will strongly disapprove. I didn't want to tell you about it, but I
suppose I must. Two or three male loons passed over the Glimmerglass
one afternoon, calling and shouting as they went, and he flew up and
joined them, and came back no more that summer. It looked like a clear
case of desertion, but we must remember that he had stood by his wife
all through the trying period of the spring and early summer, and that
the time was at hand when the one chick that was left would go out into
the world to paddle his own canoe, and when she would no longer need his
help in caring for a family of young children. But you think he might
have stayed with her, anyhow? Well, so do I; I'm sorry he didn't. They
say that his cousins, the Red-throated Loons, marry for life, and live
together from the wedding-day till death, and I don't see why he
couldn't have done as well as they. But it doesn't seem to be the custom
among the Great Northern Divers. Mahng was only following the usual
practice of his kind, and if his first wife had not been shot it is
likely that they would have separated before they had gone very far
south. And yet it does not follow that the marriage was not a
love-match. If you had seen them at their housekeeping I think you would
have pronounced him a very good husband and father. Perhaps the conjugal
happiness of the spring and early summer was all the better for a taste
of solitude during the rest of the year.
As I said, the time was near when the chick would strike out for
himself. He soon left his mother, and a little later she too started for
the Gulf of Mexico. Summer was over, and the Glimmerglass was lonelier
than ever.
Mahng came back next spring, and of course he brought a wife with him.
But was she the same wife who had helped him make the Glimmerglass ring
with his shouting twelve months before? Well, I--I don't quite know. She
looked very much like her, and I certainly hope she was the same bird. I
should like to believe that they had been reunited somewhere down in
Texas or Mississippi or Louisiana, and that they had come back together
for another season of parental cares and joys. But when I consider the
difficulties in the way I cannot help feeling doubtful about it. The two
birds had gone south at different times and perhaps by different routes.
Before they reached the lower Mississippi Valley they may have been
hundreds of miles apart. Was it to be reasonably expected that Mahng,
when he was ready to return, would search every pond and stream from
the Cumberland to the Gulf? And is it likely that, even if he had tried
for weeks and weeks, he could ever have found his wife of the previous
summer? His flight was swift and his sight keen, and his clarion voice
rang far and wide over the marshes; but it is no joke to find one
particular bird in a region covering half a dozen States. If they had
arranged to come north separately, and meet at the Glimmerglass, there
would not have been so many difficulties in the way, but they didn't do
that. Anyhow, Mahng brought a wife home. That much, at least, is
established. They set to work at once to build a nest and make ready for
some new babies; but, alas! there was little parental happiness or
responsibility in store for them that year.
If you had been there you might have seen them swimming out from shore
one bright, beautiful spring morning, when the sun had just risen, and
the woods and waters lay calm and peaceful in the golden light, fairer
than words can tell. They were after their breakfast, and presently they
dived to see what was to be had. The light is dim down there in the
depths of the Glimmerglass, the weeds are long and slimy, and the mud of
the bottom is black and loathsome. But what does that matter? One can
go back whenever one pleases. A few quick, powerful strokes will take
you up into the open air, and you can see the woods and the sky. Aha!
There is a herring, his scales shining like silver in the faint green
light that comes down through the water. And there is a small salmon
trout, with his gray-brown back and his golden sides. A fish for each of
us.
The loons darted forward at full speed; but the two fish made no effort
to escape, and did not even wriggle when the long, sharp bills closed
upon them. They were dead, choked to death by the fine threads of a
gill-net. And now those same threads laid hold of the loons themselves,
and a fearful struggle began.
Mahng and his wife did not always keep their wings folded when they were
under water. Sometimes they used them almost as they did in flying, and
just now they had need of every muscle in their bodies. How their
pinions lashed the water, and how their legs kicked and their long necks
writhed, and how the soft mud rose in clouds and shut out the dim light!
But the harder they fought the more tightly did the net grapple them,
winding itself round and round their bodies, and soon lashing their
wings down against their sides. Expert divers though they were, the
loons were drowning. There was a ringing in their ears and a roaring in
their heads, and the very last atoms of oxygen in their lungs were
almost gone. Death was drawing very near, and the bright, sunshiny world
where they had been so happy a moment before, the world to which they
had thought they could return so quickly and easily, seemed a thousand
miles away. One last effort, one final struggle, and if that failed
there would be nothing more to do but go to sleep forever.
Fortunately for Mahng, his part of the net had been mildewed, and much
of the strength had gone out of the linen threads. He was writhing and
twisting with all his might, and suddenly he felt something give. One of
the rotten meshes had torn apart. He worked with redoubled energy, and
in a moment another thread gave way, and then another, and another. A
second more and he was free. Quick, now, before the last spark goes out!
With beating wings and churning paddles he fairly flew up through the
green water toward the light, and on a sudden he shot out into the air,
panting and gasping, and staring wildly around at the blue sky, and the
quiet woods, and the smiling Glimmerglass. And how royally beautiful
was the sunshine, and how sweet was the breath of life!
But his mate was not with him, and a few hours later the fisherman found
in his net the lifeless body of a drowned loon.
Mahng went north. He had thought that his spring flight was over and
that he would go no farther, but now the Glimmerglass was no longer
home, and he spread his wings once more and took his way toward the
Arctic Circle. Over the hills, crowded with maple and beech and birch;
over the Great Tahquamenon Swamp, with its cranberry marshes, its
tangles of spruce and cedar, and its thin, scattered ranks of tamarack;
over the sandy ridges where the pine-trees stand tall and stately, and
out on Lake Superior. The water was blue, and the sunshine was bright;
the wind was fresh and cool, and the billows rolled and tumbled as if
they were alive and were having a good time together. Together--that's
the word. They were together, but Mahng was alone; and he wasn't having
a good time at all. He wanted a home, and a nest, and some young ones,
but he didn't find them that year, though he went clear to Hudson Bay,
and looked everywhere for a mate. There were loons, plenty of them, but
they had already paired and set up housekeeping, and he found no one who
was in a position to halve his sorrows and double his joys.
Something attracted his attention one afternoon when he was swimming on
a little lake far up in the Canadian wilderness--a small red object that
kept appearing and disappearing in a very mysterious fashion among the
bushes that lined the beach. Mahng's bump of curiosity was large and
well developed, and he gave one of his best laughs and paddled slowly in
toward the shore. I think he had a faint and utterly unreasonable hope
that it might prove to be what he was looking and longing for, though he
knew very well that no female loon of his species ever had red
feathers--nor a male, either, for that matter. It was a most absurd
idea, and his dreams, if he really had them, were cut short by the
report of a shotgun. A little cloud of smoke floated up through the
bushes, and a charge of heavy shot peppered the water all around him.
But if Mahng was curious he was also quick to take a hint. He had heard
the click of the gun-lock, and before the leaden hail could reach him he
was under water. His tail feathers suffered a little, but otherwise he
was uninjured, and he did not come to the surface again till he was far
away from that deceitful red handkerchief.
The summer was an entire failure, and after a while Mahng gave it up in
despair, and started south much earlier than usual. At the Straits of
Mackinac he had another narrow escape, for he came very near killing
himself by dashing head first against the lantern of a lighthouse, whose
brilliant beams, a thousand times brighter than the light which had
lured his first wife to her death, had first attracted and then dazzled
and dazed him. Fortunately he swerved a trifle at the last moment, and
though he brushed against an iron railing, lost his balance, and fell
into the water, there were no bones broken and no serious damage done.
The southland, as everybody knows, is the only proper place for a loon
courtship. There, I am pleased to say, Mahng found a new wife, and in
due time he brought her up to the Glimmerglass. That was only last
spring, and there is but one more incident for me to relate. This summer
has been a happy and prosperous one, but there was a time when it seemed
likely to end in disaster before it had fairly begun.
Just northeast of the Glimmerglass there lies a long, narrow, shallow
pond. I believe I mentioned it when I was telling you about the Beaver.
One afternoon Mahng had flown across to this pond, and as he was
swimming along close to the shore he put his foot into a beaver-trap,
and sprung it. Of course he did his best to get away, but the only
result of his struggling was to work the trap out into deeper and deeper
water until he was almost submerged. He made things almost boil with the
fierce beating of his wings, but it was no use; he might better have
saved his strength. He quieted down at last and lay very still, with
only his head and neck out of water, and there he waited two mortal
hours for something to happen.
Meanwhile his wife sat quietly on her eggs--there were three of them
this year--and drowsed away the warm spring afternoon. By and by she
heard a tramping as of heavy feet approaching, and glancing between the
tall grasses she saw, not a bear nor a deer, but something far worse--a
man. She waited till he was within a few yards, and then she jumped up,
scuttled down to the water as fast as she could go, and dived as if she
was made of lead. The trapper glanced after her with a chuckle.
"Seems pretty badly scared," he said to himself, but his voice was not
unkindly. His smile faded as he stood a moment beside the nest, looking
at the eggs, and thinking of what would some day come forth from them.
He was a solitary old fellow, with never a wife nor a child, nor a
relation of any kind. His life in the woods was just what he had chosen
for himself, and he would not have exchanged it for anything else in the
world; but sometimes the loneliness of it came over him, and he wished
that he had somebody to talk to. And now, looking at those eggs, and
thinking of the fledglings that were coming to the loons, he wondered
how it would seem if he had some children of his own. Pretty soon he
glanced out on the lake again, and saw Mahng's wife sitting quietly on
the water, just out of range.
"Hope she won't stay away till they get cold," he thought, and went on
his way across the swamp. The loon watched him till he passed out of
sight, and then she swam in to the beach and pushed herself up her
narrow runway to her old place. The eggs were still warm.
Half an hour later the trapper stepped out of the bushes beside the
pond, and caught sight of Mahng's head sticking out of the water. He
was considerably astonished, but he promptly laid hold of the chain and
drew bird, trap, and all up onto the bank, and then he sat down on a log
and laughed till the echoes went flying back and forth across the pond.
Plastered with mud, dripping wet, and with his left leg fast in the big
steel killing-machine, Mahng was certainly a comical sight. All the
fight was soaked out of him, and he lay prone upon the ground and waited
for the trapper to do what he pleased. But the trapper did nothing--only
sat on his log, and presently forgot to laugh. He was thinking of the
sitting loon whom he had disturbed a little while before. This was
probably her mate, and again there came over him a vague feeling that
life had been very good to these birds, and had given them something
which he, the man, had missed. He was growing old. A few more seasons
and there would be one trapper less in the Great Tahquamenon Swamp; and
he would die without--well, what was the use of talking or thinking
about it? But the loons would hatch their young, and care for them and
protect them until they were ready to go out into the world, and then
they would send them away to the south. A few weeks later they would
follow, and next spring they would come back and do it all over again.
That is--they would if he didn't kill them.
He rose from his log, smiling again at the abject look with which Mahng
watched him, and putting one foot on each of the two heavy steel
springs, he threw his weight upon them and crushed them down. Mahng felt
the jaws relax, and suddenly he knew that he was free. The strength came
back with a rush to his weary limbs, and he sprang up, scrambled down
the bank and into the water, and was gone. A few minutes later he
reappeared far down the pond, and rising on the wing he flew away with a
laugh toward the Glimmerglass.
THE MAKING OF A GLIMMERGLASS BUCK
I DON'T know that he was a record-breaker, but he was certainly much
larger and more powerful than the average buck, and he was decidedly
good-looking, even for a deer. There were one or two slight
blemishes--to be described later--in his physical make-up; but they were
not very serious, and except for them he was very handsome and
well-formed. I can't give you the whole story of his life, for that
would take several books, but I shall try to tell you how he became the
biggest buck and the best fighter of his day and generation in the woods
around the Glimmerglass. He was unusually favored by Providence, for
besides being so large and strong he was given a weapon such as very few
full-grown Michigan bucks have ever possessed.
He had a good start in life, and it is really no wonder that he
distanced all his relations. In the first place, he arrived in the woods
a little earlier in the year than deer babies usually do. This was
important, for it lengthened his first summer, and gave more opportunity
for growth before the return of cold weather. If the winter had
lingered, or if there had been late frosts or snow-storms, his early
advent might have been anything but a blessing; but the spring proved a
mild one, and there was plenty of good growing weather for fawns. Then,
too, his mother as in the very prime of life, and for the time being he
was her only child. If there had been twins, as there were the year
before, he would, of course, have had to share her milk with a brother
or sister; but as it was he enjoyed all the benefits of a natural
monopoly, and he grew and prospered accordingly, and was a baby to be
proud of.
[Illustration: "_He was a baby to be proud of._"]
And his mother took good care of him, and never tried to show him off
before the other people of the woods. She knew that it was far safer and
wiser to keep him concealed as long as possible, and not let anyone know
that she had him. So instead of letting him wander with her through the
woods when she went in search of food, she generally left him hidden in
a thicket or behind a bush or a fallen tree. There he spent many a long,
lonely hour, idly watching the waving branches and the moving shadows,
and perhaps thinking dim, formless, wordless baby thoughts, or looking
at nothing and thinking of nothing, but just sleeping the quiet sleep
of infancy, and living, and growing, and getting ready for hard times.
At first the Fawn knew no difference between friends and enemies, but
the instinct of the hunted soon awoke and told him when to be afraid. If
a hostile animal came by while the doe was gone, he would crouch low,
with his nose to the ground and his big ears laid back on his neck; or
if pressed too closely he would jump up and hurry away to some better
cover, with leaps and bounds so light and airy that they seemed the very
music of motion. But that did not happen very often. His hiding-places
were well chosen, and he usually lay still till his mother came back.
When she thought he was large enough, and strong and swift enough, she
let him travel with her; and then he became acquainted with several new
kinds of forest--with the dark hemlock groves, and the dense cedar
swamps; with the open tamarack, where the trees stand wide apart, and
between them the great purple-and-white lady's-slippers bloom; with the
cranberry marshes, where pitcher-plants live, and white-plumed grasses
nod in the breeze; with sandy ridges where the pine-trees purr with
pleasure when the wind strokes them; with the broad, beautiful
Glimmerglass, laughing and shimmering in the sunshine, and with all the
sights and the sounds of that wonderful world where he was to spend the
years of his deerhood.
They were a very silent pair. When his breakfast was ready she would
sometimes call him with a low murmuring, and he would answer her with a
little bleat; but those were almost the only sounds that were ever heard
from them, except the rustling of the dry leaves around their feet. Yet
they understood each other perfectly, and they were very happy together.
There was little need of speech, for all they had to do the livelong day
was to wander about while the doe picked up her food, and then, when she
had eaten her fill, to lie down in some sheltered place, and there rest
and chew the cud till it was time to move again.
Life wasn't all sunshine, of course. There were plenty of hard things
for the baby Buck to put up with, and perhaps the worst were the
mosquitoes and the black-flies and "no-see-'ems" that swarmed in the
woods and swamps through the month of June. They got into his mouth and
into his nose; they gathered in circles around his eyes; and they
snuggled cosily down between the short hairs of his pretty, spotted
coat, and sucked the blood out of him till it seemed as if he would
soon go dry. For a while they were almost unbearable, but I suppose the
woods-people get somewhat hardened to them. Otherwise I should think our
friends would have been driven mad, for there was never any respite from
their attacks, except possibly a very stormy day, or a bath in the lake,
or a saunter on the shore.
At the eastern end of the Glimmerglass there is a broad strip of sand
beach, where, if there happens to be a breeze from the water, one can
walk and be quite free from the flies; though in calm weather, or with
an offshore wind, it is not much better than the woods. There, during
fly-time, the doe and her baby were often to be found; and to see him
promenading up and down the hard sand, with his mother looking on, was
one of the prettiest sights in all the wilderness. The ground-color of
his coat was a bright bay red, somewhat like that of his mother's summer
clothing; but deeper and richer and handsomer, and with pure white spots
arranged in irregular rows all along his neck and back and sides. He was
so sleek and polished that he fairly glistened in the sunshine, like a
well-groomed horse; his great dark eyes were brighter than a girl's at
her first ball; and his ears were almost as big as a mule's, and a
million times as pretty. But best and most beautiful of all was the
marvellous life and grace and spirit of his every pose and motion. When
he walked, his head and neck were thrust forward and drawn back again at
every step with the daintiest gesture imaginable; and his tiny pointed
hoofs touched the ground so lightly, and were away again so quickly,
that you hardly knew what they had done. If anything startled him, he
stamped with his forefoot on the hard sand, and tossed his head in the
air with an expression that was not fear, but alertness, and even
defiance. And when he leaped and ran--but there's no use in trying to
describe that.
By the middle of July most of the flies were gone, and the deer could
travel where they pleased without being eaten alive. And then, almost
before they knew what had happened, the summer was gone, too, and the
autumn had come. The Fawn's white spots disappeared, and both he and his
mother put off their thin red summer clothing and donned the blue coat
of fall, which would by and by fade into the gray of winter--a garment
made of longer, coarser hairs, which were so thick that they had to
stand on end because there wasn't room for them to lie down, and which
made such a warm covering that one who wore it could sleep all night in
the snow, and rise in the morning dry and comfortable.
The Fawn had thriven wonderfully. Already the budding antlers were
pushing through the skin on the top of his head, which alone is pretty
good proof that he was a remarkable baby. But, of course, the infancy of
a wild animal is always much shorter than that of a human child. It is
well that this is so, for if the period of weakness and helplessness was
not shortened for them, there would probably be very few who would ever
survive its dangers and reach maturity. The Fawn was weaned early in the
autumn; though he still ran with his mother, and she showed him what
herbs and leaves were pleasantest to the taste and best for building up
bone and muscle, and where the beechnuts were most plentiful. The mast
was good that fall, which isn't always the case, and that was another
lucky star in young Buck's horoscope. So much depends on having plenty
to eat the first year.
And now the doe was thriving as well as her son. Through the summer she
had been thin and poor, for the Fawn had fed on her life and strength,
and the best of all that came to her she had given to him; but the
strain was over at last, and there were granted her a few weeks in
which to prepare for the season of cold and storm and scanty food. She
made the best of them, and in an amazingly short time she was rolling
fat.
Everything was lovely and the goose hung high, when all of a sudden the
peace and quiet of their every-day lives were rudely broken. The hunting
season had come, and half-a-dozen farmers from lower Michigan had camped
beside the Glimmerglass. They were not really very formidable. If one
wants to kill deer, one should learn to shoot straight and to get around
in the woods without making quite as much noise as a locomotive. But
their racket was intolerable, and after a day or two the doe and the
Fawn left home and spent the next three or four weeks near a secluded
little pond several miles away to the southeast.
By the first of December these troublous times were over, and they had
returned to their old haunts in the beech and maple woods, where they
picked up a rather scanty living by scraping the light snow away with
their forefeet in search of the savory nuts. But before Christmas there
came a storm which covered the ground so deeply that they could no
longer dig out enough food to keep them from going hungry; and they
were forced to leave the high lands and make their way to the evergreen
swamps around the head-waters of the Tahquamenon. There they lived on
twigs of balsam and hemlock and spruce, with now and then a mouthful of
moss or a nutritious lichen. Little by little the fat on their ribs
disappeared, they grew lank and lean again, and the bones showed more
and more plainly through their heavy winter coats. If one of those
November hunters had succeeded in setting his teeth in their flesh he
would have found that it had a very pleasant, nutty flavor, but in
February it would have tasted decidedly of hemlock. Yet they were strong
and healthy, in spite of their boniness, and of course you can't expect
to be very fat in winter.