A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1469 entries
haymaker
Haymaker is a name for the pika, a small round-eared relative of rabbits that lives in talus slopes high in the mountains of North America and Asia. It does not hibernate. Instead it spends the whole summer cutting vegetation, carrying it back in mouthfuls, and stacking it under the rocks to cure, then eats the pile through the winter. A single pika can gather sixty pounds of hay in a season.
Etymology
The name comes straight off the farm, from the workers who cut, turned, and dried the grass. Applied to the pika, it is a direct comparison to human practice, and an accurate one, since the animal cuts, carries, spreads, and turns its hay to dry it before storing it. The boxing sense, meaning a wide swinging punch, comes from the same farm work by way of the arc of a scythe.
Notes
Research in the Elk Mountains of Colorado found that pikas divide their foraging trips about equally between eating on the spot and haying, and that they travel further for hay than for a meal, going up to sixty feet out from the safety of the rocks. Hay piles are territorial centers, and neighbors steal from each other. Other names for the animal include rock rabbit, coney, and whistling hare.