As the young grew older and stronger on their legs, I noticed the rudiments, at least, of a curious habit of dancing, which seems to belong to most of our long-legged wading birds. Sometimes, sitting quietly in my canoe, I would see the young birds sail down in a long slant to the shore. Immediately on alighting, before they gave any thought to frogs or fish or carnal appetite, they would hop up and down, balancing, swaying, spreading their wings, and hopping again round about each other, as if bewitched. A few moments of this crazy performance, and then they would stalk sedately along the shore, as if ashamed of their ungainly levity; but at any moment the ecstasy might seize them and they would hop again, as if they simply could not help it. This occurred generally towards evening, when the birds had fed fulland were ready for play or for stretching their broad wings in preparation for the long autumn flight.
Watching them, one evening, I remembered suddenly a curious scene that I had stumbled upon when a boy. I had seen a great blue heron sail croaking, croaking, into an arm of the big pond where I was catching bullpouts, and crept down through dense woods to find out what he was croaking about. Instead of one, I found eight or ten of the great birds on an open shore, hopping ecstatically through some kind of a crazy dance. A twig snapped as I crept nearer, and they scattered in instant flight. It was September, and the instinct to flock and to migrate was at work among them. When they came together for the first time some dim, old remembrance of generations long gone by—the shreds of an ancient instinct, whose meaning we can only guess at—had set them to dancing wildly;though I doubted at the time whether they understood much what they were doing.
Perhaps I was wrong in this. Watching the young birds at theirungainly hopping, the impulse to dance seemed uncontrollable; yet they were immensely dignified about it at times; and again they appeared to get some fun out of it—as much, perhaps, as we do out of some of our peculiar dances, of which a visiting Chinaman once asked innocently: "Why don’t you let your servants do it for you?"
I have seen little green herons do the same thing in the woods at mating time; and once, in the Zoölogical Gardens at Antwerp, I saw a magnificent hopping performance by some giant cranes from Africa. Our own sand-hill and whooping cranes are notorious dancers; and undoubtedly it is more or less instinctive with all the tribes of the cranes and herons, from the least to the greatest. But what the instinct means—unless, like our own dancing, it is a pure bit of pleasure-making, as crows play games and loons swim races—nobody can tell.
Before the young were fully grown, and while yet they were following the mother to learn the ways of frogging and fishing, a startling thing occurred which made me ever afterwards look up to Quoskh with honest admiration. I was still-fishing in the middle of the big lake, one late afternoon, when Quoskh and her little ones sailed over the trees from the beaverpond and lit on a grassy shore. A shallow little brook stole into the lake there, and Mother Quoskh left her young to frog for themselves, while she went fishing up the brook under the alders. I was watching the young herons through my glass when I saw a sudden rush in the tall grass near them. All three humped themselves, heron fashion, on the instant. Two got away safely; the other had barely spread his wings when a black animal leaped out of the grass for his neck and pulled him down, flapping and croaking desperately.
I pulled up my killick on the instant and paddled over to see what was going on, and what the creature was that had leaped out of the grass. Before my paddle had swung a dozen strokes I saw the alders by the brook open swiftly, and Mother Quoskh sailed out and drove like an arrow straight at the struggling wing tips, which still flapped spasmodically above the grass. Almost before her feet had dropped to a solid landing she struck two fierce, blinding, downward blows of her great wings. Her neck curved back and shot straight out, driving the keen six-inch bill before it, quicker than ever a Roman arm drove its javelin. Above thelap-lapof my canoe I heard a savage cry of pain; the same black animal leaped up out of the tangled grass, snapping for the neck; and a desperatebattle began, with short gasping croaks and snarls that made caution unnecessary as I sped over to see who the robber was, and how Quoskh was faring in the good fight.
The canoe shot up behind a point where, looking over the low bank, I had the arena directly under my eye. The animal was a fisher—black-cat the trappers call him—the most savage and powerful fighter of his size in the whole world, I think. In the instant that I first saw him, quicker than thought he had hurled himself twice at the towering bird’s breast. Each time he was met by a lightning blow in the face from Quoskh’s stiffened wing. His teeth ground the big quills to pulp; his claws tore them into shreds; but he got no grip in the feathery mass, and he slipped, clawing and snarling, into the grass, only to spring again like a flash. Again the stiff wing blow; but this time his jump was higher; one claw gripped the shoulder, tore its way through flying feathers to the bone, while his weight dragged the big bird down. Then Quoskh shortened her neck in a great curve. Like a snake it glided over the edge of her own wing for two short, sharp down-thrusts of the deadly javelin—so quick that my eye caught only the double yellow flash of it. With a sharp screech the black-cat leaped away and whirled towards me blindly. One eye wasgone; an angry red welt showed just over the other, telling how narrowly the second thrust had missed its mark.
A shiver ran over me as I remembered how nearly I had once come myself to the black-cat’s condition, and from the same keen weapon. I was a small boy at the time, following a big, good-natured hunter that I met in the woods, one day, from pure love of the wilds and for the glory of carrying the game bag. He shot a great blue heron, which fell with a broken wing into some soft mud and water grass. Carelessly he sent me to fetch it, not caring to wet his own feet. As I ran up, the heron lay resting quietly, his neck drawn back, his long keen bill pointing always straight at my face. I had never seen so big a bird before, and bent over him wondering at his long bill, admiring his intensely bright eye.
I did not know then—what I have since learned well—that you can always tell when the rush or spring or blow of any beast or bird—or of any man, for that matter—will surely come by watching the eye closely. There is a fire that blazes in the eye before the blow comes, before ever a muscle has stirred to do the brain’s quick bidding. As I bent over, fascinated by the keen, bright look of the wounded bird, and reached down my hand to pick him up, there was a flash deepin the eye, like the glint of sunshine from a mirror, and I dodged instinctively. Well for me that I did so. Something shot by my face like lightning, opening up a long red gash across my left temple from eye-brow to ear. As I jumped I heard a careless laugh. "Look out, Sonny, he may bite you—Gosh! what a close call!" And with a white, scared face, as he saw the ugly wound that the heron’s beak had opened, he dragged me away as if there had been a bear in the water grass.
The black-cat had not yet received punishment enough. He is one of the largest of the weasel family, and has a double measure of the weasel’s savageness and tenacity. He darted about the heron in a quick, nervous, jumping circle, looking for an opening behind; while Quoskh lifted her great torn wings as a shield and turned slowly on the defensive, so as always to face the danger. A dozen times the fisher jumped, filling the air with feathers; a dozen times the stiffened wings struck down to intercept his spring, and every blow was followed by a swift javelin thrust. Then, as the fisher crouched snarling in the grass, off his guard for an instant, I saw Mother Quoskh take a sudden step forward, her first offensive move—just as I had seen her twenty times at the finish of a frog stalk—and her bill shot down with the whole powerof her long neck behind it. A harsh screech of pain followed the swift blow; then the fisher wobbled away with blind, uncertain jumps towards the shelter of the woods.
“A DOZEN TIMES THE FISHER JUMPED, FILLING THE AIR WITH FEATHERS”“A DOZEN TIMES THE FISHER JUMPED, FILLING THE AIR WITH FEATHERS”
And now, with her savage enemy in full flight, a fierce, hot anger seemed to flare within the mother heron, burning out all the previous cool, calculating defense. Her wings heaved aloft, as the soldiers of old threw up their shields in the moment of victory; while her whole frame seemed to swell with power, like a hero whose fight is won. She darted after the fisher, first on the run, then with heavy wing beats, till she headed him and with savage blows of pinion and beak drove him back, seeing nothing, guided only by fear and instinct, towards the water. For five minutes more she chevied him hither and yon through the trampled grass, driving him from water to bush and back again, jabbing him at every turn; till a rustle of leaves invited him, and he dashed blindly into thick underbrush, where her broad wings could not follow. Then with marvelous watchfulness she saw me standing near in my canoe; and without a thought, apparently, for the young heron lying so still in the grass close beside her, she spread her torn wings and flapped away heavily in the path of her more fortunate younglings.
I followed the fisher’s trail into the woods and found him curled up in a hollow stump. He made slight resistance as I pulled him out. All his ferocity was already lulled to sleep in the vague, dreamy numbness which Nature always sends to her stricken creatures. He suffered nothing, apparently, though he was fearfully wounded; he just wanted to be let alone. Both eyes were gone, and there was nothing left for me except to finish mercifully what little Quoskh had left undone.
When September came, and family cares were over, the colony beyond the beaver pond scattered widely, returning each one to the shy, wild, solitary life that Quoskh likes best. Almost anywhere, in the loneliest places, I might come upon a solitary heron stalking frogs, or chumming little fish, or treading the soft mud expectantly, like a clam digger, to find where themussels were hidden by means of his long toes; or just standing still to enjoy the sleepy sunshine till the late afternoon came, when he likes best to go abroad.
They slept no more on the big nest, standing like sentinels against the twilight glow and the setting moon; but each one picked out a good spot on the shore and slept as best he could on one leg, waiting for the early fishing. It was astonishing how carefully even the young birds picked out a safe position. By day they would stand like statues in the shade of a bank or among the tall grasses, where they were almost invisible by reason of their soft colors, and wait for hours for fish and frogs to come to them. By night each one picked out a spot on the clean open shore, off a point, generally, where he could see up and down, where there was no grass to hide an enemy, and where the bushes on the bank were far enough away so that he could hear the slight rustle of leaves before the creature that made it was within springing distance. And there he would sleep safe through the long night, unless disturbed by my canoe or by some other prowler. Herons see almost as well by night as by day, and their ears are keen as a weasel’s; so I could never get near enough to surprise them, however silently I paddled. I would hear only a startledrush of wings, and then a questioning call as they sailed over me before winging away to quieter beaches.
If I were jacking, with a light blazing brightly before me in my canoe, to see what night folk I might surprise on the shore, Quoskh was the only one for whom my jack had no fascination. Deer and moose, foxes and wild ducks, frogs and fish,—all seemed equally charmed by the great wonder of a light shining silently out of the vast darkness. I saw them all, at different times, and glided almost up to them before timidity drove them away from the strange bright marvel. But Quoskh was not to be watched in that way, nor to be caught by any such trick. I would see a vague form on the far edge of the light’s pathway; catch the bright flash of either eye as he swung his weather-vane head; then the vague form would slide into the upper darkness. A moment’s waiting; then, above me and behind, where the light did not dazzle his eyes, I would hear his night cry—with more of anger than of questioning in it—and as I turned the jack upward I would catch a single glimpse of his broad wings sailing over the lake. Nor would he ever come back, like the fox on the bank, for a second look to be quite sure what I was.
When the bright, moonlit nights came, there was uneasiness in Quoskh’s wild breast. The solitary lifethat he loves best claimed him by day; but at night the old gregarious instinct drew him again to his fellows. Once, when drifting over the beaver pond through the delicate witchery of the moonlight, I heard five or six of the great birds croaking excitedly at the heronry, which they had deserted weeks before. The lake, and especially the lonely little pond at the end of the trail, was lovelier than ever before; but something in the south was calling him away. I think that Quoskh was also moonstruck, as so many wild creatures are; for, instead of sleeping quietly on the shore, he spent his time circling aimlessly over the lake and woods, crying his name aloud, or calling wildly to his fellows.
At midnight of the day before I broke camp, I was out on the lake for a last paddle in the moonlight. The night was perfect,—clear, cool, intensely still.Not a ripple broke the great burnished surface of the lake; a silver pathway stretched away and away over the bow of my gliding canoe, leading me on to where the great forest stood, silent, awake, expectant, and flooded through all its dim, mysterious arches with marvelous light. The wilderness never sleeps. If it grow silent, it is to listen. To-night the woods were tense as a waiting fox, watching to see what new thing would come out of the lake, or what strange mystery would be born under their own soft shadows.
Quoskh was abroad too, bewitched by the moonlight. I heard him calling and paddled down. He knew me long before he was anything more to me than a voice of the night, and swept up to meet me. For the first time after darkness fell I saw him—just a vague, gray shadow with edges touched softly with silver light, which whirled once over my canoe and looked down into it. Then he vanished; and from far over on the edge of the waiting woods, where the mystery was deepest, came a cry, a challenge, a riddle, the night’s wild question which no man has ever yet answered—Quoskh? quoskh?
A rustling in the brakes just outside my little tent roused me from a light slumber. There it was again! the push of some heavy animal trying to move noiselessly through the tangle close at hand; while from the old lumber camp in the midst of the clearing a low gnawing sound floated up through the still night. I sat up quickly to listen; but at the slight movement all was quiet again. The night prowlers had heard me and were on their guard.
One need have no fear of things that come round in the night. They are much shyer than you are, and can see you better; so that, if you blunder towards them, they mistake your blindness for courage, and take to their heels promptly. As I stepped out therewas a double rush in some bushes behind my tent, and by the light of a half-moon I caught one glimpse of a bear and her cub jumping away for the shelter of the woods.
The gnawing still went on behind the old shanty by the river. “Another cub!” I thought—for I was new to the big woods—and stole down to peek by the corner of the camp, in whose yard I had pitched my tent the first night out in the wilderness.
There was an old molasses hogshead lying just beyond the log camp, its mouth looking black as ink in the moonlight, and the scratching-gnawing sounds went on steadily within its shadow. “He’s inside,” I thought with elation, “scraping off the crusted sugar. Now to catch him!”
I stole round the camp, so as to bring the closed end of the hogshead between me and the prize, crept up breathlessly, and with a quick jerk hove the old tub up on end, trapping the creature inside. There was a thump, a startled scratching and rustling, a violent rocking of the hogshead, which I tried to hold down; then all was silent in the trap. “I’ve got him!” I thought, forgetting all about the old she-bear, and shouted for Simmo to wake up and bring the ax.
We drove a ring of stakes close about the hogshead, weighted it down with heavy logs, and turned in tosleep. In the morning, with cooler judgment, we decided that a bear cub was too troublesome a pet to keep in a tent; so I stood by with a rifle while Simmo hove off the logs and cut the stakes, keeping a wary eye on me, meanwhile, to see how far he might trust his life to my nerve in case the cub should be big and troublesome; for an Indian takes no chances. A stake fell; the hogshead toppled over by a push from within; Simmo sprang away with a yell; and out wobbled a big porcupine, the biggest I ever saw, and tumbled away straight towards my tent. After him went the Indian, making sweeping cuts at the stupid thing with his ax, and grunting his derision at my bear cub.
Halfway to the tent Unk Wunk stumbled across a bit of pork rind, and stopped to nose it daintily. I caught Simmo’s arm and stayed the blow that would have made an end of my catch. Then, between us, Unk Wunk sat up on his haunches, took the pork in his fore paws and sucked the salt out of it, as if he had never a concern and never an enemy in the wide world. A half hour later he loafed into my tent, where I sat repairing a favorite salmon fly that some hungry sea-trout had torn to tatters, and drove me unceremoniously out of my own bailiwick in his search for more salt.
Such a philosopher, whom no prison can dispossess of his peace of mind, and whom no danger can depriveof his simple pleasures, deserves more consideration than the naturalists have ever given him. I resolved on the spot to study him more carefully. As if to discourage all such attempts and make himself a target for my rifle, he nearly spoiled my canoe the next night by gnawing a hole through the bark and ribs for some suggestion of salt that only his greedy nose could possibly have found.
Once I found him on the trail, some distance from camp, and, having nothing better to do, I attempted to drive him home. My intention was to share hospitality; to give him a bit of bacon, and then study him as I ate my own dinner. He turned at the first suggestion of being driven, came straight at my legs, and by a vicious slap of his tail left some of his quills in me before I could escape. Then I drove him in the opposite direction, whereupon he turned and bolted past me; and when I arrived at camp he was busily engaged in gnawing the end from Simmo’s ax handle.
However you take him, Unk Wunk is one of the mysteries. He is a perpetual question scrawled across the forest floor, which nobody pretends to answer; a problem that grows only more puzzling as you study to solve it.
Of all the wild creatures he is the only one that has no intelligent fear of man, and that never learns, eitherby instinct or experience, to avoid man’s presence. He is everywhere in the wilderness, until he changes what he would call his mind; and then he is nowhere, and you cannot find him. He delights in solitude, and cares not for his own kind; yet now and then you will stumble upon a whole convention of porcupines at the base of some rocky hill, each one loafing around, rattling his quills, grunting his nameUnk Wunk! Unk Wunk!and doing nothing else all day long.
You meet him to-day, and he is timid as a rabbit; to-morrow he comes boldly into your tent and drives you out, if you happen to be caught without a club handy. He never has anything definite to do, nor any place to go to; yet stop him at any moment and he will risk his life to go just a foot farther. Now try to drive or lead him another foot in the same direction, and he will bolt back, as full of contrariness as two pigs on a road, and let himself be killed rather than go where he was heading a moment before. He is perfectly harmless to every creature; yet he lies still and kills the savage fisher that attacks him, or even the big Canada lynx, that no other creature in the woods would dare to tackle.
Above all these puzzling contradictions is the prime question of how Nature ever produced such a creature, and what she intended doing with him; for he seemsto have no place nor use in the natural economy of things. Recently the Maine legislature has passed a bill forbidding the shooting of porcupines, on the curious ground that he is the only wild animal that can easily be caught and killed without a gun; so that a man lost in the woods need not starve to death but may feed on porcupine, as the Indians sometimes do. This is the only suggestion thus far, from a purely utilitarian standpoint, that Unk Wunk is no mistake, but may have his uses.
Once, to test the law and to provide for possible future contingencies, I added Unk Wunk to my bill of fare—a vile, malodorous suffix that might delight a lover of strong cheese. It is undoubtedly a good law; but I cannot now imagine any one being grateful for it, unless the stern alternative were death or porcupine.
The prowlers of the woods would eat him gladly enough, but that they are sternly forbidden. They cannot even touch him without suffering the consequences. It would seem as if Nature, when she made this block of stupidity in a world of wits, provided for him tenderly, as she would for a half-witted or idiot child. He is the only wild creature for whom starvation has no terrors. All the forest is his storehouse. Buds and tender shoots delight him in their season; and when the cold becomes bitter in its intensity, andthe snow packs deep, and all other creatures grow gaunt and savage in their hunger, Unk Wunk has only to climb the nearest tree, chisel off the rough, outer shell with his powerful teeth, and then feed full on the soft inner layer of bark, which satisfies him perfectly and leaves him as fat as an alderman.
Of hungry beasts Unk Wunk has no fear whatever. Generally they let him severely alone, knowing that to touch him would be more foolish than to mouth a sunfish or to bite a Peter-grunter. If, driven by hunger in the killing March days, they approach him savagely, he simply rolls up and lies still, protected by an armor that only a steel glove might safely explore, and that has no joint anywhere visible to the keenest eye.
Now and then some cunning lynx or weasel, wise from experience but desperate with hunger, throws himself flat on the ground, close by Unk Wunk, and works his nose cautiously under the terrible bur, searching for the neck or the underside of the body, where there are no quills. One grip of the powerful jaws, one taste of blood in the famished throat of the prowler—and that is the end of both animals. For Unk Wunk has a weapon that no prowler of the woods ever calculates upon. His broad, heavy tail is armed with hundreds of barbs, smaller but more deadly than those on his back; and he swings this weapon with the vicioussweep of a rattlesnake. It is probably this power of driving his barbs home by a lightning blow of his tail that has given rise to the curious delusion that Unk Wunk can shoot his quills at a distance, as if he were filled with compressed air—which is, of course, a harmless absurdity that keeps people from meddling with him too closely.
Sometimes, when attacked, Unk Wunk covers his face with this weapon. More often he sticks his head under a root or into a hollow log, leaving his tail out ready for action. At the first touch of his enemy the tail snaps right and left quicker than thought, driving the hostile head and sides full of the deadly quills, from which there is no escape; for every effort, every rub and writhe of pain, only drives them deeper and deeper, till they rest in heart or brain and finish their work.
Mooween the bear is the only one of the wood folk who has learned the trick of attacking Unk Wunk without injury to himself. If, when very hungry, he finds a porcupine, he never attacks him directly,—he knows too well the deadly sting of the barbs for that,—but bothers and irritates the porcupine by flipping earth at him, until at last Unk Wunk rolls all his quills outward and lies still. Then Mooween, with immense caution, slides one paw under him and witha quick flip hurls him against the nearest tree, and knocks the life out of him.
“BOTHERS AND IRRITATES THE PORCUPINE BY FLIPPING EARTH AT HIM”“BOTHERS AND IRRITATES THE PORCUPINE BY FLIPPING EARTH AT HIM”
If he find Unk Wunk in a tree, he will sometimes climb after him and, standing as near as the upper limbs allow, will push and tug mightily to shake him off. That is usually a vain attempt; for the creature that sleeps sound and secure through a gale in the tree-tops has no concern for the ponderous shakings of a bear. In that case Mooween, if he can get near enough without risking a fall from too delicate branches, will wrench off the limb on which Unk Wunk is sleeping and throw it to the ground. That also is usually a vain proceeding; for before Mooween can scramble down after his game, Unk Wunk is already up another tree and sleeping, as if nothing had happened, on another branch.
Other prowlers, with less strength and cunning than Mooween, fare badly when driven by famine to attack this useless creature of the woods, for whom Nature nevertheless cares so tenderly. Trappers have told me that in the late winter, when hunger is sharpest, they sometimes catch a wild-cat or lynx or fisher in their traps with his mouth and sides full of porcupine quills, showing to what straits he had been driven for food. These rare trapped animals are but an indication of many a silent struggle that only thetrees and stars are witnesses of; and the trapper’s deadfall, with its quick, sure blow, is only a merciful ending to what else had been a long, slow, painful trail, ending at last under a hemlock tip with the snow for a covering.
Last summer, in a little glade in the wilderness, I found two skeletons, one of a porcupine, the other of a large lynx, lying side by side. In the latter three quills lay where the throat had once been; the shaft of another stood firmly out of an empty eye orbit; a dozen more lay about in such a way that one could not tell by what path they had entered the body. It needed no great help of imagination to read the story here of a starving lynx, too famished to remember caution, and of a dinner that cost a life.
Once also I saw a curious bit of animal education in connection with Unk Wunk. Two young owls had begun hunting, under direction of the mother bird, along the foot of a ridge in the early twilight. From my canoe I saw one of the young birds swoop downward at something in the bushes on the shore. An instant later the big mother owl followed with a sharp, angryhoo-hoo-hoo-hoo!of warning. The youngster dropped into the bushes; but the mother fairly knocked him away from his game in her fierce rush, and led him away silently into the woods. I wentover on the instant, and found a young porcupine in the bushes where the owl had swooped, while two more were eating lily stems farther along the shore.
Evidently Kookooskoos, who swoops by instinct at everything that moves, must be taught by wiser heads the wisdom of letting certain things severely alone.
That he needs this lesson was clearly shown by an owl that my friend once shot at twilight. There was a porcupine quill imbedded for nearly its entire length in his leg. Two more were slowly working their way into his body; and the shaft of another projected from the corner of his mouth like a toothpick. Whether he were a young owl and untaught, or whether, driven by hunger, he had thrown counsel to the winds and swooped at Unk Wunk, will never be known. That he should attack so large an animal as the porcupine would seem to indicate that, like the lynx, hunger had probably driven him beyond all consideration for his mother's teaching.
Unk Wunk, on his part, knows so very little that it may fairly be doubted whether he ever had the discipline of the school of the woods. Whether he rolls himself into a chestnut bur by instinct, as the possum plays dead, or whether that is a matter of slow learning is yet to be discovered. Whether his dense stupidity, Which disarms his enemies and brings him safe out ofa hundred dangers where wits would fail, is, like the possum’s blank idiocy, only a mask for the deepest wisdom; or whether he is quite as stupid as he acts and looks, is also a question.
More and more I incline to the former possibility. He has learned unconsciously the strength of lying still. A thousand generations of fat and healthy porcupines have taught him the folly of trouble and rush and worry in a world that somebody else has planned, and for which somebody else is plainly responsible. So he makes no effort and lives in profound peace. But this also leaves you with a question which may take you overseas to explore Hindu philosophy. Indeed, if you have one question when you meet Unk Wunk for the first time, you will have twenty after you have studied him for a season or two. His paragraph in the woods’ journal begins and ends with a question mark, and a dash for what is left unsaid.
The only indication of deliberate plan and effort that I have ever noted in Unk Wunk was in regard to teaching two young ones the simple art of swimming,—which porcupines, by the way, rarely use, and for which there seems to be no necessity. I was drifting along the shore in my canoe when I noticed a mother porcupine and two little ones, a prickly pair indeed, on a log that reached out into the lake. She hadbrought them there to make her task of weaning them more easy by giving them a taste of lily buds. When they had gathered and eaten all the buds and stems that they could reach, she deliberately pushed both little ones into the water. When they attempted to scramble back she pushed them off again, and dropped in beside them and led them to a log farther down the shore, where there were more lily pads.
The numerous hollow quills floated them high in the water, like so many corks, and they paddled off with less effort than any other young animals that I have ever seen in the water. But whether this were a swimming lesson, or a rude direction to shift and browse for themselves, is still a question. With the exception of one solitary old genius, who had an astonishing way of amusing himself and scaring all the other wood folk, this was the only plain bit of fore-thought and sweet reasonableness that I have ever found in a porcupine.
A new sound, a purring rustle of leaves, stopped me instantly as I climbed the beech ridge, one late afternoon, to see what wood folk I might surprise feeding on the rich mast.Pr-r-r-r-ush, pr-r-r-r-ush!a curious combination of the rustling of squirrels’ feet and the soft, crackling purr of an eagle’s wings, growing nearer, clearer every instant. I slipped quietly behind the nearest tree to watch and listen.
Something was coming down the hill; but what? It was not an animal running. No animal that I knew, unless he had gone suddenly crazy, would evermake such a racket to tell everybody where he was. It was not squirrels playing, nor grouse scratching among the new-fallen leaves. Their alternate rustlings and silences are unmistakable. It was not a bear shaking down the ripe beechnuts—not heavy enough for that, yet too heavy for the feet of any prowler of the woods to make on his stealthy hunting.Pr-r-r-r-ush, swish! thump!Something struck the stem of a bush heavily and brought down a rustling shower of leaves; then out from under the low branches rolled something that I had never seen before,—a heavy, grayish ball, as big as a half-bushel basket, so covered over with leaves that one could not tell what was inside. It was as if some one had covered a big kettle with glue and sent it rolling down the hill, picking up dead leaves as it went. So the queer thing tumbled past my feet, purring, crackling, growing bigger and more ragged every moment as it gathered up more leaves, till it reached the bottom of a sharp pitch and lay still.
I stole after it cautiously. Suddenly it moved, unrolled itself. Then out of the ragged mass came a big porcupine. He shook himself, stretched, wobbled around a moment, as if his long roll had made him dizzy; then he meandered aimlessly along the foot of the ridge, his quills stuck full of dead leaves, lookingbig and strange enough to frighten anything that might meet him in the woods.
Here was a new trick, a new problem concerning one of the stupidest of all the wood folk. When you meet a porcupine and bother him, he usually rolls himself into a huge pincushion with all its points outward, covers his face with his thorny tail, and lies still, knowing well that you cannot touch him anywhere without getting the worst of it. Now had he been bothered by some animal and rolled himself up where it was so steep that he lost his balance, and so tumbled unwillingly down the long hill; or, with his stomach full of sweet beechnuts, had he rolled down lazily to avoid the trouble of walking; or is Unk Wunk brighter than he looks to discover the joy of roller coasting and the fun of feeling dizzy afterwards?
There was nothing on the hill above, no rustle or suggestion of any hunting animal to answer the question; so I followed Unk Wunk on his aimless wanderings along the foot of the ridge.
A slight movement far ahead caught my eye, and I saw a hare gliding and dodging among the brown ferns. He came slowly in our direction, hopping and halting and wiggling his nose at every bush, till he heard our approach and rose on his hind legs to listen. He gave a great jump as Unk Wunk hove into sight,covered all over with the dead leaves that his barbed quills had picked up on his way downhill, and lay quiet where he thought the ferns would hide him.
The procession drew nearer. Moktaques, full of curiosity, lifted his head cautiously out of the ferns and sat up straight on his haunches again, his paws crossed, his eyes shining in fear and curiosity at the strange animal rustling along and taking the leaves with him.For a moment wonder held him as still as the stump beside him; then he bolted into the bush in a series of high, scared jumps, and I heard him scurrying crazily in a half circle around us.
Unk Wunk gave no heed to the interruption, but yew-yawed hither and yon after his stupid nose. Like every other porcupine that I have followed, he seemed to have nothing whatever to do, and nowhere in the wide world to go. Heloafed along lazily, too full to eat any of the beechnuts that he nosed daintily out of the leaves. He tried a bit of bark here and there, only to spit it out again. Once he started up the hill; but it was too steep for a lazy fellow with a full stomach. Again he tried it; but it was not steep enough to roll down afterwards. Suddenly he turned and came back to see who it was that followed him about.
I kept very quiet, and he brushed two or three times past my legs, eyeing me sleepily. Then he took to nosing a beechnut from under my foot, as if I were no more interesting than Alexander was to Diogenes.
I had never made friends with a porcupine,—he is too briery a fellow for intimacies,—but now with a small stick I began to search him gently, wondering if, under all that armor of spears and brambles, I might not find a place where it would please him to be scratched. At the first touch he rolled himself together, all his spears sticking straight out on every side, like a huge chestnut bur. One could not touch him anywhere without being pierced by a dozen barbs. Gradually, however, as the stick touched him gently and searched out the itching spots under his armor, he unrolled himself and put his nose under my foot again. He did not want the beechnut; but he did wantto nose it out. Unk Wunk is like a pig. He has very few things to do besides eating; but when he does start to go anywhere or do anything he always does it. Then I bent down to touch him with my hand.
That was a mistake. He felt the difference in the touch instantly. Also he smelled the salt in my hand, for a taste of which Unk Wunk will put aside all his laziness and walk a mile, if need be. He tried to grasp the hand, first with his paws, then with his mouth; but I had too much fear of his great cutting teeth to let him succeed. Instead I touched him behind the ears, feeling my way gingerly through the thick tangle of spines, testing them cautiously to see how easily they would pull out.
The quills were very loosely set in, and every arrowheaded barb was as sharp as a needle. Anything that pressed against them roughly would surely be pierced; the spines would pull out of the skin, and work their way rapidly into the unfortunate hand or paw or nose that touched them. Each spine was like a South Sea Islander’s sword, set for half its length with shark’s teeth. Once in the flesh it would work its own way, unless pulled out with a firm hand spite of pain and terrible laceration. No wonder Unk Wunk has no fear or anxiety when he rolls himself into a ball, protected at every point by such terrible weapons.
The hand moved very cautiously as it went down his side, within reach of Unk Wunk’s one swift weapon. There were thousands of the spines, rough as a saw’s edge, crossing each other in every direction, yet with every point outward. Unk Wunk was irritated, probably, because he could not have the salt he wanted. As the hand came within range, his tail snapped back like lightning. I was watching for the blow, but was not half quick enough. At the rustling snap, like the voice of a steel trap, I jerked my hand away. Two of his tail spines came with it; and a dozen more were in my coat sleeve. I jumped away as he turned, and so escaped the quick double swing of his tail at my legs. Then he rolled into a chestnut bur again, and proclaimed mockingly at every point: “Touch me if you dare!”
I pulled the two quills with sharp jerks out of my hand, pushed all the others through my coat sleeve, and turned to Unk Wunk again, sucking my wounded hand, which pained me intensely. “All your own fault,” I kept telling myself, to keep from whacking him across the nose, his one vulnerable point, with my stick.
Unk Wunk, on his part, seemed to have forgotten the incident. He unrolled himself slowly and loafed along the foot of the ridge, his quills spreading andrustling as he went, as if there were not such a thing as an enemy or an inquisitive man in all the woods.
He had an idea in his head by this time and was looking for something. As I followed close behind him, he would raise himself against a small tree, survey it solemnly for a moment or two, and go on unsatisfied. A breeze had come down from the mountain and was swaying all the tree-tops above him. He would look up steadily at the tossing branches, and then hurry on to survey the next little tree he met, with paws raised against the trunk and dull eyes following the motion overhead.
At last he found what he wanted,—two tall saplings growing close together and rubbing each other as the wind swayed them. He climbed one of these clumsily, higher and higher, till the slender top bent with his weight towards the other. Then he reached out to grasp the second top with his fore paws, hooked his hind claws firmly into the first, and lay there binding the tree-tops together, while the wind rose and began to rock him in his strange cradle.
Wider and wilder he swung, now stretched out thin, like a rubber string, his quills lying hard and flat against his sides as the tree-tops separated in the wind; now jammed up against himself as they came together again, pressing him into a flat ring withspines sticking straight out, like a chestnut bur that has been stepped upon. And there he swayed for a full hour, till it grew too dark to see him, stretching, contracting, stretching, contracting, as if he were an accordion and the wind were playing him. His only note, meanwhile, was an occasional squealing grunt of satisfaction after some particularly good stretch, or when the motion changed and both trees rocked together in a wide, wild, exhilarating swing. Now and then the note was answered, farther down the ridge, by another porcupine going to sleep in his lofty cradle. A storm was coming; and Unk Wunk, who is one of the wood’s best barometers to foretell the changing weather, was crying it aloud where all might hear.
So my question was answered unexpectedly. Unk Wunk was out for fun that afternoon, and had rolled down the hill for the joy of the swift motion and the dizzy feeling afterwards, as other wood folk do. I have watched young foxes, whose den was on a steep hill side, rolling down one after the other, and sometime varying the programme by having one cub roll as fast as he could, while another capered alongside, snapping and worrying him in his brain-muddling tumble.
That is all very well for foxes. One expects to find such an idea in wise little heads. But who taughtUnk Wunk to roll downhill and stick his spines full of dry leaves to scare the wood folk? And when did he learn to use the tree-tops for his swing and the wind for his motive power?
Perhaps—since most of what the wood folk know is a matter of learning, not of instinct—his mother teaches him some things that we have never yet seen. If so, Unk Wunk has more in his sleepy, stupid head than we have given him credit for, and there is a very interesting lesson awaiting him who shall first find and enter the porcupine school.
I was fishing, one September afternoon, in the pool at the foot of the lake, trying in twenty ways, as the dark evergreen shadows lengthened across the water, to beguile some wary old trout into taking my flies. They lived there, a score of them, in a dark well among the lily pads, where a cold spring bubbled up from the bottom; and their moods and humors were a perpetual source of worry or amusement, according to the humor of the fisherman himself.
For days at a time they would lie in the deep shade of the lily pads in stupid or sullen indifference. Then nothing tempted them. Flies, worms, crickets, redfins, bumblebees,—all at the end of dainty hair leaders, were drawn with crinkling wavelets over their heads, or dropped gently beside them; but they only swirled sullenly aside, grouty as King Ahab when he turned his face to the wall and would eat no bread.
At such times scores of little fish swarmed out of the pads and ran riot in the pool. Chub, shiners,"punkin-seeds," perch, boiled up at your flies, or chased each other in savage warfare through the forbidden water, which seemed to intoxicate them by its cool freshness. You had only to swing your canoe up near the shadowy edge of the pool and draw your cast once across the open water to know whether or not you would eat trout for breakfast. If the small fish chased your flies, then you might as well go home or study nature; you would certainly get no trout. But you could never tell when the change would come. With the smallest occasion sometimes—a coolness in the air, the run of a cat’s-paw breeze, a cloud shadow drifting over—a transformation would sweep over the speckled Ahabs lying deep under the lily pads. Some blind, unknown warning would run through the pool before ever a trout had changed his position. Looking over the side of your canoe you would see the little fish darting helter-skelter away among the pads, seeking safety in shallow water, leaving the pool to its tyrant masters. Now is the time to begin casting; your trout are ready to rise.
A playful mood would often follow the testy humor. The plunge of a three-pound fish, the slap-dash of a dozen smaller ones would startle you into nervous casting. But again you might as well spare your efforts, which only served to acquaint the trout withthe best frauds in your fly book. They would rush at Hackle or Coachman or Silver Doctor, swirl under it, jump over it, but never take it in. They played with floating leaves; their wonderful eyes caught the shadow of a passing mosquito across the silver mirror of their roof, and their broad tails flung them up to intercept it; but they wanted nothing more than play or exercise, and they would not touch your flies.
Once in a way there would come a day when your study and patience found their rich reward. The slish of a line, the flutter of a fly dropping softly on the farther edge of the pool—and then the shriek of your reel, buzzing up the quiet hillside, was answered by a loud snort, as the deer that lived there bounded away in alarm, calling her two fawns to follow. But you scarcely noticed; your head and hands were too full, trying to keep the big trout away from the lily pads, where you would certainly lose him with your light tackle.
On the afternoon of which I write the trout were neither playful nor sullen. No more were they hungry. The first cast of my midget flies across the pool brought no answer. That was good; the little fish had been ordered out, evidently. Larger flies followed; but the big trout neither played with them nor let them alone. They followed cautiously, a footastern, to the near edge of the lily pads, till they saw me and swirled down again to their cool haunts. They were suspicious clearly; and with the lower orders, as with men, the best rule in such a case is to act naturally, with more quietness than usual, and give them time to get over their suspicion.
As I waited, my flies resting among the pads near the canoe, curious sounds came floating down the hillside—Prut, prut, pr-r-r-rt! Whit-kwit? whit-kwit? Pr-r-rt, pr-r-rt! Ooo-it, ooo-it? Pr-r-reeee! this last with a swift burr of wings. And the curious sounds, half questioning, half muffled in extreme caution, gave a fleeting impression of gliding in and out among the tangled underbrush. “A flock of partridges—ruffed grouse,” I thought, and turned to listen more intently.
The shadows had grown long, with a suggestion of coming night; and other ears than mine had heard the sounds with interest. A swifter shadow fell on the water, and I looked up quickly to see a big owl sail silently out from the opposite hill and perch on a blasted stub overlooking the pool. Kookooskoos had been sleeping in a dark spruce when the sounds waked him, and he started out instantly, not to hunt—it was still too bright—but to locate his game and follow silently to the roosting place, near which he would hide and wait till the twilight fell darkly. I could seeit all in his attitude as he poised forward, swinging his round head to and fro, like a dog on an air trail, locating the flock accurately before he should take another flight.
Up on the hillside the eager sounds had stopped for a moment, as if some strange sixth sense had warned the birds to be silent. The owl was puzzled; but I dared not move, because he was looking straight over me. Some faint sound, too faint for my ears, made him turn his head, and on the instant I reached for the tiny rifle lying before me in the canoe. Just as he spread his wings to investigate the new sound, the little rifle spoke, and he tumbled heavily to the shore.
“One robber the less,” I was thinking, when the canoe swung slightly on the water. There was a heavy plunge, a vicious rush of my unheeded line, and I seized my rod to find myself fast to a big trout, which had been watching my flies from his hiding among the lily pads till his suspicions were quieted, and the first slight movement brought him up with a rush.
Ten minutes later he lay in my canoe, where I could see him plainly to my heart’s content. I was waiting for the pool to grow quiet again, when a new sound came from the underbrush, a rapidplop, lop, lop, lop, lop, like the sound in a sunken bottle as water pours in and the air rushes out.
There was a brook near the sounds, a lazy little stream that had lost itself among the alders and forgotten all its music; and my first thought was that some animal was standing in the water to drink, and waking the voice of the brook as the current rippled past his legs. The canoe glided over to find out what he was, when, in the midst of the sounds, came the unmistakableWhit-kwit?of partridges—and there they were, just vanishing glimpses of alert forms and keen eyes gliding among the tangled alder stems. When near the brook they had changed the soft, gossipy chatter, by which a flock holds itself together in the wild tangle of the burned lands, into a curious liquid sound, so like the gurgling of water by a mossy stone that it would have deceived me completely, had I not seen the birds. It was as if they tried to remind the little alder brook of the music it had lost far back among the hills.
Now I had been straitly charged, on leaving camp, to bring back three partridges for our Sunday dinner. My own little flock had grown a bit tired of trout and canned foods; and a taste of young broiled grouse, which I had recently given them, had left them hungry for more. So I left the pool and my fishing rod, just as the trout began to rise, to glide into the alders with my pocket rifle.
There were at least a dozen birds there, full-grown and strong of wing, that had not yet decided to scatter to the four winds, as had most of the coveys which one might meet on the burned lands. All summer long, while berries are plenty, the flocks hold together, finding ten pairs of quiet eyes much better protection against surprises than one frightened pair. Each flock is then under the absolute authority of the mother bird; and one who follows them gets some curious and intensely interesting glimpses of a partridge’s education. If the mother bird is killed, by owl or hawk or weasel, the flock still holds together, while berries last, under the leadership of one of their own number, more bold or cunning than the others. But with the ripening autumn, when the birds have learned, or think they have learned, all the sights and sounds and dangers of the wilderness, the covey scatters; partly to cover a wider range in feeding as food grows scarcer; partly in natural revolt at maternal authority, which no bird or animal likes to endure after he has once learned to take care of himself.
I followed the flock rapidly, though cautiously, through an interminable tangle of alders that bordered the little stream, and learned some things about them; though they gave me no chance whatever for a rifle shot. The mother was gone; their leader was afoxy bird, the smallest of the lot, who kept them moving in dense cover, running, crouching, hiding, inquisitive about me and watching me, yet keeping themselves beyond reach of harm. All the while the leader talked to them, a curious language of cheepings and whistlings; and they answered back with questions or sharp exclamations as my head appeared in sight for a moment. Where the cover was densest they waited till I was almost upon them before they whisked out of sight; and where there was a bit of opening they whirred up noisily on strong wings, or sailed swiftly away from a fallen log with the noiseless flight that a grouse knows so well how to use when the occasion comes.
Already the instinct to scatter was at work among them. During the day they had probably been feeding separately along the great hillside; but with lengthening shadows they came together again to face the wilderness night in the peace and security of the old companionship. And I had fortunately been quiet enough at my fishing to hear when the leader began to call them together and they had answered, here and there, from their feeding.
I gave up following them after a while—they were too quick for me in the alder tangle—and came out of the swamp to the ridge. There I ran along a deerpath and circled down ahead of them to a thicket of cedar, where I thought they might pass the night.
Presently I heard them coming—Whit-kwit? pr-r-r, pr-r-r, prut, prut!—and saw five or six of them running rapidly. The little leader saw me at the same instant and dodged back out of sight. Most of his flock followed him; but one bird, more inquisitive than the rest, jumped to a fallen log, drew himself up straight as a string, and eyed me steadily. The little rifle spoke at his head promptly; and I stowed him away comfortably, a fine plump bird, in a big pocket of my hunting shirt.
At the report another partridge, questioning the unknown sound, flew to a thick spruce, pressed close against the trunk to hide himself, and stood listening intently. Whether he was waiting to hear the sound again, or was frightened and listening for the call of the leader, I could not tell. I fired at his head quickly, and saw him sail down against the hillside, with a loud thump and a flutter of feathers behind him to tell me that he was hard hit.
I followed him up the hill, hearing an occasional flutter of wings to guide my feet, till the sounds vanished into a great tangle of underbrush and fallen trees. I searched here ten minutes or more in vain, then listened in the vast silence for a longer period; but thebird had hidden himself away in some hole or covert where an owl might pass by without finding him. Reluctantly I turned away toward the swamp.
Close beside me was a fallen log; on my right was another; and the two had fallen so as to make the sides of a great angle, their tops resting together against the hill. Between the two were several huge trees growing among the rocks and underbrush. I climbed upon one of these fallen trees and moved along it cautiously, some eight or ten feet above the ground, looking down searchingly for a stray brown feather to guide me to my lost partridge.
Suddenly the log under my feet began to rock gently. I stopped in astonishment, looking for the cause of the strange teetering; but there was nothing on the log beside myself. After a moment I went on again, looking again for my partridge. Again the log rocked, heavily this time, almost throwing me off. Then I noticed that the tip of the other log, which lay balanced across a great rock, was under the tip of my log and was being pried up by something on the other end. Some animal was there, and it flashed upon me suddenly that he was heavy enough to lift my weight with his stout lever. I stole along so as to look behind a great tree—and there on the other log, not twenty feet away, a big bear was standing, twisting himself uneasily,trying to decide whether to go on or go back on his unstable footing.
He discovered me at the instant that my face appeared behind the tree. Such surprise, such wonder I have seldom seen in an animal’s face. For a long moment he met my eyes steadily with his. Then he began to twist again, while the logs rocked up and down. Again he looked at the strange animal on the other log; but the face behind the tree had not moved nor changed; the eyes looked steadily into his. With a startled movement he plunged off into the underbrush, and but for a swift grip on a branch the sudden lurch would have sent me off backward among the rocks. As he jumped I heard a swift flutter of wings. I followed it timidly, not knowing where the bear was, and in a moment I had the second partridge stowed away comfortably with his brother in my hunting shirt.
The rest of the flock had scattered widely by this time. I found one or two and followed them; but they dodged away into the thick alders, where I could not find their heads quick enough with my rifle sight. After a vain, hasty shot or two I went back to my fishing.
Woods and lake were soon quiet again. The trout had stopped rising, in one of their sudden moods. A vast silence brooded over the place, unbroken by any buzz of my noisy reel, and the twilight shadows weregrowing deeper and longer, when the soft, gliding, questioning chatter of partridges came floating out of the alders. The leader was there, in the thickest tangle—I had learned in an hour to recognize his peculiarPrut, prut—and from the hillside and the alder swamp and the big evergreens his scattered flock were answering; here akwit, and there aprut, and beyond a swift burr of wings, all drawing closer and closer together.
I had still a third partridge to get for my own hungry flock; so I stole swiftly back into the alder swamp. There I found a little game path and crept along it on hands and knees, drawing cautiously near to the leader’s continued calling.