Go to New Bedford.
April 2, 2017
A great change in the weather. I set out apple trees yesterday, but in the night it was very cold, with snow, which is now several inches deep.
On the sidewalk in Cambridge I see a toad, which apparently hopped out from under a fence last evening, frozen quite hard in a sitting posture. Carried it into Boston in my pocket, but could not thaw it into life.
The other day as I came to the front of the house I caught sight of a genuine wayfaring man, an oldish countryman, with a frock and a bundle strapped to his back, who was speaking to the butcher, just then driving off in his cart. He was a gaunt man with a flashing eye, as if half crazy with travel, and was complaining, “You see it shakes me so, I would rather travel the common road.” I supposed that he referred to the railroad, which the butcher had recommended for shortness. I was touched with compassion on observing the butcher’s apparent indifference, as, jumping to his seat, he drove away before the traveller had finished his sentence, and the latter fell at once into the regular wayfarer’s gait, bending under his pack and holding the middle of the road with a teetering gait.
On my way to New Bedford, see within a couple of rods of the railroad, in some country town, a boy’s box trap set for some muskrat or mink by the side of a little pond. The lid was raised, and I could see the bait on its point.
A black snake was seen yesterday in the Quaker burying-ground here.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 2, 1857
In the night it was very cold, with snow, which is now several inches deep. See note to April 2, 1861 ("A drifting snow-storm, perhaps a foot deep on an average.”)
I see a toad frozen quite hard in a sitting posture. Carried it into Boston in my pocket, but could not thaw it into life. April 22, 1857 (“Near Tall's Island, rescue a little pale or yellowish brown snake that was coiled round a willow half a dozen rods from the shore and was apparently chilled by the cold.”); December 31, 1857 ("found . . .a bull frog. . . It was evidently nearly chilled to death and could not jump, though there was then no freezing. I looked round a good while and finally found a hole to put it into,"); ; May 19, 1856 ("Saw a small striped snake in the act of swallowing a Rana palustris . . .. The snake, being frightened, released his hold, and the frog hopped off to the water. "); August 23, 1851 ("[A snake] had a toad in his jaws, which he was preparing to swallow with his jaws distended to three times his width, but he relinquished his prey in haste and fled"); July 23, 1856 ("Saw . . . a small bullfrog in the act of swallowing a young but pretty sizable apparently Rana palustris, . . . I sprang to make him disgorge, but it was too late to save him. ")
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