diving for a mussel for himself. How they opened them I could not
clearly make out, for the shells were almost concealed in their paws;
but judging from their actions and the appearance of other shells
which they had opened, I should say that they first gnawed through the
big hinge at the back, then pried open the valves, and ate out the
contents.
Having finished this first course of big-neck clams, they were joined
by a third muskrat, and, together, they filed over the bank and down
into the meadow. Shortly two of them returned with great mouthfuls of
the mud-bleached ends of calamus-blades. Then followed the washing.
They dropped their loads upon the plank, took up the stalks, pulled
the blades apart, and soused them up and down in the water, rubbing
them with their paws until they were as clean and white as the
whitest celery one ever ate. What a dainty picture! Two little brown
creatures, humped on the edge of a plank, washing calamus in moonlit
water!
One might have taken them for half-grown coons as they sat there
scrubbing and munching. Had the big barred owl, from the gum-swamp
down the creek, come along then, he could easily have bobbed down upon
them, and might almost have carried one away without the other knowing
it, so all-absorbing was the calamus-washing.
Muskrats, like coons, will wash what they eat, whether washing is
needed or not. It is a necessary preliminary to dinner--their
righteousness, the little Pharisees! Judging from the washing disease
which ailed two tame muskrats that I knew, it is perfectly safe to say
that had these found clean bread and butter upon the plank, instead of
muddy calamus, they would have scoured it just the same.
Before the two on the plank had finished their meal, the third muskrat
returned, dragging his load of mud and roots to the scrubbing. He was
just dipping into the water when there was a terrific explosion in
my ears, a roar that echoed round and round the pond. As the smoke
lifted, there were no washers upon the plank; but over in the quiet
water floated three long, slender tails.
"No man gwine stan' dat shot, boy, jis t' see a mus'rat wash hi'
supper"; and Uncle Jethro limbered his stiffened knees and went
chuckling down the bank.
A STUDY IN BIRD MORALS
[Illustration: "She melted away among the dark pines like a shadow."]
A STUDY IN BIRD MORALS
The eternal distinctions of right and wrong upon which the moral law
is based inhere even in the jelly of the amoeba. The Decalogue binds
all the way down. In the course of a little observation one must find
how faithfully the animals, as a whole, keep the law, and how sadly,
at times, certain of them are wont to break it.
To pass over such notorious cases as the cow-bird, cuckoo,
turkey-buzzard, and crow, there is still cause for positive alarm, if
the birds have souls, in the depraved habit of duplicity common among
them. In a single short tramp, one June afternoon, no less than five
different birds attempted to deceive me. The casuist may be able to
justify all five of them; for, no doubt, there are extremities when
this breach of the law should not merit condemnation; but even so, if
in the limits of one short walk _five_ little innocents deliberately
act out the coolest of falsehoods, one cannot help wondering if it is
not true that the whole creation needs redeeming.
The first of these five was a yellow warbler. I was trying to look
into her nest, which was placed in the top of a clump of alders in
a muddy pasture, when she slipped out and fluttered like an autumn
leaf to the ground. She made no outcry, but wavered down to my feet
with quivering wings, and dragged herself over the water and mud as
if wounded. I paused to look at her, and, as long as I watched, she
played her best to lure me. A black-snake would have struck at her
instantly; but I knew her woman's ways and turned again to the nest.
As soon as she saw that her tears and prayers would not avail; she
darted into the bushes near me and called me every wicked thing that
she could think of. I deserved it all, of course, though I was only
curious to see her cradle and its holdings, which, had she been a
human mother, she would have insisted on my stopping to see.
[Illustration: "She called me every wicked thing that she could think
of."]
On the way to Lupton's I climbed a sharp, pine-covered hill, where the
needles were so slippery that I had to halt for a minute's rest at
the top. The trees rose straight and close and slender, with scarcely
a live branch reaching out nearer the ground than twenty feet. The
roof of green shut out the light, and the matting of brown spread the
ground so deep that only a few stunted blueberry-bushes, small ferns,
and straying runners of ground-pine abode there. It was one of those
cathedral-like clumps, a holy of holies of the woods, into whose dim
silence the straggling bushes, briers, and other lowly forest folk
dare not come, but fall upon their knees outside and worship.
[Illustration: "It was one of those cathedral-like clumps."]
The birds, however, are not so reverent. I was scarcely stretched upon
the needles when a slight movement overhead arrested my attention.
As I looked, a soft fluttering of wings brought a blue jay into the
branches directly above me. There is nothing peculiar in finding a
blue jay among the pines--they usually nest there. But there was
something peculiar about this jay; he moved so quietly, he appeared so
entirely unconscious of me, though I knew that he saw me as plainly as
I him. Then at his side alighted his mate, meeker and more modest than
a chippy.
What did it signify--these squawking, scolding, garrulous birds
suddenly gone silent and trustful? In the pines at this season one
never gets nearer a jay than field-glass range--near enough to hear
him dash away, screeching defiance. But here were these two gliding
among the branches above my head as cautiously and softly as
cuckoos, searching apparently for grubs, yet keeping all the time to
the one spot, not leaving for a moment to hunt among other trees.
Round and round the same limbs they went, without once screaming or
uttering so much as a word of that sweet, confiding talk which one
hears when he spies on a pair of lovers or a newly wedded couple of
these birds. I became suspicious. All this meant something. They kept
close together, and fluttered about, hanging from the twigs head down
like chickadees, deliberately biting off bunches of needles, prying
into the cones, and scaling off bits of bark, but finding nothing, nor
even trying to find anything.
At this juncture I chanced to move my feet. The birds stopped
instantly; but on my becoming quiet they went on scattering the
needles and bark-chips again. Then I raised my glass. They paused
just for a second, and continued, though now I saw that their picking
was all at random, hitting the limb or not as might be. They were not
hunting grubs: they were watching me; and more--they were keeping me
watching them.
[Illustration: "They were watching me."]
It was a clever little ruse. But it was too good, too new, too
unjaylike for my faith. There was a nest against one of these pines,
as sure as it was June. And this fearless unconcern? this new and
absorbing interest in grubs? All assumed!--very genuinely assumed,
indeed, and might have led me to do a dozen things other than looking
for the nest, had I known a little less of jays. It was heroic, too.
They were calm and had all their wits about them. Outwardly they were
indifferent to my presence and gave me not the slightest heed. But
this was all show. Every instant they saw me; and, while pretending
not to know that I was near, they had come to intercept me, to attract
my attention to themselves, and save their nest. And at how much cost!
To have looked within those calm little bosoms were to have seen two
hearts as anxious and fearful as ever thumped parental breasts.
If I had been deceived and led to waste my afternoon or to record
something untrue of the blue jay, still, I think, these two birds
could hardly have been condemned before the law. For did not their
motive justify the deed?
The blue jays are braggarts, full of noise, and almost without morals;
yet they have not seemed to me quite as bad as they used to, not quite
the same blustering, quarrelsome, unmoral renegades, since these two
showed me how they could conquer their instinctive fears and rise
superior to everything common and cowardly by the power of their
parental love.
I could not find the nest; so returning the next day, I crept under
cover to the foot of the hill, and, ascending stealthily, saw the hen
as she slipped from the home tree. She melted away among the dark
pines like a shadow, but reappeared immediately with her mate to head
me off again. Not this time, however, for I had their secret. My eye
was upon the nest. It was a loose, rough affair of coarse sticks,
fixed upon two dead branches well up against a slender pine's trunk.
I could see patches of light sky through it, it was such a botch. But
where art failed nature perfected. I saw the sky through the bungled
structure, but not the eggs. I had to climb to see them, for they were
so washed with shadowy green that they blended perfectly with the
color of the nest and the subdued light of the pines.
After my adventure with the jays I had an interesting experience with
a pair of tiny birds in the sand-bank on the north side of Lupton's
Pond.
The country immediately surrounding the pond is exceedingly varied and
full of life. The high, level farm-lands break off into sandbanks,
which, in turn, spread into sweeping meadows that run out to the
creek. The little pond lies between steep hills of chestnut-oak and
pine, its upper waters being lost in a dense swamp of magnolia and
alder, while over the dam at its foot there rushes a fall that echoes
around the wooded hills and then goes purling among the elder and dog
roses into the sullen tide-ditches of the meadow. Except the meadows
and cultivated fields, everything is on a small scale, as if the place
were made of the odds and ends, the left-over pieces in the making
of the region round about. Such diversity of soils, such a medley of
features, such profusion of life, in a territory of the same size I
never saw elsewhere. At the boarding-school, near by, Lupton's Pond is
known as "Paradise."
On reaching the pond I went over to the sand-bank to look for a pair
of kingfishers who had nested there many years; but instead of them, I
saw a pair of winter wrens fly sharply among the washed-out roots of a
persimmon-tree which stood on the edge of the hill above. I instantly
lost sight of one of the birds. The actions of the other were so
self-conscious that I stopped and watched--I had never found a winter
wren's nest. In a moment the missing bird appeared and revealed the
nest. It was large for the size of the builders, made of sticks,
grass, and feathers, and was fixed among the black roots just below
the green hilltop, and set into the sand far enough to leave a little
of one side exposed.
The wrens hurried away on my approach; but when I retreated to the
foot of the bank, they darted back to the nest, the hen entering
without a pause, while the cock perched upon a root at the door and
began a most extraordinary performance.
He managed to put himself directly between me and the tiny portal,
completely cutting off my view of the little brown wife inside the
nest; then, spreading his wings, with tail up and head on one side, he
fluttered and bobbed and wagged and poured out a volume of song that
was prodigious. It lifted him fairly off his feet. Had he suddenly
gone up with a whizz, like a sky-rocket, and burst into a shower of
bubbles, trills, runs, and wild, ecstatic warbles, I should have
looked on with no more wonder. Such a song! It was singing gone mad.
My head was on a level with him. I leaned forward nearer the bank.
At this he went crazy with his efforts--into a fit, almost. I cannot
have been mistaken: it was the first time that I had ever heard a bird
sing when in terror; but I had whistled my way past too many dogs
and through too many graveyards at night to be deceived in the note
of fear, and in the purpose of this song. That bit of a husband was
scared almost out of his senses; but there he stood, squarely between
me and that precious nest and the more precious wife, guarding them
from my evil eyes with every atom of his midget self.
It was as fine an illustration of courage as I ever saw, a triumph of
love and duty over fear--fear that perhaps we have no way to measure.
And it was a triumph of wedded love at that; for there were no young,
not even an egg in the unfinished nest. It all happened in less than
a minute. The female reappeared in an instant, satisfied that all was
well with the nest, and both birds sped off and dropped among the
briers.
How would the casuist decide for so sweet, so big, so heroic a
deception--or the attempt?
A little farther down the creek, where the meadows meet the marsh,
dwell the cousins of the winter wrens, the long-billed marsh-wrens.
Here in the wide reaches of calamus and reeds, where the brackish tide
comes in, the marsh-wrens build by hundreds. Their big, bulky nests
are woven about a handful of young calamus-blades, or tied to a few
long, stout sedge-stalks, and grow as the season grows.
[Illustration: "A triumph of love and duty over fear."]
The nests are made of coarse marsh-grass,--of the floatage often,--and
are so long in the process of construction that, when completed, they
are all speared through with the grass-blades, as with so many green
bayonets. They are about the size of a large calabash, nearly round,
thick-walled and heavy, with a small entrance, just under the roof,
leading upward like a short stair to a deep, pocket-like cavity, at
whose bottom lie the eggs, barely out of finger reach.
I could hear the smothered racket of the singing wrens all about me
in the dense growth, scoldings to my right, defiance to my left,
discussions of wives, grumblings of husbands, and singing of lovers
everywhere, until the whole marsh seemed a-sputter and a-bubble with a
gurgling tide of song like a river running in. Now and then, a wave,
rising higher than its fellows, splashed up above the reeds and broke
into song-spray, as an ecstasy lifted the wee brown performer out of
the green.
But these short dashes of the wrens into upper air, I have come to
believe, are not entirely the flights of enraptured souls. Something
more than Mr. Chapman's "mine of music bursts within them." Before
they knew that I was near I rarely saw one make this singing dive into
the air; but as soon as they were acquainted with my presence they
appeared on every hand. I had not gone fifty feet into their reedy
domain when I began to catch a furious berating. The knives of the
mowing-machine up in the meadow went no faster nor sharper than these
unseen tongues in the reeds. Suddenly a bit of brown fury dashed into
view near me, spattered the air thick with song-notes, and, as if
veiled by this cloud of melody, it turned on its head and dived back,
chattering of all that was seen to the other furies in the reeds.
Does any one believe that exhibition to be an explosion of pure
song--the exaltation of unmixed joy? If ever the Ninth Commandment was
broken, it was broken here.
This uncontrollable emotion, this shower of song, is but a cloak to
the singer's fear and curiosity. He wants to know where I am and what
I am about. I once knew a little dog who was so afraid of the dark
that he would run barking all the way to the barn when put out at
night. So these little spies start up singing their biggest as a blind
to their real feelings and purposes.
The quail's broken wings and rushes of blood to the head during
nesting-time have lost their lure even for the small boy; yet they
somehow still work on me. I involuntarily give my attention to this
distress until too late to catch sight of the scurrying brood. I
imagine, too, that the oldest and wisest of the foxes is still fooled
by this make-believe, and will continue to be fooled to the end of
time.
A barren, stony hillside slopes gradually to the marsh where the wrens
live. Here I was met by the fifth deceiver, a killdeer plover. The
killdeer's crocodile tears are bigger and more touchingly genuine than
even the quail's. And, besides all her tricks, she has a voice that
fairly drips woe.
The killdeer always builds in a worn-out, pebbly pasture or in a bare,
unused field. Here among the stones she makes her nest by scraping
out a shallow cavity, into which she scratches a few bits of rotten
wood and weed-stalks in sizes that would make good timber for a
caddis-worm's house. Instead of digging the cavity, she often hunts up
two or three stones and a corn-butt, which happen to lie so that she
can crowd in between them, and makes this shift serve her for a nest.
[Illustration: "He wants to know where I am and what I am about."]
Her eggs are one of the world's small wonders. They lie out in the
open like so many of the pebbles about them--resembling the stones
so perfectly that they are more often overlooked or crushed than
discovered. The ground color of the egg is that of the earth, and the
markings correspond marvelously to the size, shade, and distribution
of the bits of wood beneath them in the nest. I know of no other
instance of protective coloring among the birds so nearly perfect,
unless it be the killdeer herself when playing her favorite trick of
"invisible."
She had seen me before I entered the reeds of the marsh-wrens.
Squatting close over her eggs, she watched me silently, and seeing
that I was approaching her nest on my way up the hill, she glided off
and suddenly appeared at my feet. Where she came from I did not know.
It was as if the earth had opened and let her out. I stopped. That
was what she wanted. "You numskull, look at me and make a fool of
yourself," she said by the light in her eye. I did exactly so.
With her head outstretched and body close to the ground, she slid like
a ghost before me as I followed. Now she took form like a stone, now
seemed to sink out of sight into the earth, reappearing only to vanish
again into thin air. Thus she led me on, contriving to keep from
beneath my feet, and always just out of reach, till, seeing that my
credulity and patience were failing, she broke silence for a desperate
last act, and fell in a fit, screaming, _Kill-dee, kill-dee, kill-dee!_
There she lay in the agony of death. I stooped to pick her up; but she
happened to flutter a little--the death-spasm. I stepped forward to
take her. Putting my hand down, I--ah! not dead yet! Poor thing! She
jerked just out of my hand--reflex action, no doubt. But now it is all
over; she is dead, and I bend to pick her up, when, springing like
an arrow from my grasp, killdeer, ringing out her wail, goes swiftly
flying across the hill.
Fooled! Yes; but not altogether fooled, for I knew that it would turn
out so. The impostor! But wasn't it beautifully done? I shall never
grow too wise to be duped.
She has played me a trick, and now I will revenge myself and find her
nest. I shall--perhaps.
[Illustration: "In the agony of death."]
RABBIT ROADS
[Illustration]
RABBIT ROADS
In your woods walks did you ever notice a little furrow or
tunnel through the underbrush, a tiny roadway in the briers and
huckleberry-bushes? Did you ever try to follow this path to its
beginning or end, wondering who traveled it? You have, doubtless. But
the woods must be wild and the undergrowth thick and you must be as
much at home among the trees as you are in your own dooryard, else
this slight mark will make no impression upon you.
But enter any wild tract of wood or high swamp along the creek, and
look sharp as you cut across the undergrowth. You will not go far
before finding a narrow runway under your feet. It is about five
inches wide, leading in no particular direction, and is evidently made
by cutting off the small stems of vines and bushes at an inch or more
from the ground. The work looks as if it had been laid out by rule and
done with a sharp knife, it is so regular and clean.
This is a rabbit road. Follow it a few rods and you will find it
crossed by another road, exactly similar. Take this new path now, and
soon you are branching off, turning, and joining other roads. You
are in rabbit-land, traveling its highways--the most complicated and
entangling system of thoroughfares that was ever constructed. The
individual roads are straight and plain enough, but at a glance one
can see that the plan of the system is intended to bewilder and lead
astray all who trespass here. Without a map and directions no one
could hope to arrive at any definite point through such a snarl.
There often comes along with the circus a building called the
"Moorish Maze," over whose entrance is this invitation:
COME IN AND GET LOST!
This is what one reads at the cross-roads in rabbit-land. There are
finger-boards and mile-stones along the way; but they point nowhere
and mark no distances except to the rabbits.
An animal's strong points usually supplement each other; its
well-developed powers are in line with its needs and mode of life.
So, by the very demands of his peculiar life, the beaver has become
chief among all the animal engineers, his specialty being dams. He can
make a good slide for logging, but of the construction of speedways he
knows absolutely nothing. The rabbit, on the other hand, is a runner.
He can swim if he is obliged to. His interests, however, lie mostly in
his heels, and hence in his highways. So Bunny has become an expert
road-maker. He cannot build a house, nor dig even a respectable den;
he is unable to climb, and his face is too flat for hole-gnawing:
but turn him loose in a brambly, briery wilderness, and he will soon
thread the trackless waste with a network of roads, and lay it open
to his nimble feet as the sky lies open to the swallow's wings.
But how maddening these roads are to the dogs and foxes! In the first
place, they have a peculiar way of beginning nowhere in particular,
and of vanishing all at once, in the same blind fashion. I am not sure
that I ever found a satisfactory end to a rabbit's road--that is, a
nest, a playground, or even a feeding-place. Old Calamity, the hound,
is always tormented and undone whenever she runs foul of a rabbit road.
[Illustration: "Calamity is hot on his track."]
She will start Bunny in the open field, and trail away after him in
full tongue as fast as her fat bow-legs will carry her. The rabbit
makes for the woods. Calamity is hot on his track, going down toward
the creek. Suddenly she finds herself plunging along a rabbit road,
breaking her way through by sheer force where the rabbit slipped
along with perfect ease. She is following the path now rather than
the scent, and, all at once, discovers that she is off the trail. She
turns and goes back. Yes, here the rabbit made a sharp break to the
right by a side-path; the track is fresh and warm, and the old hound
sings in her eager delight. On she goes with more haste, running the
path again instead of the trail, and--there is no path! It is gone.
This bothers the old dog; but her nose is keen and she has picked up
the course again. Here it goes into another road. She gives tongue
again, and rushes on, when--_Wow!_ she has plunged into a thick and
thorny tangle of greenbrier.
That is where the torment comes in. These roads have a habit of taking
in the brier-patches. Calamity will go round a patch if she can; she
will work her way through if she must--but it is at the cost of bloody
ears and a thousand smarting pricks. Bunny, meantime, is watching
just inside the next brier-patch, counting the digs of his clumsy
pursuer.
I suppose that this "blind alley" kind of road is due to the fact that
the rabbits have no regular homes. They make a nest for the young; but
they never have dens, like minks and coons. In New England they often
live in holes and among the crannies of the stone walls; and there, as
far as I have seen, they rarely or never make roads. Farther south,
where the winters are less severe, they dig no holes, for they prefer
an open, even an exposed, bed to any sort of shelter.