is red-haired Masha, behind her is Tanya with a saucepan of blueberry jam, I follow Tanya, the gun is over my shoulder, because I was no longer afraid of bears.

Ever since a horse suddenly snores in the taiga at night or a twig crackles in the dark, I take the gun in my hands and calmly wait.

And even when I slept on the fresh tracks of a “real bear”, I just thought about how the bear was creeping up in the dark, and could not sleep. And then I remembered blueberry jam, lazy Masha with a burnt tail, brave Tanya, and the fear passed.