Photo. by Enos A. MillsA Wild Life Trail Centre
Photo. by Enos A. Mills
A Wild Life Trail Centre
Photo. by Enos A. MillsMy Departing Caller
Photo. by Enos A. Mills
My Departing Caller
I watched a coyote walk back and forth close to a mother antelope with two young kids. She paid no apparent attention to him. But she was besieged. After two or three hours he was relieved by another coyote. This was a new and rather leisurely way of relaying. Evidently the devilish plan was to wear the antelope out or stay until she was forced to go for water and then seize the youngsters.
It was more than fifteen miles to the next water-hole. This may have been the second or even the third day that the coyotes had been worrying her. I frightened them away, but had not gone half a mile when I saw them circling back again. I do not know the end of the story, but as I walked on I wished that this mother antelope might have possessed the specialdevelopment of the pronghorn in the desert regions—the ability to do without water for days at a time.
The food of the pronghorn is sage, greasewood, sometimes cactus, and, on the desert, broomrape. I do not recall ever seeing him eat grass. In the extremely arid regions of the Southwest the local flocks, in common with mountain sheep and other animals of the desert, have developed the habit of doing without water for days—sometimes for a period of two weeks or longer have no other moisture than that furnished by the plants eaten.
When the young antelope are about three weeks old they appear to have full use of their legs and usually follow the mother in feedings and fights. At this time numbers of mothers and youngsters collect and run together. They are thus enabled to give mutual aid and to withstand coyotes and other enemies better. Sometimes under dangerous conditions the young are left behind while some of the mothers go for water, and on their return the remaining ones go. Just why this mutual aid is not practised while the young are almost helpless is not clear.
In early autumn all ages and sexes unite and commonly run together, often in large flocks, throughout the winter. The youngsters oftenplay together. Frequently one of the males is the lively leader of twenty or thirty. At other times the old antelopes play, go through a series of marches and countermarches. They race back and forth and over short circles. When thus engaged they commonly have sentinels posted on the outskirts.
Most other animals appear to forget possible enemies while playing, but the nervous antelope, with big open spaces round it, appears never to be quite in repose.
Depending upon speed rather than upon stealth, fighting ability, or concealment, as a means of escaping enemies, and living in the plains with a magnificence of unobstructed distances, it has learned to be watchful, to use sentinels, and to flee even when danger is afar.
Usually when the antelope lies down it selects a spot well away from any ravine, bluff, willow clump, or sagebrush thicket that could conceal an enemy or that would enable an enemy to approach it closely unseen.
Under most conditions the female appears to be the acknowledged leader. In the majority of instances in which I have watched moving flocks of antelope—fleeing small numbers or a number of alarmed antelope preparing to move—it was under female leadership.
The pronghorn lives in a home territory.This I think is rarely more than six or eight miles in diameter. If pursued by man, dogs, or wolves it is likely to run in great circles, keeping within the bounds of home territory. Most antelope are not migratory, but in a few localities the flocks make a short migration. For winter they may travel to a more broken locality, one that gives some shelter from the wind and contains spaces off which the wind sweeps the snow.
The antelope makes long leaps but not high jumps. I watched an antelope that had been separated from the flock hurrying to rejoin it. In its way was a line of willows along the dry, shallow water channel. This willow stretch was not wide nor high. A deer would have leaped it without the slightest hesitation. The antelope went far round and jumped wide gullies, but made no attempt to leap this one low line of willows. Being a plains animal, knowing but little of cliffs and timber, it has not learned high jumping.
For ages the antelope was thickly scattered over the Great Plains and the small parks of the West, Northwest, and Southwest. Fifty years ago they were numbered by millions. The present antelope population numbers not more than 15,000. Howard Eaton tells me that years ago he sometimes saw several thousand in a singleday. Once when a boy I saw at least a thousand in a North Park, Colorado, flock.
A few are now protected in the national parks and in private antelope reserves. But they are verging well toward extermination. Rarely does the antelope thrive in captivity. Apparently the food ordinarily fed it in captivity does not agree with it.
Mature antelope are marked with what may be called revealing colours, which advertise their presence and make them easily visible at long distances: rich tan to grayish brown on the back and sides, with clean white buttocks and sides of face and belly; the throat faintly striped with white and brown; and a touch of near-black on the head. The antelope’s colour is so distinctive and stands out so well against most backgrounds that it may be classed as an animal with revealing coloration.
Two white rump patches flare up during excitement; the crowded and bristling hairs may be seen at surprisingly long distances.
Possibly these hairs are also under conscious control. At any rate, let one or a number on a ridge see an approaching enemy and these white patches stand out, and the next adjacent flock, even though two or three miles away, will see the sign—or signal—and also take alarm. Though the antelope does not do any wirelesswigwagging, the sudden flare of white buttocks is revealing.
Depending chiefly on speed in escaping his enemies, the antelope has also the added advantage of being able to detect an enemy while he is still afar. The plains where he lives enable him to see objects miles away, and his eyes being of telescopic nature ofttimes enable him to determine whether a distant moving object is friend or foe.
It thus is important that an antelope be so marked that another antelope will recognize him at long range. Each flock of antelope watches the distant surrounding flocks, and each flock thus mutually aids the others by acting as an outlying sentinel for it. If a flock sees an object approaching that may be an enemy it strikes attitudes which proclaim alarm, and, definitely marked, their actions at once give eye messages of alarm to all flocks in view and close enough to make out what they are doing. It would thus seem that the revealing colours of the antelope have been of help in protecting—that is, perpetuating, the species.
The antelope is nervous and is easily thrown into a panic. Though it is often canny and courageous, it lacks the coolness, the alertness, and the resourcefulness—that is to say, the quick wit and adaptability—of the mountainsheep. In the Yellowstone and the Wind Cave National Parks are numbers of antelope. Many of these have readjusted themselves to the friendly conditions and have lost most of their nervousness and fear of man.
They have a bump of curiosity. I paused one afternoon to talk to a homesteader on the prairie. He was fencing, and presently commenced stretching a line of barbed wire. The penetrating squeaks of the wire reached the ears of several unseen antelope and appealed to their curiosity. They came close, about the distance from third to home plate.
Well might they have shown concern at barbed wire! It has wrought terrific destruction to the species.
A generation or so ago it appears to have been easy for the hunter by displaying a red flag or some partly concealed moving object to rouse antelope curiosity and to lure numbers. I have repeatedly seen this trick tried and a few times I have patiently endeavoured with this appeal to bring a flock within range of my double-barrelled field glass, but I didn’t succeed. They promptly went over the horizon. They are curious still, but have become wiser.
I suppose it will never do to reach final conclusions concerning what an animal will do under new conditions. After a few years of intimateacquaintance with the plains antelope I visited the Yellowstone region, thinking that I was well grounded in all antelope habits. One day I came upon a flock in a deep grassy forest bay in the edge of a dense woods. Thinking to get close I walked in behind them. To my amazement they darted into the woods, dodging trees right and left like lightning, and hurdling fallen trees as readily as any deer or mountain sheep that I have seen. They well illustrated a phase of animal behaviour called ecology, or response to environment.
The pronghorn or antelope is distinctly American. Fossilized antelope bones have been found in western Nebraska that are estimated to be two million years old. This antelope family is not related to the African or Asiatic antelope, nor to any American mammal species; it is alone in the world.
Many prehistoric species of animals that lived in the same scenes with the ancient ancestors of the antelope have been extinct for thousands of years. The rhinoceros, toothed birds, American horses, ponderous reptiles, and numerous other species failed to do what the antelope did—readjust to each radical change and survive. Climatic changes, new food, strange enemies, uplifts, subsidences, wild volcanic outpourings, the great Ice Age—over all these the antelope has triumphed.
Raisingmy eyes for an instant from the antics of a woodchuck, they caught a movement of the tall grass caused by a crawling animal. This presently showed itself to be a mountain lion. He was slipping up on a mare and colt on the opposite edge of the meadow. The easy air that was blowing across my face—from horse to lion—had not carried a warning of my presence to either of them.
I was in Big Elk Park, seated on a rock pile, and was nearly concealed by drooping tree limbs. Behind me rose the forested Twin Peaks, and before me a ragged-edged mountain meadow lay in the forest; and across this meadow the lion crawled.
The colt kicked up its heels as it ran merry circles round its mother. This beautiful bay mare, like her colt, was born in unfenced scenes and had never felt the hand of man. She had marked capability and the keenness exacted by wilderness environment.
I watched the bending grass as the lion creptcloser and closer. Occasionally I caught a glimpse of the low-held body and the alert raised head. The back-pointing, sensitive three-foot tail, as restless as an elephant’s trunk, kept swinging, twitching, and feeling. Planning before the lion was within leaping distance to warn the mare with a yell, I sat still and watched.
The well-developed and ever-alert senses of the mare—I know not whether it was scent or sight—brought a message of danger. Suddenly she struck an attitude of concentration and defiance, and the frightened colt crowded to her side. How capable and courageous she stood, with arched neck, blazing eyes, vigilant ears, and haughty tail! She pawed impatiently as the lion, now near, watchful and waiting, froze.
Suddenly he leaped forward, evidently hoping to stampede both animals and probably to seize the separated colt. Instantly the mother wheeled, and her outkicking heels narrowly missed the lion’s head. Next the lion made a quick side-leap to avoid being stamped beneath the mare’s swift front feet.
For half a minute the mare and lion were dodging and fighting with all their skill. A splendid picture the mare made with erect tail and arched neck as she struck and wheeled and kicked!
Again and again the lion tried to leap uponthe colt; but each time the mother was between them. Then, watching his chance, he boldly leaped at the mare, endeavouring to throw a forepaw round her neck and, at the same instant, to seize and tear the throat with his savage teeth. He nearly succeeded.
With the lion clinging and tearing at her head, the audacious mare reared almost straight on her hind legs and threw herself backward. This either threw the lion off or he let go. She had her nose badly clawed and got a bite in the neck; but she was first to recover, and a kick landed upon the lion’s hip. Crippled, he struggled and hurried tumbling away into the woods, while the bleeding mare paused to breathe beside the untouched colt.
The mountain lion is called a puma, catamount, panther, painter, or cougar, and was originally found all over North America. Of course he shows variations due to local climate and food.
The lion is stealthy, exceedingly cunning, and curious in the extreme; but I am not ready, as many are, to call him cowardly. He does not have that spectacular rash bravery which dashes into the face of almost certain death; but he is courageous enough when necessity requires him to procure food or to defend himself and his kind. He simply adapts himselfto conditions; and these exact extreme caution.
The mountain lion may be called sagacious rather than audacious. Settlers in his territory are aware of his presence through his hogging the wild game and his occasional or frequent killing of colts, horses, cattle, sheep, and chickens. But so seldom is he seen, or even heard, that, were it not for his tracks and the deadly evidence of his presence, his existence could not be believed.
Though I have camped in his territory for weeks at a time, and ofttimes made special efforts to see him, the number of lions I have seen—except, of course, those treed by dogs—is small.
When a mountain lion is frightened, or when pursued by dogs, he is pretty certain to take refuge in a tree. This may be a small tree or a large one. He may be out on a large limb or up in the top of the tree.
The lion is a fair runner and a good swimmer. Often he has been known to swim across lakes, or even arms of the sea, more than a mile wide. And he is an excellent tree climber, and often uses a living tree or a dead leaning one as a thoroughfare—as a part of his trail system on a steep mountain side. Twice I have seen him on a near-by limb at night watching me or my fire. Once I woke in the night and saw a lion upontwo out-reaching tree limbs not more than eight feet above me. His hind feet were upon one limb, his forefeet upon a lower limb, and he was looking down, watching me curiously. He remained in this position for several minutes, then turned quietly, descended the tree on the opposite side, and walked away into the woods.
It is probable that lions mate for life. Sometimes they live year after year in the same den and prowl over the same local territory. This territory, I think, is rarely more than a few miles across; though where food is scarce or a good den not desirably located, they may cover a larger territory.
Lions commonly live in a den of their own making. This is sometimes dug in loose sand or soil where its entrance is concealed among bushes. Sometimes it is beneath a fallen log or a tree root, and in other places a semi-den, beneath rocks, is enlarged. In this den the young are born, and the old ones may use it a part of each year, and for year after year.
Though occasionally a mother lion may raise as many as five kittens, rarely does she succeed in raising more than two; and I think only two are commonly brought forth at a birth. These kittens probably remain with the mother for nearly a year, and in exceptional cases even longer. As I have seen either kittens or theirtracks at every season of the year, I assume the young may be born at any time.
The mountain lion is a big-whiskered cat and has many of the traits possessed by the average cat. He weighs about one hundred and fifty pounds and is from seven to eight feet long, including a three-foot tail. He is thin and flat-sided and tawny in colour. He varies from brownish red to grayish brown. He has sharp, strong claws.
Mr. Roosevelt once offered one thousand dollars for a mountain lion skin that would measure ten feet from tip to tip. The money was never claimed. Apparently, however, in the state of Washington a hunter did succeed in capturing an old lion that weighed nearly two hundred pounds and measured ten and a half feet from tip to tip. But most lions approximate only one hundred pounds and measure possibly eight feet from tip to tip.
The lion eats almost anything. I have seen him catching mice and grasshoppers. On one occasion I was lying behind a clump of willows upon a beaver dam. Across the pond was an open grassy space. Out into this presently walked a mountain lion. For at least half an hour he amused or satisfied himself by chasing, capturing, and eating grasshoppers. He then laid down for a few minutes in the sunshine;but presently he scented something alarming and vanished into the thick pine woods.
One evening I sat watching a number of deer feeding on a terrace of a steep mountain side. Suddenly a lion leaped out, landing on the neck of one. Evidently the deer was off balance and on a steep slope. The impact of the lion knocked him over, but like a flash he was upon his feet again. Top-heavy with the lion, he slid several yards down a steep place and fell over a precipice. The lion was carried with him. I found both dead on the rocks below.
The lion is a master of woodcraft. He understands the varying sounds and silences of the forest. He either hides and lies in wait or slips unsuspected upon his victim. He slips upon game even more stealthily than man; and in choosing the spot to wait for a victim he usually chooses wisely and, alert waits, if necessary, for a prolonged time. He leaps upon the shoulders and neck of horse, deer, or sheep, and then grabs the victim’s throat in his teeth. Generally the victim quickly succumbs. If a lion or lioness misses in leaping, it commonly turns away to seek another victim. Rarely does it pursue or put up a fight.
A friend wished a small blue mule on me. It had been the man’s vacation pack animal. The mule loitered round, feeding on the abundantgrass near my cabin. The first snow came. Twenty-four hours later the mule was passing a boulder near my cabin when a lion leaped upon him and throttled him. Tracks and scattered hair showed that the struggle had been intense though brief.
Not a track led to the boulder upon which the lion had lain in wait, and, as the snow had fallen twenty-four or more hours before the tragedy, he must have been there at least twenty-four hours, and he may have waited twice as long.
Another time I frightened a lion from a cliff where he was waiting for a near-by flock of bighorn sheep to come within leaping distance. Though it was nearly forty-eight hours since snow had ceased falling, not a track led to the lion’s watching place or blind.
The lion probably is the game hog of the wilds. Often I have read his red records in the snow. On one occasion he killed nine mountain sheep in one attack. He ate a few pounds of one of them and never returned to the kill. On another occasion he killed eleven domestic sheep in one night. Inside of twenty-four hours a lion killed a doe, a fawn, a porcupine, a grouse, and was making a try for a mountain sheep when I appeared on snowshoes. He seems to prefer colts or horses for food.
Photo. by Enos A. MillsJohnny, My Grizzly Cub
Photo. by Enos A. Mills
Johnny, My Grizzly Cub
Drawing by Will JamesEcho Mountain Grizzly
Drawing by Will James
Echo Mountain Grizzly
Mr. J. A. McGuire, editor ofOutdoor Life, who has made special investigations concerning the killings of mountain lions, estimates that a lion will kill a deer every week if he has the opportunity to do so. From personal experience I have known him to kill four deer in a single week.
On one occasion, when I was hidden and watching the carcass of a deer which a lion had killed to see what carnivorous animal might come to the feast, a mountain lion walked quietly and unalertly to it and commenced to eat. After a few minutes the lion suddenly bristled up and spat in the direction from which a grizzly bear presently appeared. With terrible snarling and threatening, the lion held on to the prize until the grizzly was within a few feet. He then leaped toward the grizzly with a snarl, struck at it, and dashed into the woods. The grizzly, without even looking round to see where the lion had gone, began eating.
From many experiences I believe that much of the killing of domestic and wild animals attributed to bears is done by lions. The lion prefers warm blood and fresh meat for each meal, and will kill daily if there is opportunity. I have known bears to follow mountain lions evidently for the purpose of obtaining food. One day I came upon the recently killed carcassof a cow. Only mountain lion tracks led to it and from it. The following night I spent at a near-by ranch house, and the rancher informed me that on the previous day he had discovered a bear eating the carcass of this cow which he accused the bear of killing. The lion is a most capable raider of ranches, and colts, horses, sheep, pigs, and poultry are his prizes.
In northern New Mexico one day I saw a lion bounding across an opening carrying a tame sheep in its mouth. On another occasion I saw a lion carrying off a deer that apparently weighed much more than the lion itself. The lion appeared to have the deer by the shoulder, and it was resting on the lion’s shoulders in such a way that I do not believe it touched the ground.
I suppose when the lion makes a kill in an out-of-the-way place, where he may eat with comparative safety, he does not take the trouble to carry or to drag the victim off. Often, of course, the kill is made for the benefit of the young, and hence must be transported to the den.
It is quite true that he will sometimes wander back to his kill day after day and feast upon it. It is also true, when food is scarce, that lions will eat almost anything, even though they have nothing to do with the killing. They have been trapped at the bait that was out for bears: and so, though a lion prefers blood and warm meat,he will return to his kill to feast, or, if food is scarce, gladly eat whatever he can obtain.
From many observations I judge that after eating he prefers to lie down for a few hours in some sunny or secluded spot, or on a many-branched limb generally well up toward the top of the tree but sometimes not more than ten feet above the earth.
The lion has extreme curiosity. He will follow travellers for hours if there is opportunity to keep out of sight while doing so. Often during long snowshoe trips I have returned over the route first travelled. Lion tracks in the snow showed that I was repeatedly followed for miles. In a number of places, where I had taken a long rest, the lion had crept up close, so that he could easily watch me; and on a few occasions he must have been within a few feet of me.
While walking through a forest in the Medicine Bow Mountains I was startled and knocked down by a glancing blow of a tree limb. This limb had evidently broken off under the weight of a lion. The lion also came tumbling down but caught a claw on a limb and saved himself from striking the earth. Evidently in his curiosity to see me he had leaned out too far on a weak limb. He fled in confusion, perhaps even more frightened than myself.
The mountain lion is not ferocious. Mr.Roosevelt, in summing up its characteristics, concluded that it would be no more dangerous to sleep in woods populated with mountain lions than if they were so many ordinary cats.
In addition to years of camping in the wilds in all sorts of places and under all conditions of weather I have talked with careful frontiersmen, skillful hunters and trappers, and these people uniformly agreed with what I have found to be true—that the instances of mountain lions attacking human beings are exceedingly rare. In each of these cases the peculiar action of the lion and the comparative ineffectiveness of his attacks indicated that he was below normal mentally or nearly exhausted physically.
Two other points of agreement are: Rarely does any one under ordinary conditions see a lion; and just as rarely does one hear its call. Of the dozen or more times I have heard the screech of the lion, on three occasions there was a definite cause for the cry—on one a mother frantically sought her young, which had been carried off by a trapper; and twice the cry was a wail, in each instance given by the lion calling for its mate, recently slain by a hunter.
During the past thirty years I have investigated dozens of stories told of lions leaping upon travellers from cliffs or tree limbs, or of other stealthy attacks. When run down eachof these proved to be an invention; in most cases not a lion or even lion track had been seen.
Two instances of lion attacks are worth mentioning. One night in California a lion leaped from a cliff, struck a man, knocked him down, and then ran away. Out of this incident have come numerous stories of lion ferocity. The lion was tracked, however, and the following day the pursuing hunter saw it crossing an opening. It suddenly clawed and hit at a boulder. Then, going on, it apparently ran into a tree, and fought that. As it started on the hunter shot it. This beast was badly emaciated, had a swollen face from an ulcerated tooth, and was nearly, if not entirely, blind.
Another instance apparently was of a weak-minded lion. As though to attack, it came toward a little ten-year-old girl in Idaho. She struck it over the head with a bridle she was carrying. Her brother hurried to the rescue with a willow fishing pole. Together they beat the lion off and escaped with a few bad scratches. Yet had this been a lion of average strength and braveness he must have killed or severely injured both.
The mountain lion rivals the shark, the devilfish, and the grizzly in being the cause of ferocious tales. The fact that he takes refuge on limbs as a place of lookout to watch for peopleor other objects, and that he frequently follows people for hours through the woods without their ever seeing him—and, I suppose, too, the very fact that he is so rarely seen—make him a sort of storm centre, as it were, for blood-curdling stories.
Through years I investigated plausible accounts of the ferocity of mountain lions. These investigations brought little information, but they did disclose the fact that there are a few types of lion tales which are told over and over again, with slight local variations. These tales commonly are without the slightest basis of fact. They are usually revamped by a clever writer, a frightened hunter, or an interesting story teller, as occasions offer. One of the commonest of the oft-told tales that have come to me through the years is as follows:
“Late Saturday evening, while Mr. and Mrs. Simpson were returning from the village through the woods, they were attacked by a half-starved mountain lion. The lion leaped out upon them from brush by the roadside and attempted to seize Mr. Simpson. Though an old man, he put up a fight, and at last beat off the lion with the butt of the buggy whip.”
Sometimes this is a family and the time of day is early morning. Sometimes the lion is ferocious instead of half-starved. Sometimes it is of enormous size. Once in a while he leapsfrom a cliff or an overhanging tree limb. Generally he chews and claws someone up pretty badly, and occasionally attempts to carry off one of the children.
Many times my letter addressed to one of the party attacked is returned unclaimed. Sometimes my letter to the postmaster or the sheriff of the locality is returned with the information: “No such party known.” Now and then I ask the sheriff, the postmaster, or the storekeeper some questions concerning this attack, and commonly their replies are: “It never happened”; “It’s a pipe dream”; “A pure fake”; or “Evidently whoever told you that story had one or two drinks too many.”
One day I came out of the woods in the rear of a saw-mill. I was making my way to the living room of the place, between logs and lumber piles. Right round the corner of a slab heap I caught sight of a mountain lion just as it leaped at me. It missed me intentionally, and at once wheeled and rose up to play with me. In the two or three seconds that elapsed between the time I had my first glimpse of it and when I realized it was a pet I had almost concluded that, after all, a lion may be a ferocious animal.
On one occasion, when I was on a cliff at the edge of a grassy opening, I was astonished tosee a coyote trot leisurely across and just before he disappeared in the woods a lion appear on the opposite side of the opening, following contentedly along the trail of the coyote. The next day I again saw this friendly pair, but on this occasion the lion was leading and the coyote following. Afterward I saw their tracks a number of times.
Just why they were associated in this friendly manner we can only conjecture. It will be readily seen that the coyote, which has all the wisdom of a fox, might follow a game-hog lion about and thus, with little effort, get a substantial and satisfactory food supply. But why the lion should willingly associate with a coyote is not quite clear. Perhaps this association proved to be of some advantage to the lion in his killing, or it may have been just one of those peculiar, unaccounted-for attachments occasionally seen between animals.
In any discussion concerning the mountain lion, or, for that matter, any living animal, hardly can the last word be said concerning the character of the individual of the species. Individuals vary, and now and then a mountain lion, as well as a human being, shows marked and peculiar traits. These may be the result of unusual alertness and sheer curiosity, or they may be subnormal, and cruel or murderous.
Coldweather came one fall before my new beaver neighbours had laid in their winter’s food. They had harvested one food supply several miles down stream but a fierce forest fire had devastated the region while they were in the midst of their preparations for winter and left their home site unliveable. The beavers in a body started off to found a new colony, having the hardships and adventures that ever fall to pioneers.
The place selected for their new home was on a tributary stream not far from my cabin. Here they built a typical house of sticks, sod, and mud. The stream ran through an old glacier meadow partly overgrown with forest. One side carried a belt of pines. Beyond the pines was a ragged and extensive growth of quaking aspen. Up stream the mountain rose steeply to the summit of Mt. Meeker.
While the beavers were working on a dam which was to give them ample water in the pond to prevent its freezing to the bottom, a trappercame into the region. He lingered and broke and rebroke the dam three or four times. When he finally left, autumn was half gone and preparations for winter in the new colony were only well begun. The dam was still low and uncompleted. As yet they had not begun cutting and storing aspen for their winter’s food supply.
These beavers had been industrious. They had planned well. But it was a case of one misfortune quickly following another. A severe cold wave still further and seriously handicapped the harvest gathering of the colonists. The quieter reaches of the stream were frozen over and a heavy plating of ice was left on the pond. They would have difficulty transporting their food-cut aspens under such conditions.
Winter supplies for this colony—green aspen or birch trees—must be had. Ordinarily, beavers cut the trees most easily obtained: first those on the shore of the pond, then those up stream, and finally those on near-by, down-hill slopes. Rarely does a beaver go fifty feet from the water. But if necessary he will go down stream and float trees against the current, or drag trees up steep slopes. This pond did not have, as is common, a border of aspen trees.
Late October I visited this new wilderness home. In the lower end of the frozen pond was a two-foot hole in the ice. This had beengnawed by the beavers, but for what purpose I could not then imagine.
One crew of loggers had started to work in a grove about two hundred feet from the hole in the ice. They were cutting aspens that were about four inches in diameter and twelve feet high. But before dragging them to the pond an opening or trailway through the woods had been cleared. Every bush in the way was cut off, every obstructing log cut in two and the ends rolled aside.
Dragging their tree cuttings to the pond was slow, hard work, and it was also dangerous work for a slow-moving beaver to go so far from the water. A beaver is heavy bodied and short-legged. With webbed hind feet he is a speedy swimmer, but on land he is a lubber and moves slowly and with effort.
A few days later the purpose of the hole in the ice of the frozen pond was made plain. A freshly swept trail in the snow led to it out of the woods. The beavers were taking their green aspen cuttings through the hole into the pond for their winter’s food. They had begun storing winter food at last.
I followed the trail back to where a number of aspens had been cut. Their stumps were about fifteen inches above the snow. Two trees still lay where they fell. These were about sixinches in diameter and perhaps twenty feet long. Preparatory to being dragged to the pond they had been gnawed into sections of from three to six feet.
The beavers had not nearly finished their harvesting when a heavy fall of snow came and they were compelled to abandon their carefully made dragway and the aspen grove where they had been cutting. The nearest aspens now available were only sixty feet from the edge of the pond. But a thick belt of pines and a confusion of large, fallen, fire-killed spruce logs lay between the pond and this aspen grove.
Deep snow, thick pines, and fallen logs did not stop their harvest-gathering efforts. Tracks in the snow showed that they went to work beyond the belt of pines. During one night five beavers had wallowed out to the aspens, felled several and dragged them into the pond. But wolves appeared to realize the distress of the beavers. They lurked about for opportunities to seize these hunger-driven animals. While harvesting the aspen grove wolves had pounced upon one of the beavers at work and another on his way to the pond had been pursued, overtaken, and killed in the deep snow.
During three days of good weather which followed, ever watchful for wolves, the beavers cut few aspens. Then came another snowstorm.The work of harvesting winter supplies was still further hindered.
But beavers never give up. To obtain aspens which were to supply them with winter food they finally dug a tunnel. They began this on the bottom of the pond near the shore and dug outward toward the aspen grove. The tunnel was about two feet under the surface for fifteen feet. From this point it inclined upward and came out under a pine tree, close to the aspens. In only the last few feet, where the digging was through frozen ground, was there difficult digging of this tunnel. Apparently the thick carpet of fallen leaves and the deep snow checked the frost and the earth had not frozen deeply.
From the end of this tunnel the beavers cleared a dragway about eighteen inches wide to the aspen grove. In doing this they cut through three or four large logs and tunnelled under a number of others. Then aspens were felled, cut in short sections, dragged to the end of the tunnel, pushed through this out into the pond beneath the ice, and finally piled on the bottom of the pond close to the house.
Solid snowdrifts formed in the grove while this slow work of transportation was going on. A few aspens were cut from the top of a five-foot snowdrift. The following summer thesestumps suggested that prehistoric beavers—large as bears—had reappeared on earth.
At last cold, ice, snow, and enemies completely stopped the beavers’ harvest gathering. The food provided for the colony’s winter supply was less than one half that needed. But the beavers had done their best, and come what may, they would alertly, stoically meet it.
These colonists had a hard winter. I visited them a number of times. Now and then snow covered the frozen pond, but usually the wind in sweeping down the open-stream avenue through the woods left the ice clear. One day, looking through the clear ice of the pond, I counted six beavers, but on most occasions I was able to see only one or two. The population of this colony probably numbered twelve or fifteen.
The upper part of the area flooded by their pond had been a semi-swampy tract bearing thick growths of water-loving plants. The roots of sedge, bulbs of lilies, tubers of many plants, and long juicy roots of willow and alder were made use of by these beavers facing a food-shortage.
I supposed it was only a question of time before they would be shut off by the thick ice from this root supply. But they dug a deep waterway—a canal about two feet wide and nearly as deep—from the house in the centre of thepond to the heart of the rooty area. Even after most of the pond was frozen to the bottom they had an open line of communication with the root supplies.
Mutual aid is a factor in beaver life. I do not know how many days’ work this ditch required; but when one of the beavers in a colony work, all work. Since late summer these beavers had worked at one task after another; they had unitedly worked for the welfare of each member of the colony. With mutual aid beaver colonists achieve much in a short time. Their strong love for home, causing them to remain long in one place, and the peculiar work which this calls for, makes changes on earth sometimes enduring for centuries.
But they had only commenced to dig out the roots on the bottom of the pond when the ever-thickening ice froze over this life-saving food supply. The water would have been deeper over this area but the beavers’ early hard luck had prevented their building the dam as high as it should have been.
I do not know how they handled the food-shortage, whether or not they went on short rations. But no beaver had more than his portion, for beavers are coöperators, they work in common, and so long as the food supply lasts each has his share.
I had glimpses of the beavers’ eager digging through the clear spots in the ice. They tore the root-filled section to pieces and devoured all that it contained. But not until the following summer, when the broken dam released the water, did I realize how deeply and completely the bottom of the pond had been stirred and ploughed. I have seen gardens uprooted by hogs, and mountain meadows dug to pieces by grizzly bears, but neither of them equalled this.
The supply of roots ran out and the bark of the green aspens was eaten off, and still this mountain region was white with winter and the pond locked and sealed with ice. Beavers are strict vegetarians. There were trout in the pond, but these were not caught; nor were the bodies of the starved ones eaten, as sometimes occurs among other animals. The beavers must escape from their now foodless prison or perish.
Spring examinations which I made indicated that they had tried to escape through the long tunnel which had been made to obtain the aspens, but this had nearly filled with ice. They had then driven several feet of a new tunnel, but evidently found they could not accomplish it through the frozen, gravelly earth. Beavers are engineers—the handling of earth in building dams or in the making of canals is as much in their line as tree felling—but cutting and tunnellingthrough gravelly, frozen earth is near impossible for them.
They then attempted to cut a hole upward through the two feet of ice, as I found out later when the ice was breaking up. And they had almost succeeded. On the edge of their house they had raised a working foundation of mud and sticks and gnawed upward to within three or four inches of the surface. Beavers are expert gnawers and have been known with their powerful teeth and strong jaws to gnaw off and fell trees more than two feet in diameter. Perhaps they might have succeeded eventually, but they apparently found another and better way out of the pond.
What they finally did was to tunnel out through the unfrozen earth beneath the bottom of the dam. They had commenced on the bottom of the pond and driven a fifteen-inch tunnel nearly level through the base of the dam, and a foot or two beneath the water and below frostline. This came out in the ice-covered stream channel, beneath the frozen earth. As this tunnel had to be dug under water, it must have been slow work and to have constantly called for relay efforts. When a working beaver had to breathe it was necessary for him to swim to the house and climb up to the floor, above water level, in order to obtain air.
Tracks of six muddy-footed fellows on the snow at the outer end of the successful tunnel told the number who survived the winter’s food-shortage. Spring came, and warmth and flood water broke up the ice on the pond about a month after they escaped. No young beavers were seen. These surviving beavers lived in bank holes along the stream until summer. Then they wandered away. Late that August they, or six other beavers, came to the place. They completed the dam and repaired the house, and by mid-October had a huge pile of food stored in the pond for the winter.
Aboutthirty years ago a cowboy took me out to see “The big Dog-town.” This metropolis was in the heart of the great plains near the Kansas-Colorado line. For five hours we rode westward along the southern limits of the town. It extended on over the horizon more than two miles wide and about forty miles long. A town with a population of two million!
Its visible inhabitants would have astounded a census-taker or a dog-catcher. Thousands of prairie dogs were yipping and barking more than sixty times a minute, and stub tails were whizzing away at the same time. We rode out among the crowded and protesting dogs and stopped to watch them. A number ducked into their holes.
Around each hole was an earthy collar less than two feet across and four or five inches high. At a distance this earthy collar surrounding the hole had the appearance of a low mound. Evidently this mound is to keep out storm water.
There were thousands of these holes, each with its dog. One near-by dog sat up on his mound like a ten-pound sea lion. He watched us with concentrated attention. His tongue and tail were still. When my hat started toward him he simply dropped into the hole. There were scattered holes which had a rabbit or two little owls at its doorway. Throughout the town were little orchards of dwarfed sagebrush and a scattering of tall weeds. A showy bed of prickly pear cactus inside the town limits was not inhabited.
The prairie dog is a sun worshipper. He keeps aloof from localities where willows are an enemy-hiding screen and where trees cast a shadow. His populous cities are in arid lands where for three hundred days each year they have their place in the sun.
The dogs seemed to be ever moving about, visiting or barking. A young dog near me ambled over to visit another. These two called on a third and while in session were joined by one’s, two’s, and companies until there were several dozen massed.
A young dog left his hole-top after a survey and started off for a call. But he turned aside to join and mingle with the crowd for a minute or two, then went on with his call. All this time there were several dogs behind me energeticallyprotesting at or about something. Cheerfulness and vivacity characterized this fat, numerous people, but they were always alert, and commonly maintained sentinels scattered throughout the town.
While numbers were visiting or playing a few were feeding. They appeared to feed at all times of the day. But I do not believe that they eat half the food of the average woodchuck. The short grass was the principal food. They also ate of the various weeds around. I do not recall seeing them eat the bark of sagebrush or any part of the prickly pear.
Prairie dogs must materially assist in soil formation. Their digging and tunnelling lets dissolving water and disintegrating air into the earth and deepens the prairie soil.
The congesting population in time increases the soil supply. In places and for a time this new soil seems to be helpful in increasing the food supply, but after a time in many towns food becomes scarce. Food scarcity causes movement. I have heard that the entire population of a dog town, like an entire species of migrating birds, will leave the old town and trek across the plains to a site of their liking.
A generation ago the prairie dog population must have exceeded two hundred millions. It was scattered over the great plains andthe rocky region from the Canadian line to Mexico.
Dog towns are dry towns. My cowboy friend had repeated to me what everyone thus far had told him:
Prairie dogs dig down to water.
Prairie dogs, snakes, and owls all use the same den.
The water supply of dog towns and also their congested life so interested me that I visited a number of them to study the manners and customs of these citizens.
For two months not a drop of rain had fallen in Cactus Center. Not a bath nor a drink had the dogs enjoyed. I hurried into the town immediately after a rain thinking the dogs might be on a spree. I had supposed they would be drinking deeply again and swimming in the pools. But there was no interest. I did not even see one have a drink, although all may have had one. A few dogs were repairing the levee-crater rim of their holes, but beyond this things went on as usual. The rain did not cause dog town to celebrate.
On a visit to the “Biggest dog town in the world,” near the Staked Plains in Texas, and where there were dogs numbering many millions, I watched well drillers at a number of places. Several of these wells, in the limits of dog town,struck water at three hundred feet, none less than this depth. This told that dogs did not dig down to water. They are busy diggers and have five claws on each foot but they do not dig through geological ages to obtain water.
One day two cowboys came along with a shovel which was to be used in setting up a circular corral and I excited their interest in prairie dog dens. We made the dirt lively for two hours but we did not reach bottom. I examined old and new gullies by dog towns but learned nothing. Finally, a steam shovel revealed subterranean secrets.
This steam shovel was digging a deep railroad cut through a dog town. The dogs barked and protested, but railroads have the right of way. The holes descended straight and almost vertically into the earth to the depth of from ten to fourteen feet. From the bottom a tunnel extended horizontally for from ten to forty feet. There was a pocket or side passage in the vertical hole less than two feet below the top: and a number of pockets or niches along the tunnel with buried excrement in the farther end of the tunnel. The side niches were used for sleeping places and side tracks. There was a network of connecting tubes between the vertical holes and communicating tunnels between the deeper tunnels.
I found the underground works of the dogs similar in other railroad cuts. None of the holes reached water, in fact, they were extra dry in the bottom.
Prairie dogs in common with many species of plants and animals of the arid districts require and use but little water. Dogs do without water for weeks except such moisture as is obtained from plants eaten. A part of each year the plants are about as dry as dog biscuit.
There were from a few dozen to a thousand dogs upon or in an acre; from a few holes to more than one hundred in an area the size of a baseball diamond.
Although the plains had numerous large and populous places there were leagues without a single dog. Apparently the dogs keep on the higher and the well-drained land.
One day I watched some fat, happy puppies amusing themselves. They played, but without much pep, while mothers remained near to guard and to admire.
Prairie dogs often play. But never, I think, alone like the grizzly. In groups and in hundreds they played the universal game of tag. They were fat and low-geared and their running gallop made an amusing effort to get somewhere. There were several boxing exhibitions, orfarces. Their fat bodies and extremely short legs and slow, awkward movement made their efforts more ludicrous even than those of fat men boxers. There was a kind of snake dance with entangled countermarching in which most dogs tried to be dignified while many acted as though in new company and did not know what was expected of them.
One of their plays consisted in a single dog mimicking a stranger or an enemy. A bunch of dogs acted as spectators while an old dog highly entertained them by impersonating a coyote, at least his exhibition reminded me very much of coyote. The old dog imitated the coyote’s progress through dog town, with the usual turning, looking, smelling, and stopping. He looked into holes, rolled over, bayed at the heavens, and even tried the three-legged gallop. During most of his stunts the spectators were silent but toward the last he was applauded with violent cursings and denunciation—at least so it sounded. A number of other folks were imitated, but just who they were my natural history and the actor’s presentation gave no clue. Apparently the skunk was imitated. The actor’s interpretation was good. The congested audience watched him closely, with now and then a yip, but mostly in silence.
But sometimes there are less peaceful scenesin dog town. A dog town without a coyote would be like Hades without Mephistopheles.
The prairie dog likes to keep close to his hole, or to the hole of a neighbour into which he can duck and escape the surprise raids of the coyote.
The coyote stalks patiently, hiding until a dog comes close or is too far from his hole to outrun the coyote to it. Coyotes hunt in pairs or fours and often while one, two, or three of them are holding the attention of the dogs the other coyote makes a sudden dash. Sometimes they take sheer delight in stirring up things in congested corners of dog town.
As I stood watching them, screened by the cottonwood, two coyotes crossed the corner of dog town and set it all agog. While these coyotes made their way leisurely through dog town the dogs sat on their crater-like mounds and uttered rapid-fire protests, ready to drop into safety in case of a rush by the coyotes. Suddenly two old dogs wheeled and yapped at highest rattling speed. While the first pair of coyotes was attracting attention a second pair appeared. The old dogs violently denounced the second pair for this surprise. But the coyote is ever doing the unexpected.
On the outskirts of Cactus Center numerous pairs of coyotes had enlarged prairie dog holes for a den. Pairs of prairie owls occupied otherdeserted dog holes, rabbits possessed many, and two were taken by skunk families.
The black-footed ferret is the terrible enemy of prairie dogs. This small, agile, powerful fellow boldly invades the dens and slays the dog, rabbit or other inmates. The dogs do not appear even to attempt to resist him. But apparently he does not often call.
The mixed population of dog towns is not at peace. Lizards, rabbits, dogs, owls, snakes congest in the same block, but the block is red in tooth and claw. In a few cases I noticed these warring species all used the same subway entrance, but below the surface they surely lived in separate apartments.
No, the rattlesnake, prairie dog, and owl do not lie down together, unless a flood or other calamity throws them together.
One time I was approaching a town limits where yelpings and yappings filled the sky like a wind. From the summit of the ridge treeless, houseless, fenceless plains extended in leagues of level distances to every horizon. Before me there must have been one hundred thousand dogs swarming like the inhabitants of a disturbed ant hill. Beside a lone and grizzled old cottonwood I explored localities of dog town through my glasses.
Cloud shadows were sliding in silence acrossthe green plains in which the golden banner bloomed like broken yellow coral. A cottontail hopped slowly from his hole to a clump of Spanish bayonet; buzzing gnats and bees hummed by. Grasshoppers all jumping toward the town limits suggested that they were abandoning the congested town.
Suddenly there were two disturbances: Near me an old dog was set upon by a protesting, noisy mob of dogs, while off on my left an invading rattlesnake threw a locality into a frenzy of excitement.
Apparently dogs aim to bury alive all enemies and invaders. The frightened rattler was pursued by a screeching, noisy dog mob, and driven into a dog hole. While two or three dogs kept watch of this, other dogs were looking into or wildly watching other dog holes which the snake might reach through underground tunnels.
Out of one of these holes he glided and at him went the yapping, snapping dog mob. Down into another hole he ducked. Evidently the dogs realized that this hole was detached, and the dogs fell over each other with efforts to claw earth into it. Presently the hole was filled to the collar and the snake buried. On this filled hole the dogs danced with weird and uncanny glee.
The other dog mob evidently rough handledthe outcast dog but I missed most of this in watching the snake mob. It, too, was a vehement, noisy mob. The wise old dog refused to go into a hole but was literally jammed in, with earth clawed in after him until the hole was filled, then another barbaric, triumphal war dance upon the buried one.
Rattlesnakes eat young dogs and sometimes boldly enter the dens for them during the mother’s absence.
But what was the offense of the old dog which had been attacked by his fellows? Was it crime or misdemeanour? Had he been misunderstood, or was it a case of circumstantial evidence? In other dog towns I have seen the populace putting one of their number to death, and in this town, about two years later, I saw two dogs entombed by the same wild mob. In this case even the sentinels forgot the coyote and joined the mob. Were the executed ones murderers, robbers, or had they denied some ancient and unworthy superstition and like reformers paid the penalty of being in advance of popular opinion?
One afternoon Cactus Center had a storm. Black clouds suddenly covered the sky and a storm swept the prairie. A barrage of large hailstones led, striking the prairie violently at an angle so sharp that stones bounded and rolledfor long distances. One which struck me in the side felt like a thrown baseball. There was a thumping, deep roar while they dashed meteorically down.
Dog town watched the hail but was deserted before the first raindrop fell. The downpour lasted for several minutes with a plentiful accompaniment of crashing of lightning.
A deep sheet of water swept down from the prairie beyond the town limits to the west, where the rainfall was a cloudburst. The sheet of water overspread the town and temporarily filled hundreds of the inhabited dens.
Out came the sputtering, protesting dogs. Numbers, perhaps hundreds, were drowned. Across the soaked prairie I hurried, catching the effects and the movements. I pulled several gurgling dogs from their water-filled holes, each of them making nip-and-tuck efforts to climb out.
The following morning a pair of coyotes slipped up the invading gully trench into town. Occasionally these crafty fellows peeked over the bank. Then they crept farther in, and one peeped from a screen of sagebrush on the bank. Suddenly both dashed out and each killed two dogs. The entire village howled and yapped itself hoarse while the invaders feasted within the town limits. Leisurely the coyote at lastmoved on through the town turning aside to sniff at the drowned dogs.
One spring I called early in Cactus Center and found blackbirds, robins, and other northbound birds among the visitors. Among these was a flock of golden plover, one of the greatest of bird travellers. These birds were resting and feeding. They probably were on their way from the far South American plains, to their nesting ground on the treeless grassland around the Arctic Circle.
During an early summer visit to this dog town it was decorated with wild flowers—sand lilies, golden banner, creamy vetch, and prickly poppy. I wandered about in the evening twilight looking at the evening star flowers while a coyote chorus sounded strangely over the wide, listening prairie. Near me was a dog hole; its owner climbed up to peep out; in a minute or so he retired without a bark or a yap.
The magnificent visible distances of the plains seem to create a desire in its dwellers to see everything that is going on around. And also a desire for sociability, for herds. Buffalo crowded in enormous herds, the antelope were sometimes in flocks of thousands, and the little yellow-brown dogs crowded and congested.
The old cottonwood tree which stood on one edge of Cactus Center dog-town limits was theobserved of all observers. Through the years it must have seen ten thousand tragedies, comedies, courtships, plays, and games of these happy little people of the plains.
No dog hole was within fifty feet of the old cottonwood tree. The tree probably offered the wily coyote concealment behind which he sometimes approached to raid; and from its top hawks often dived for young dogs, for mice, and also for grasshoppers. I suppose owls often used it for a philosophizing stand, and also for a point of vantage from which to hoot derision on the low-down, numerous populace.
But the old tree was not wholly allied with evil, and was a nesting site for orioles, wrens, and bluebirds. From its summit through the summer days the meadow lark with breast of black and gold would send his silvery notes sweetly ringing across the wide, wide prairie.