A red squirrel, a raven and a coyote are the only ones who turn up to the winter meeting. Write the minutes.Fact: foxes, coyotes, red squirrels, hares and ravens stay active in winter and adapt to it.
A lemur hibernates in a tree hole where the winter is warm. Write its explanation to a ground squirrel who does not believe it.Fact: the fat-tailed dwarf lemur of Madagascar hibernates in tree holes for seven months of the year.
Snakes leave the winter den one at a time and find the sun. Write the rock where they all warm up.Fact: reptiles spend the winter months dormant, waiting for warm weather to return.
A bat chooses a cave for the winter. Write the tour it takes before picking its spot.Fact: bats choose caves, mines and rock crevices with the right temperature and humidity for hibernation.
A chipmunk makes trip after trip with full cheeks. Write the inventory of its pantry on the last day.Fact: in many small species, storing food takes the place of eating and getting fat.
A colony of marmots lines one room of the burrow with hay. Write the bed-making, and the argument over who gets the middle.Fact: yellow-bellied marmots huddle closely together in a burrow room insulated with hay.
A fat-tailed dwarf lemur stores its winter in its tail. Write the tail's point of view as it grows.Fact: the fat-tailed dwarf lemur uses its tail to store fat for its months of torpor.
A groundhog eats less than it did in spring and still grows rounder. Write a puzzled groundhog weighing itself.Fact: a groundhog's weight can rise by as much as 100 percent as it lays down fat for hibernation.
A hazel dormouse fattens up on hazelnuts. Write the hedge's count of how many it lost.Fact: hazelnuts are the hazel dormouse's main food for fattening up before hibernation.
A hazel dormouse leaves the branches for a nest on the ground. Write why the climber of the hedge spends winter downstairs.Fact: the hazel dormouse hibernates in a nest on the ground, under piles of leaves or logs.
A marmot looks over the meadow one last time before going under until spring. Write what it wants to remember.Fact: yellow-bellied marmots enter their burrows in September or early October and come out in April or May.
The adults went under in August while the food was still good. Write the young ground squirrel left on the surface in September.Fact: adult arctic ground squirrels often start hibernating in late August. The young stay up later.
An arctic ground squirrel doubles its weight over one short summer. Write its diary for the last week of eating.Fact: arctic ground squirrels often double their body weight by the time they enter hibernation.
The days get shorter and something tells a snake it is time. Write the feeling before the snake knows what it is.Fact: a reptile's winter dormancy is triggered by cold weather and fewer hours of daylight.
Some animals leave, some sleep and some stay. Write three neighbors saying goodbye on the last warm afternoon.Fact: animals have three ways to deal with winter: escape it, avoid it or adapt to it.
Winter brings two problems, the cold and the empty cupboard. Write a forest meeting where each animal announces its plan.Fact: winter has two big problems for animals: there is less food and it is intensely cold.
Write an animal's last meal before winter as a menu, with the dish it goes back to for thirds.Fact: before hibernating, an animal must store enough energy to last its whole dormant period.
Write the checklist an animal runs through before the long sleep: fat, bed, door.Angle: the last item is the one it nearly forgets.
The long sleep 15
A bat hangs in a cave and goes minutes without a breath. Write one of those minutes.Fact: a hibernating bat's heart drops to 10 beats a minute, and it may go minutes without taking a breath.
A common poorwill sits among desert rocks for weeks without moving. Write the hiker who takes the bird for a stone.Fact: the common poorwill is the only bird known to go into torpor for weeks to months.
A hibernating marmot takes a breath or two a minute. Write a whole page that lasts exactly one breath.Fact: a hibernating marmot needs only one to two breaths a minute.
A lemur hibernates in a tree hole where the winter is warm. Write its explanation to a ground squirrel who does not believe it.Fact: the fat-tailed dwarf lemur of Madagascar hibernates in tree holes for seven months of the year.
A marmot's heart slows from racing to one beat every two seconds. Write the winter as the heart.Fact: a hibernating marmot's heart slows from 180 to 200 beats a minute to an average of 30.
A wood frog freezes under the leaves, with no heartbeat, and is not dead. Write the winter from inside the frog.Fact: a frozen wood frog has no detectable heartbeat, breathing or muscle movement.
An arctic ground squirrel is colder than ice and alive. Write what the snow above it would say if it knew.Fact: the body temperature of a hibernating arctic ground squirrel drops below freezing.
Every few weeks a sleeping ground squirrel shivers for hours, warms up and goes back to the cold. Write one of those shivers.Fact: every two to three weeks it shivers and shakes for 12 to 15 hours to warm itself back up.
For years scientists argued over whether a bear's winter sleep counts as hibernation. Write the debate as two ground squirrels holding it.Fact: it was long unclear whether bears truly hibernate, since their body temperature falls only a little.
Hibernating is not the same as sleeping. Write a ground squirrel that warms up from hibernation because it badly needs a nap.Fact: one idea is that hibernators build up a sleep debt and must warm up now and then to sleep.
In midwinter a hibernating bat warms up for a few hours and then goes back. Write what it does with its time.Fact: hibernating bats cycle through torpor broken by brief arousals that last a few hours.
One people's name for the poorwill means The Sleeping One. Give three other animals new names for what they do in winter.Fact: the Hopi name for the common poorwill, hölchko, means The Sleeping One.
Snakes spend the winter together in one den. Write the den as the last snake to arrive finds it.Fact: the spots where snakes pass the winter fill with many snakes that spend it together.
Three things slow down in a true hibernator. Write them as three workers in one factory who are told to go slow.Fact: a true hibernator has a reduced metabolism, a slower heart rate and a lowered body temperature.
Write the winter of a burrow as its doorway: what passes, what sniffs, what never learns who is inside.Angle: the doorway has no eyes. What does it know by?
Who stays awake 15
A chickadee hides seeds all fall and has to find them all winter. Write its memory as a map.Fact: black-capped chickadees cache food for the winter and can remember a cache for up to 28 days.
A chipmunk has a full pantry and has not decided whether to hibernate. Write the decision.Fact: a chipmunk sleeps for long periods but truly hibernates only if food is scarce.
A fox stands on the snow, listening to something moving underneath. Write the listening.Fact: foxes and large owls can hear small animals moving through the snow beneath them.
A hare eats twigs and bark all winter and thinks about grass. Write the daydream.Fact: in winter snowshoe hares eat mostly buds, twigs and bark from willow and alder.
A hummingbird is no winter sleeper, but it shuts down for a single cold night. Write that night and the morning after.Fact: hummingbirds have been seen to enter torpor on cold nights, which saves their stores of fat.
A pika does not hibernate. Write its winter in the tunnels between its haypiles.Fact: pikas dig tunnels underneath the snow to the plants they stored among the rocks in summer.
A red squirrel, a raven and a coyote are the only ones who turn up to the winter meeting. Write the minutes.Fact: foxes, coyotes, red squirrels, hares and ravens stay active in winter and adapt to it.
A snowshoe hare sits out a blizzard tucked into the snow itself. Write the storm as the hare hears it.Fact: snowshoe hares and grouse snuggle into the snow for protection from cold and wind.
An animal that stays awake keeps a winter newspaper for the friend who sleeps through it. Write the front page for January.Angle: one headline is about the weather and one is gossip.
Between the ground and the snow there is a room with a white ceiling. Write a vole's commute through it.Fact: mice, voles and shrews live beneath the snow, tunneling through it and feeding on seeds and bark.
On the coldest night a chickadee turns its own heat down to save fuel. Write the night.Fact: a black-capped chickadee can lower its body temperature on cold winter nights to save energy.
The small holes in the snow are not always doors. Write the vole who has to explain its air vents to a visitor.Fact: many of the small holes seen in the snow are vents that let carbon dioxide out from beneath it.
Snow is a blanket to the animals under it. Write the first big snowfall of the year as good news.Fact: where there is no permafrost, the zone beneath six inches of snow or more stays close to 32 °F.
Tracks in the snow tell who was awake last night. Write the story of one set of tracks, read by a child at breakfast.Fact: tracks found in the snow are left by animals that adapt to winter instead of sleeping through it.
Write a pika's summer as one long shopping trip for a winter it will spend wide awake.Fact: pikas collect grass, leaves and plants into haypiles and eat them all winter long.
The first morning out 15
A bat has waited half a year for one thing, the first moth of spring. Write the moment it hears it.Fact: some bats hibernate for more than six months, waiting for the return of insects in the spring.
A hazel dormouse wakes in spring and starts a new nest of honeysuckle bark. Write its first day back at work after a winter off.Fact: when it wakes in spring, the hazel dormouse weaves nests of shredded honeysuckle bark, leaves and grass.
A male arctic ground squirrel digs up through the snow, first out of the whole colony. Write what he sees.Fact: adult male arctic ground squirrels are usually first out, digging their way up through the snow.
A marmot comes out after more than 200 days underground. Write the first thing it does, and the second.Fact: marmots build fat stores that carry them through roughly 200 or more days of hibernating.
A pika who was awake all winter watches the marmots come out, yawning. Write what it says to them.Fact: pikas do not hibernate. Marmots spend more than half their lives in hibernation.
A sleeper wakes too early, in a thaw that will not last. Write the day, and the decision at dusk.Angle: go back under, or stay up?
After months curled in a ball, an animal has to remember how its legs work. Write the first walk.Angle: clumsy first, then sure of itself.
An animal wakes and does not know how long it slept. Write the three clues it uses to work it out.Angle: the light, the smell of the air, its own ribs.
The first ground squirrel out will not go far from its burrow. Write the small world it guards while it waits for the melt.Fact: the first squirrels out stay fairly close to their burrows until the snow cover melts.
Half the colony is awake and half is not. Write the early risers deciding whether to wake the rest.Angle: one of them votes to let the loud one sleep.
Invent an alarm clock for hibernators. What sets it off: warmth, light, hunger or something else?Angle: decide what your animal trusts most.
The poorwill opens its eyes among the rocks. Write the hiker's second visit, when the stone is gone.Angle: the hiker tells nobody, or everybody.
Snakes leave the winter den one at a time and find the sun. Write the rock where they all warm up.Fact: reptiles spend the winter months dormant, waiting for warm weather to return.
The wood frog thaws. Write the minute its heart starts again.Fact: wood frogs can survive the freezing of 65 to 70 percent of the water in their bodies.
Write the weigh-in on the first morning out: what the animal was in the fall, and what is left of it now.Fact: alpine marmots are much lighter in spring, just after hibernation, than in the fall before it.
How it works
These hibernation writing prompts cross one winter in order: fattening up, the long sleep, the neighbors who never sleep, the first morning out. Most carry a fact from the US National Park Service or Wikipedia about marmots, ground squirrels, bats, frogs and birds.
Read the full guide
From the last meal to the long sleep
Getting ready is all appetite and bed-making: a colony of marmots lines a room of the burrow with hay and argues over who gets the middle. Then the bodies slow. A marmot's heart drops to one beat every two seconds, and an arctic ground squirrel turns colder than ice and lives.
Who stays awake, and the first morning out
A pika spends the winter in the tunnels between its haypiles, and a chickadee has to find the seeds it hid. In the last group the sleepers come up: a ground squirrel digs through the snow and a marmot is weighed.
Choose one animal and follow it through all four groups.
Use the numbers. Thirty heartbeats a minute is a rhythm you can write to.
Questions and answers
What is a good hibernation writing prompt?
One with a body in it. A bat hangs in a cave and goes minutes without a breath: write one of those minutes. Or an animal wakes, does not know how long it slept, and works it out from three clues.
Which animals hibernate?
Ground squirrels, marmots, dormice, hedgehogs and some bats are among them. One bird, the common poorwill, goes into torpor for weeks to months, and the fat-tailed dwarf lemur of Madagascar hibernates in tree holes.
What is the difference between hibernation and torpor?
Torpor is the slowed state itself: a low body temperature, a slow heart, little breathing. A bat may enter it for a few hours on a cold day. Hibernation is a season of torpor broken by brief warm-ups, on the US National Park Service's account.
Which animals do not hibernate in winter?
Pikas, snowshoe hares, foxes, coyotes, red squirrels and ravens stay active, on the Park Service's lists. Mice, voles and shrews spend the winter awake beneath the snow.