"Crotch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and Cynthia cocoons will account for some; others will puzzle us until we have found the traces of some insect foe, whose girdling has killed the twig and thus prevented the leaf from falling at the usual time; some may be simply mechanical causes, where a broken twig crotch has fallen athwart another stem in the course of its downward fall. Then there is the pitiful remnant of a last summer's bird's-nest, with a mere skeleton of a floor all ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... hope soured on me Of my fellow-critter's aid; I jest flopped down on my marrow-bones, Crotch-deep in the snow, and prayed. * * * * * By this, the torches was played out, And me and Isrul Parr Went off for some wood to a sheepfold That ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... the velvet night. A big moon had climbed out of a crotch of the purple hills and poured a silvery light into a valley green and beautiful with the magic touch of spring. A grove of suhuaro rose like ghostly candelabra from the hillside opposite. The mesquite carried a wealth of dainty foliage. ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... fifteen minutes passed, and then the snapping of underbrush told of the approach of Benny Ellison, on his return. That his shot had told was evidenced by another pickerel which he carried, hung by the gills on the crotch of an alder branch, together with the big fellow that Little Tim had caught. Tim's eyes snapped as he saw ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... arms and hands of the girls; and the only wringers were the strong wrists and firm grip that could give a vigorous twist to what passed through the hands. Water was drawn from the wells with a bucket fastened to a long slender pole attached to a sweep suspended to a crotch. Butter, as has already been intimated, was made in upright churns, and many an hour have I stood, with mother's apron pinned around me to keep my clothes from getting spattered, pounding at the stubborn cream, when every minute ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... a knowing nod, and the two of them quickly whisked the little lame French girl up in the first crotch like magic. ...
— Afloat on the Flood • Lawrence J. Leslie
... crotch of one of the oaks—his watch-tower in other periods of stress—he saw the Major mount and continue his gallop eastward on the pike; and a little later the ancient Dabney family carriage came and went in a smother of white dust, wheeling ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... paper was used to keep out the storms and cold of Autumn and Winter. Holes were bored at the proper height in the logs at one corner of the room, and into these ends of poles were fitted the opposite ends, where they crossed, being supported by a crotch or a block of the proper height. Across these poles others were laid, and these were covered by a thick mattress of hemlock boughs, over which blankets were spread. On such beds as these the first inhabitants of this town slept and their first children were born. For want of chairs, rude ...
— The Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Settlement of the Town of New Milford, Conn. June 17th, 1907 • Daniel Davenport
... and capricious, yet it was just as the man, who was using that tree as an ambush, established touch between finger and trigger, that the splintered piece of timber broke away from its support and ripped its way noisily downward until a crotch caught and held it. Startled by that unexpected alarm from above, given as though the tree had been a living sentinel, the rifleman jerked his gun upward ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... dad seen las' night when I war down hyar afore, a-figurin' ter ketch that thar leetle owel," he said to himself when he had reached the tree and sat in a crotch, panting ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... which she could not extricate herself without his help. Billy had to take heavy logs out of her arms, had to lay a plank across the stretch of creek she could not cross, had to help her down from the crotch of a tree with ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... bulk, exactly where he had slept, and covered it over with leaves in the same manner the panther had done, and then sprang to a tree near by, into which he ascended, from whence he had a view a good distance about him, and especially in the direction the creature had gone. Here in the crotch of the tree he stood, with his gun resting across a limb, in the direction of the place where he had been left by the panther, looking sharply as far among the woods as possible, in the direction he expected ...
— A Sketch of the History of Oneonta • Dudley M. Campbell
... sixty-seventh roun', the brute had no sooner gone down the birch than he bounded up agen just when Old-pot-head's son was a-climbin' thro' the upper branches o' the birch. So he slips over into the top o' the east pine, while I stays in the top o' the west pine, an' the bear sits down in a upper crotch ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... CRUTCH, OR CROTCH. A support fixed upon the taffrail for the main boom of a sloop, brig, cutter, &c., and a chock for the driver-boom of a ship when their respective sails are furled. Also, crooked timber inside the after-peak of a vessel, for securing the heels of the cant or half-timbers: they ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... Grip, in his efforts to free himself from the shawl, managed to pull his cap over his eyes, and howled in blind dismay. In the midst of the confusion, Grace rescued Miss Wales from her perilous position, and, finding her classic nose still unbroken, laid her carefully in the crotch of a tree, and prepared for revenge. In his desire to secure the obedience of his dog-team, Tom had fastened them securely, by long cords, to his belt; Pete had already managed to wind his tether tightly around Tom's legs, and Grace incited Turk to rebellion, so that he, too, began ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... or entertainment. 20. Per'emp-to-ry, commanding, decisive. 21. A-vailed', was of use, had effect. 22. Al-ly', a confederate, one who unites with another in some purpose. 25. Tense, strained to stiffness, rigid. Re-laxed', loosened. 20. Chid'ing, scolding, rebuking. 27. Crotch'et, a perverse fancy, a whim. 30. ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... great ape in the crotch of a tree the boy had shivered through an almost sleepless night. His light pajamas had been but little protection from the chill dampness of the jungle, and only that side of him which was pressed against the warm body of his shaggy companion ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... most advantage from it. Returning to the table, he sat down to write. He was a man of decision. With him to propose was to act. "My son Myles," he wrote, for it was not his wont to use terms of endearment, "you are to come here at once. Tell Mr Crotch so from me; you need not say more to him. I want you to make your fortune by a way to which you will not object marrying a young and pretty wife. When you come you shall know more about the matter. Get a good rig ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... was a little gem. It was so thrilling in its details, and so diametrically different from Mr. Webster's style, that I have often wondered who he got to write it for him. It related to the discovery of a boy by an elderly gentleman, in the crotch of an ancestral apple tree, and the feeling of bitterness and animosity that sprung up at the time between the ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... her. While he was gone to school, she frequently ran off to the woods and played with wild squirrels on a tree that grew near his path homeward. Sometimes she took a nap in a large knot-hole, or, if the weather was very warm, made a cool bed of leaves across a crotch of the boughs, and slept there. When Isaac passed under the tree, on his way from school, he used to call "Bun! Bun! Bun!" If she was there, she would come to him immediately, run up on his shoulder, and so ride ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... then, by intuition. Your counter-moves are—so—triumphant. Why, it's really an ornament!" With a little stress and strain that made her words interjectional, she had got it into place, thrusting one end up the throat of the chimney, and lodging the crotch that held the nest upon the stems of fresh pine that lay across the andirons; and the "odds and ends," in safe position, and suggesting neither harm nor unsuitableness, looked unique and curious, and not ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... wonderful agility of the Englishman was displayed. In a distance of less than a two-foot drop he turned completely like a cat. Leaping up, he was free, and, getting a waist-hold with a Cornish heave, he bore Locasto to the floor. Quickly he changed to a crotch-lock, and, lastly, holding Locasto's legs, he brought him to a bridge and worked his ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... the instant, the two lads swung themselves into the crotch of the great tree under which they stood; then climbed noiselessly higher up among the branches. Just as they had succeeded in screening themselves from possible discovery, a body of horsemen burst in among ...
— The boy Allies at Liege • Clair W. Hayes
... over a ridge layin' gist beyond where I shot the buck. I warn't in any great hurry, for I knew Crop would attend to his case, and I tho't I'd wipe out my rifle afore I loaded it again. I was standin' by the upturned roots of a tall fir tree that had been blown down, and in fallin' had lodged in a crotch of a great birch, maybe twenty feet from the ground, and broke off. I stepped onto the butt of the fallen spruce, and was takin' my time to clean my gun, when I heard a crashin' among the brush on the other ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... of fur in the crotch of a slim forest elm. Presently it uncurled, cautiously; a fluffy ringed tail unfolded; the rounded furry back humped up, and the animal, moving slowly into the tangent foliage of an enormous oak, ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... the near bank to wait till the wagons were drawn up, lifted herself into the crotch of a cottonwood tree. The pastoral simplicity of the scene, the men and animals moving through the silver-threaded water with the wagons waiting and after the work the camp to be pitched, exhilarated her with a conviction of true living, of existence flowing naturally ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... went away, had made her comfortable with cushions in a chair-like crotch of the old tree. The Major was at her feet. He meditated a moment. "I shall make it my name for you. What do I care what other men have ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... his dry wood in a crotch formed by a jutting rock, and built a fire where one would scarcely have believed it were possible to do so. He got water from a little spring just above them, and by the time Miss Elting had disposed of her patients for the moment the ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls in the Hills - The Missing Pilot of the White Mountains • Janet Aldridge
... of the youthful Sauks walked out from the party near the woods, holding the stick with the crotch of a small branch supported at the point of bifurcation. This crotch was four or five inches in length, and as it was carried aloft, it looked like an inverted V, raised high so that ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... in general, cooeperates with sensory stimuli in producing them. Clearly enough, the nest-building bird, {111} picking up a twig, is reacting to that twig. He does not peck at random, as if driven by a mere blind impulsion to peck. He reacts to twigs, to the crotch in the tree, to the half-built nest. Only, he would not react to these stimuli unless the nesting fit were on him. The nest-building tendency favors response to certain stimuli, and not to others; it facilitates certain ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... of the stranger was white with rage. He turned from the tree in which the bear had now found a place of safety behind a crotch, and pointed his arrow at John. The lad saw his danger. Even as the stranger drew the arrow to its head John leaped forward; before the other knew what was happening, John seized him in his arms and with a mighty effort wrenched away the weapon. It was wonderful how easily he mastered this ...
— John of the Woods • Abbie Farwell Brown
... coop of bamboos, was perched upon a level part of the rock, the ridge-pole resting at one end in a crotch of the "Aoa," and the other propped by a forked bough ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... was quickly stifled as they recognized the gravity which sat upon the face of its enunciator, and Stuart inquired in all seriousness, "But how does he manage it? There's mains'l and jib and tiller—not to mention center board and boom-crotch—and sometimes the reef-points." ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... putting it into practice. Involuntarily I sought that corner of the orchard in which I had seen my small friend. Mindful of his counsel, I got close to the apple blossoms and smelled them. As I did so I noticed a crumpled sheet of paper in a crotch of one of the trees. I no sooner saw it than I seized it, and, smoothing it out, read, written in a ...
— The American Child • Elizabeth McCracken
... rose from their quarry; and Wayland, fevered, delirious, laughing, crying, kneeled over the body of a man lying on his face with his bloody hand clutched in death grip round an upright post driven into the alkali bottoms, a post with a drinking cup hung on the notched crotch, the Desert sign of a water spring beneath the ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... makes a final spurt for a large red pine, leaps straight for the bare trunk, mounts like a squirrel and gains a rotten limb, panting with effort. As we approach he climbs still higher and lodges himself securely in the crotch of the tree, gazing furtively down ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... the Plynck was saying, as Sara dropped the curtain behind her the next morning, "to fly around the fountain at least twice every day." As she spoke, she reached out and took, from a bundle that lay within easy reach in a crotch of the Gugollaph-tree, something that looked like a little ivory stick. She snapped it easily with one golden claw, dropped the fragments, and reached out with careless ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... buttonwood stood close to the edge of the bank,—so close that at high tide its brandies hung over the water. I climbed up into a reserved seat which was always kept for me there, a comfortable little crotch among the boughs. Upon extraordinary occasions,—a splendid sunset, or a rain, coming over the water, or an uncommonly fine moon, or a furious storm,—I used to mount to this seat ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... brooding, his elbows upon the table, his inscrutable face propped in the crotch of his hand. A ruby, set quaintly in a cobra's head, gleamed from a ring upon his little ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... set well on the little square shoulders. Her eyes were blue and black lashed, her nose nondescript, her mouth large, her chin square and her little jaw line long and pronounced. She wore a soiled sailor suit of blue galatea. Caught in the crotch of two opposite branches was a doll almost as large as the sleeping child below. It was a queer old-fashioned doll, with a huge china head, that displayed brilliant black hair and eyes as blue as those of her little mistress. The doll wore a clumsily ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... Mississippi through one of its three mouths, and went up the river till he came to an Indian village, where the chief gave him a letter which Tonty, thirteen years before, when in search of La Salle, had written and left in the crotch of ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... notch being reversed, i. e., having its flat side uppermost. This post should be set in the ground, outside of the pen, on the right hand side and on a line with the first. A third post (c), is provided with a crotch on its upper end. This should be planted outside of the pen on the right hand side, and on a line with the front. The treadle piece consists of a forked branch, about three feet [Page 19] in length, supplied with a square board secured across its ends. At the junction of the forks, an augur ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... bawling state, then, with his back to the fish, all at once the exhausted harpooneer hears the exciting cry — Stand up, and give it to him! He now has to drop and secure his oar, turn round on his centre half way, seize his harpoon from the crotch, and with what little strength may remain, he essays to pitch it somehow into the whale. No wonder, taking the whole fleet of whalemen in a body, that out of fifty fair chances for a dart, not five are successful; no wonder that so ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... struck the tree, well down toward its base. The jolt nearly shook the boy from his perch in a crotch of the tree. Very slowly at first, then with increasing speed the tree began to fall. It came down with a mighty crash, hurling little Lucien some distance ahead of it. He was bruised and shaken and for a few minutes he lay where he ...
— The Children of France • Ruth Royce
... hall as he spoke, and presently Cavendish heard the click of a telephone receiver slipping from its crotch, and Barclay's voice speaking, to some one below, of a steak, vegetables, salad, and coffee. He stepped to the table, devoured two or three of the biscuits ravenously, poured himself a glass of sherry, sipped, and then swallowed it, and flung ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... I can't say that I did, though it seems to me there is something like a bunch in that crotch about ten feet from the ground; but the branches sort of screen it. But, Jack, I saw the sun flash from the lens of a pair of glasses, not only once ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... sadness, and thought I would descend the tree and stroll home. The moon was up, and a pleasant walk before me, with enough to meditate upon in the singular discovery I had made. I was about to get down from my crotch in the tree, and was just reaching out my dexter leg to feel if I could touch a bough below me, when a low, wild shriek ran along the wire,—as when the wind-harp, above referred to for illustration, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... sun had set, but in a crotch between two snow-peaks it had kindled a vast caldron from which rose a mist of jewels, garnet and turquoise, topaz and amethyst and opal, all swimming in a sea of molten gold. The glow of it still clung to the face of the broad Yukon, as a flush does to the soft, wrinkled cheek of a ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... Bathe the face, neck, crotch, chest, armpits (finishing if not beginning with cold water), and particularly the eyes, ears, and nose. If time and conveniences ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... exertions. His hunters had killed four fat caribou. In the clearing there were great piles of dry logs, and in the center of all there rose eight ten-foot tree-butts crotched at the top; and from crotch to crotch there rested a stout sapling stripped of bark, and on each sapling was spitted the carcass of a caribou, to be roasted whole by the heat of the fire beneath. The fires were lighted at dusk, and Williams himself started the first of those wild songs of the Northland—the ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... sun-dogs in the red day-dawn, An' the wind war laid—'t war prime fur game. I went ter the woods betimes that morn, An' tuk my flint-lock, "Nancy," by name; An' thar I see, in the crotch of a tree, A great big catamount grinnin' at me. A-kee! he! he! An' a-ho! ho! he! A pop-eyed catamount laffin' ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... after, he is snugly ensconced in a crotch of the sycamore; screened from observation of any one who may pass underneath, by the ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... I were the contestants. He won the lead and went to the bat—so to speak. And there he stood, with the crotch of his cue resting against his disk while the ship rose slowly up, sank slowly down, rose again, sank again. She never seemed to rise to suit him exactly. She started up once more; and when she was nearly ready ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... rubber coat from a tree crotch, went striding away with her face toward the pale east and despite fatigue she went high-headed and with ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... species, about 16 inches in length, and with a short tail and broad rounded wings; adults have the underparts handsomely barred with brown. Their nests are usually built in large trees, but generally placed against the trunk in the crotch of some of the lower branches. It is made of sticks and almost invariably lined with bark. The two to four eggs are of a grayish white color, marked with chestnut, brown and stone gray; size 1.90 x 1.55. Data.—Worcester, Mass., May 16, 1895. Nest about 20 feet ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... ash, and crab tree for cart and for plow, Save step for a stile of the crotch of a bough; Save hazel for forks, save sallow for rake: Save hulver and thorn, ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... something were going to happen," he confided to the tree, seating himself in a crotch formed by a limb extending out from the main body of the tree, then parting the foliage for a better view. "It's funny how a fellow feels about these things some times. Hello, there, I actually believe those are ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Grand Canyon - The Mystery of Bright Angel Gulch • Frank Gee Patchin
... to 7. President, the Right Hon. Lord Guernsey. Nearly 200 performers, including Master Buggins (a Birmingham boy alto) Mr. J.J. Goss (counter tenor), Signor Joseph Naldi (buffo), and Dr. Crotch, the conductor, organist and pianist. The last-named was a good player when only 3-1/2 years old. ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... was a curious squawk in among her branches, and soon two robins, each with a worm in his mouth, came flying in through the thick-leaved boughs, to their nest in a crotch of the tree. ...
— The Little Brown Hen Hears the Song of the Nightingale & The Golden Harvest • Jasmine Stone Van Dresser
... pot-hooks of different lengths, they are constantly needed at camp; select strong green sticks with a crotch on one end and drive a nail slantingly into the wood near the bottom of the stick on which to hang kettles, pots, etc. Be sure to have the nail turn up and the short side of the crotch turn down as ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... away with weak crotches and to remove crossing or interfering branches. A crotch formed by two branches of equal size, especially when the split is deep, is a weak crotch and should be avoided. Strong crotches are formed by forcing the development of lateral buds and making almost a right angle branch from the parent ...
— Apple Growing • M. C. Burritt
... first butcher catches sight of Picard's be-tufted head protruding in this strange manner from under the crotch of his fellow. The Man of Meat grasps Picard firmly by the collar and pulls ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... Miscellanies on various Subjects (1781). He contributed to the Philosophical Transactions for 1780 an account of Mozart's visit at eight years of age to London. In his Miscellanies on varied subjects he included this with accounts of four other prodigies, namely, Crotch, Charles and Samuel Wesley, and Garrett Wellesley, Lord Mornington. Among the most curious and ingenious of his papers are his Experiments and Observations on the Singing of Birds, and his Essay on the Language of Birds. He died on the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... they are known to one another. The emblem of the Ottawas is a moose; of the Chippewas, a sea gull; of the Backswoodsmen, a rabbit; that of the underground tribe, to which I belong, is a species of hawk; and that of the Seneca tribe of Indians is a crotch of a tree. The Ottawa Indians are very nearly extinct in the state of Michigan as there are only two or three families in the state, whose national emblem is a moose, showing them to be descended from pure Ottawa blood; but those who represented themselves as the Ottawas in this ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird
... find recruits in the slums of London, and how impossible it was to bring up aright boys who were bred in these neglected homes. Even where efforts had been begun, the machinery was quite inadequate, the teachers few, the schoolrooms cheerless and ill-equipped. Mr. Crotch[22] has preserved a letter of 1843 in which Dickens makes the practical offer of providing funds for a washing-place in one school where the children seemed to be suffering from inattention to the elementary ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... the tropics—Mexico, South America, and the West Indies—but nests in almost every part of North America east of the Rockies. The female models an exquisite statant, increment nest, well set down in the crotch of a tree, but the kind of a tree selected and the materials used ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... from the water's edge a birch knoll supported, besides the birches, a single big hemlock. With his belt ax, Thorpe cleared away the little white trees. He stuck the sharpened end of one of them in the bark of the shaggy hemlock, fastened the other end in a crotch eight or ten feet distant, slanted the rest of the saplings along one side of this ridge pole, and turned in, after a hasty supper, leaving the completion of his ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... expressed the thought of one whose dress or manners are calculated to elicit the admiration of susceptible young women—a "masher." His suit was of a striped and crossed pattern of brown wool, new at that time, but since become familiar as a business suit. The low crotch of the vest revealed a stiff shirt bosom of white and pink stripes. From his coat sleeves protruded a pair of linen cuffs of the same pattern, fastened with large, gold plate buttons, set with the ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... is! No wonder he gets on in the world. He is early, he is handy, he is adaptive, he is tenacious. Before the leaves are out in April the female begins her nest, concealing it as much as she can in a tree-crotch, or placing it under a shed or porch, or even under an overhanging bank upon the ground. One spring a robin built her nest upon the ladder that was hung up beneath the eaves of the wagon-shed. Having occasion to use the ladder, we placed the nest on a box that stood beneath it. The ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... successful this attempt at communication proved is not stated, but similar means of communication were in use during the whole period of Mormon migration. Sometimes a copy of the camp journal was left conspicuously in the crotch of a tree, for the edification of the next camp, and scores of the buffaloes' skulls that dotted the plains were marked with messages and set up along ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... and snapped their long jaws vengefully at their adversary. They seemed prepared to stay there indefinitely, in the hope of starving out the carcajou and tearing her to pieces. Perceiving this, the carcajou turned her back upon them, climbed farther up the tree to a comfortable crotch, and settled herself indifferently for a nap. For all her voracious appetite, she knew she could go hungry longer than any wolf, and quite wear out the pack in a waiting game. Then the trapper, indignant at seeing so much good meat spoiled, ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... a twig both birds started forward the male slipped away; the female dropped below the nest, and stood behind a limb, just her face peering through a crotch in my direction. Had I not known she was there, I might have looked the tree over twenty times without finding her. And there she stayed hidden till I was ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long
... a new direction and passed through an open glade where lay the broken trunk of a huge basswood. The size impressed it on his memory. He swung past the glade to make for the lake, a mile to the west, and twenty minutes later he started back as his eye rested on a huge black animal in the crotch of a hemlock, some thirty feet from the ground. A Bear! At last, this was the test of nerve he had half expected all summer; had been wondering how that mystery "himself" would act under this very trial. He stood still; his right hand dived into his pocket and, bringing ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... to crotch and twig and limb. They gathered on the brim of Buck's slouch hat, filled out the wrinkles in his big coat, whitened his hair and his long mustache, and sifted into the yellow, twisting path that guided ...
— Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... was that nest on the apple-tree; about the size of a walnut, with one leaf for a shelter. It was placed—I had almost said grew—in a slender crotch of a low-hanging bough. No coarse grass stems or bark fibres bound it to its slight moorings; it seemed to stand by its own fitness, to be a part of the branch itself. Soft, creamy-hued vegetable cotton, pressed and felted into a certain firmness of consistency, ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... of this three-acre plot, a tree had decayed and fallen several years before, and a young apple tree had been planted to take its place. This tree was now about five inches in diameter, and forked about five to six feet from the ground. In the crotch of this small tree, a foot dangling on either side, sat Ruth, balancing herself as best she could while Jerry, the new Southdown buck, was prancing back and forth, jumping alternately at one foot, then at the other, as she let them ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson
... off a long wand from a bush, and seemed to partly split one end of this. Into the crotch he inserted the birch bark. The other end he pushed into ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... trunk of a dead tree that had toppled over until its upper branches struck in the limb crotch of another, which thus supported it at an angle half-way in its fall. When above the ground far enough to prevent the bear's smelling us, we sat still to wait for his approach; until, in the gathering gloom, we could no longer see the sights of our rifles. It was useless to ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... little flight of marble steps, guarded by its hand-rail of heavy metal, shod with crimson velvet, one reaches the elevator. This pretty enclosure of iron and glass, of classic detail in the period of Henry II., of Circassian walnut trim, with crotch panels, has more the aspect of boudoir than elevator. The deep seat is of walnut, upholstered with fat cushions of crimson velvet edged in dull gold galloon. Over the seat is a mirror cut into small ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... training-camp—somewhere—from his side of a tent that had flapped like a captive wing all through a wind-swept night, Lieutenant Lipkind stirred rather painfully for a final snuggle into the crotch of an elbow that was stiff with ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... curiously at a crotch in the live-oak against which he had been rubbing, had stepped into the low fork of the tree. Perhaps he had some vague notion to rub both his sides at once as an economy of effort. His front feet had slipped on the wet ground. He went down, wedged fast. He struggled and kicked. ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... spot," said the little husband, whose name was Robert, perching on a limb of the old apple-tree and poking his bill into a crotch formed by ...
— Harper's Young People, April 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... ties on a ridge-pole supported by a pair of "shears" at each end; the shears, as you will observe, consist of two sticks bound together near the top and then spread apart to receive the ridge-pole in the crotch. ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... over a willow frame was considered sufficient to protect him from the storm. Sometimes he contented himself with a mere "breakwind," the rocky wall of a canyon, or large ravine. Near at hand he set up two poles, in the crotch of which another was laid, where he kept, out of reach of the hungry wolf and coyote, his meat, consisting of every variety afforded by the region in which he had pitched his camp. Under cover of the skins of the animals he had killed hung his old-fashioned ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... behind her. From the other side his mate replied in a soft twittering that told of love and confidence and comfort. A squirrel scampered up the trunk of a young beech, near by, and sat in the first crotch to look down at her, chattering. A light breeze sighed among the branches, swaying them in languorous rhythm, rustling them in ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... holding the pot of water, which, boy-like, he did not want to spill, and the other grasping the rabbit, Wilbur was terribly handicapped. But, by the greatest good fortune, as he stooped, the crotch of the stick that he was carrying caught the wild-cat under the body as she launched herself at him from the tree. The stick was knocked out of the boy's grasp, but it also turned the cat aside, and she half fell, landing ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... squirrel haunted Noble night and day. The very squirrel himself would run up before his face into the tree, and, crouched in a crotch, would sit silently watching the whole process of bombarding the empty hole, with great sobriety and relish. But Noble would allow of no doubts. His conviction that that hole had a squirrel in it continued unshaken for six weeks. ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... so little. As night came on, he crossed over to an island, and determined to camp for the night. At the upper end of the island was a large tree that had drifted down and lodged, and in a fork of this tree he built his fire, and got in a crotch of one of the forks, and sat with his back to the fire, warming himself, but all the time he was thinking about the woman he had slept beside the night before. As he sat there, all at once he heard over beyond the ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... furnishes the maximum of light and air to all parts of the tree. Three or four main branches should form the basis of the head, care being taken not to have them start from directly opposite points on the trunk, thus forming a crotch and leaving the tree liable to splitting from winds or excessive crops. If the tree is once started right, further pruning will give little trouble. Cut out limbs which cross, or are likely to rub against each other, or that are too close together; and ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... added the roarings and the growlings and the moanings of his fellows as they approached from every direction, in the hope of wresting from him whatever of his kill they could take by craft or prowess. And now he turned snarling upon them as they circled the tree, while the girl, huddled in a crotch above them, looked down upon the gaunt, yellow monsters padding on noiseless feet in a restless circle about her. She wondered now at the strange freak of fate that had permitted her to come down this far into the valley by night unharmed, ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... lifted its crest into a sky of violet haze. Half an hour since the sun had set in a blaze of splendor behind a crotch of the hills, but dusk had softened the vivid tints of orange and crimson and scarlet to a faint pink glow. Already the mountain silhouette had lost its sharp edge and the outlines were blurring. Soon night would sift down over ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... the picnic quite as much as the merry-makers themselves—until a boy spied him. And then several boys began to throw acorns at him. Frisky did not like that so well; and he hid in a crotch of the tree where he could not be seen from below, until the boys forgot ...
— The Tale of Frisky Squirrel • Arthur Scott Bailey
... person there who did not feel pleasure at the approaching event, and that was a dwarf about a foot high, very ugly and wicked, who, by some means or other, had got into this goodly company, and who was now seated in a crotch of the tree, very close to the rope by which the crowd was lowering the lady's head. No one perceived him, for he was very much the color of the tree, and there he sat alone, quivering with spite ...
— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton
... trees beyond the clearing Tarzan caught upon the down-coming wind the explanation of his new interest—the scent spoor of man was wafted strongly to the sensitive nostrils. Caching the remainder of the deer's hind quarter in the crotch of a tree the ape-man wiped his greasy palms upon his naked thighs and swung off in pursuit of Numa. A broad, well-beaten elephant path led into the forest from the clearing. Parallel to this slunk Numa, while above him Tarzan moved through the trees, the shadow of a wraith. The ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... now moved slowly and leaning against the bole of a tree regained his breath while he listened for the expected sounds of pursuit. The cemetery seemed to be deserted, but he decided to take no chances, so he found a tree with thick foliage, and climbed from one bough to another until he found a crotch of a limb where he disposed himself as comfortably as possible to wait until the pursuit had ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs |
