rock preventing them from getting my scent, I saw one of the cubs
unearth a morsel and gobble it greedily. It was a bee’s nest, I think,
and it was certainly delicious; the little fellow ate with gusto,
making a smacking sound as he opened his mouth wide or licked his chops
again and again, as if he could never have enough of the taste. Twenty
yards away another cub suddenly threw up his head, smelling the sweets,
undoubtedly, for they can wind a disturbed bee’s nest at an incredible
distance. Rolling his fur in anticipation, he scampered up and nosed
all over the spot, sniffing and whining. Finding nothing but a smell,
he sat down, crossed both paws over the top of his head, and howled a
falsetto _oooo-wow-ow-ow-ow!_ twisting and shaking his body like a
petulant child. The other cub looked cunningly at the howling one; now
and then he would run out a slender red tongue and lap it around his
lips, as if to say, “Yum-yum, it _was_ good!”
When their stomachs are filled the cubs take to playing; and one who
watches them at their play has no more heart to kill them. They are too
droll, and the big woods seem to need them. They hide, and the mother,
after vain calling, must go smell them out; but as the end of that game
is commonly a cuffing, it is not repeated. Then, mindful of their ears,
the cubs begin to wrestle; or they face each other and box, striking
and fending till one gets more than he wants, when they clinch and go
rolling about in a rough-and-tumble. The most fascinating play is when
two cubs climb a tree on opposite sides, a tree so big that they are
hidden one from the other. The one in your sight goes humping aloft,
clasping the tree with his paws and hurling himself upward by digs
of his hind claws, till he thinks he is well above his rival. In the
excitement, what with flying chips and the loud scratching of bark, he
hears nothing but the sound of his own going. Then he peeks cautiously
around the tree, and very likely finds a black nose coming to meet
him. He hits it quickly, and dodges away to the other side, only to
get his own nose rapped. So they play hide and peek, and hit and dodge
and peek again, till they scramble into the high branches. And there
they whimper awhile, afraid to come down. Not till they are sharply
called will they try the descent, sagging down backward, looking first
over one shoulder, then over the other. But if they are in a hurry and
the branches are not too high, they turn all loose, like a coon; they
tumble down in a heap, hit the ground, and bound away like rubber balls.
Meanwhile the old she-bear is watching over the family in an odd
mixture of fondness and discipline, with temper enough to give variety
to both. Sometimes she mothers the cubs with a gruff, bearish kind of
tenderness. When they bother her, or when they are heedless of some
warning or message, she cuffs them impatiently; and a bear’s cuff is no
love pat, but a thud from a heavy paw which sends a cub spinning end
over end. If you are near enough to read her expression, you will hear
her at one moment saying, “That’s my little cubs! Oh, that’s my little
cubs!” A few minutes later she may be sitting with humped back, her
paws between her outstretched hind legs, and in her piggy, disapproving
eye the question, “Can these greedy little unfillable things be my
offspring?” So they move across the berry field, a day-long comedy.
What they do at night nobody has ever seen.
[Illustration: “_Then he peeks cautiously around the tree, and very
likely finds a black nose coming to meet him._”]
* * * * *
The fox is another comedian whose cunning has been overemphasized ever
since Æsop invented certain animal fables, but whose amusing side had
not yet found a worthy chronicler. Young foxes play by the hour outside
their den with a variety of games, mock fights and rough-and-tumble
capers, which make the antics of a kitten almost dull by comparison.
That they are glad little beasts, without fear and with only a saving
measure of caution, is plain to anyone who has ever watched them with
the understanding of sympathy. Unlike the bears, they keep the spirit
of play to the end. A grown fox will chase his tail in sheer exuberance
of animal spirits; or he will forget his mousing, even his hunger, in
the pleasure of pestering a tortoise when he finds one of the awkward
creatures loafing about the woods.
One summer day I watched a fox-and-woodchuck drama in which keen wits
were pitted against dull wits, a drama to which only the genius of
Uncle Remus could do justice. The time was late afternoon, the place a
cleared hillside, the first actor an old woodchuck that ventured from
his den to a clover field for a last sweet mouthful before he slept.
On the hill above, a fox came out of the woods, leaped to the top of
a stone wall, and stood looking keenly over the clover. Such was the
pretty scene; from some filbert bushes behind a lower wall a solitary
spectator watched it expectantly.
Eleemos the sly one, as Simmo calls the fox, does not lightly enter a
cleared field by daylight, though he is often mousing along the edge
of it just before dawn. I think he knew that this particular field had
a den, and that he was planning to catch one of the young woodchucks.
Hence his elevated station on the wall, with bushes bending over to
shadow him, and the expectant look in his bright eyes. He gave a quick
start as he caught a waving of grass, the motion of a grizzled head;
then, having located his prize, he dropped back into the woods, ran
down behind the wall, slipped over it under cover of a bush, crept flat
on his belly to a rock, and peeked around it to measure his chance.
Oh yes, he could catch that slow fellow yonder; surely, without half
trying! Inch by inch he pushed clear of the rock, waited with feet
under him till the chuck dropped out of sight to feed, then launched
himself like a bolt.
Now a woodchuck is also cunning in his own way, far too cunning to
be caught napping in the open. Like the beaver, he often sits up
for a wary look all around; after which he drops as if to feed, but
immediately bobs up a second time. A young chuck may be foolishly
content with a single survey; but a veteran is apt to make at least two
false starts at feeding, with the evident purpose of fooling any enemy
that may be watching him.
So it befell that, just as the fox leaped from cover, the woodchuck’s
head bobbed up over the clover. He saw the enemy instantly, and
scuttled away for his burrow, his fat body shaking like a jelly bag
as he ran. After him came the fox with swift jumps; into the hole
dived the woodchuck, sending back a whistle of defiance; and the fox,
grabbing at the vanishing tail, fetched up _bump!_ against the earth
with a shock that might have dislocated a less limber neck. He had the
tail, firmly gripped between his teeth; and with a do-or-die expression
he proceeded to drag his game out bodily,--a hard job, as anyone knows
who has ever tested a woodchuck’s holding power.
Eleemos pulled steadily at first, turning his head first one side,
then the other; but he might as well have tried to pull up a young
hickory as to move that anchored creature with hind feet braced against
opposite sides of the hole, and forepaws gripped about a rock or root.
Then the fox began to tug, bracing his forefeet, jerking his body to
the rear, like a terrier on a rope. In the midst of a mighty effort
something gave way; the fox went over backward, turning end over end
down the pitch of the hill. He picked himself up in a shamefaced way,
sniffed a moment at the hole, and trotted off to the woods with a small
piece of scrubby tail in his mouth.
Another time I was in an opening of the big woods at dusk of a winter
day when a red fox appeared, carrying a rabbit. Evidently he had eaten
as much as he wanted of the sweet meat, and was seeking a place to bury
the remainder against a time of need. How cautious he was! How mindful
of hungry noses that would be questing the woods before daybreak! He
went hither and yon in a most aimless way, apparently; but one who
watched him might know that he was leaving a merry tangle of tracks for
any nose that should attempt to follow them. After hesitating over many
spots he dropped the rabbit beside a rock, threw some snow over it, and
went away with such confidence that he never once turned round. As he
disappeared in the dusky woods the top of a stub under which he passed
seemed to move, to bend forward as if alive. And it was alive; for a
horned owl was sitting up there on his watchtower, making himself so
inconspicuous that no one noticed him. No sooner was the fox gone than
the owl swooped to the cache, drove his claws into it, and glided away
like a shadow, taking the rabbit with him.
* * * * *
Such little comedies are not uncommon; they go on at all hours, in
all unspoiled places, the only uncommon thing being that now and then
some man is quiet or lucky enough to see them. The few squirrels,
bears, foxes and other creatures which I have pictured are typical of
all natural birds and beasts; gladness and comedy prevail among them
until some sportsman appears with his needless killing, or a scientist
invents an absurd theory of natural struggle to account for unnatural
human depravity, or a literary artist with imaginative eye creates
a world-embracing tragedy out of a passing incident, like this, for
example:
While trout fishing one day I climbed the bank to a beautiful spot in
the budding woods, which invited me to linger and fill my heart instead
of my creel. The spring sun shone warmly; birds sang welcome to their
arriving mates; violets and marigolds were distilling sunshine into
bright color, and leaf mold into sweet fragrance. Meanwhile the brook
prattled of the mountains whence it came, or murmured of the sea to
which it hastened, or lisped and tinkled of other matters which one
has tried in vain since childhood to interpret. Truly a lovely place,
a perfect hour; but even as I picked the cushion of dry leaves on
which to rest and attune my soul to a harmonious universe, there came
a heart-stopping whir, a writhing of horrible coils, and a rattlesnake
lifted its ugly head, fangs bared, tail buzzing forth a deadly warning.
It was a shock, I confess. The instant backward leap was slow beside
the chills that ran like flood over me; but as I think of it now,
impersonally, the element of comedy is still uppermost. For the
snake, too, had answered the call of the sun, perhaps thinking in his
unemotional way that a frog would come out of the brook to enjoy such
weather, a frog of which he had greater need than I of the trout I had
been catching. Instead of a frog, the brook produced an unexpected
biped, and the snake acted pretty decently in sounding a warning
rattle before he struck--on the whole, more decently than I acted when
I grabbed a stick and, without warning, proceeded to break his neck.
But even had he struck home, to defend himself as he thought, the
result would have been a mere incident and no tragedy from Nature’s
viewpoint. Had she not bred in me, as a son of Adam, an instinct
against all creeping serpents? Had she not, as if to supplement that
instinct, furnished me with nimble legs, quick eyes and plentiful
timidity wherewith to take care of myself? Had she not even added the
supererogatory gift of medicinal plants and minerals, in order that I
might heal me of the painful result of my own carelessness?
Surely, then, it were most illogical as well as ungrateful on my part,
a truly lunatic conclusion, to misjudge Nature’s motives, to forget my
mercies, to overlook the beauty of the world and the evident gladness
of ten-thousand other creatures, all because of one reptile that had
come forth with no other purpose than to enjoy the sunshine, the frogs
and the general comedy of life in his own way.
Yes, to be sure I killed the snake, which would have killed the frog,
which would have killed the fly; and so in a house-that-Jack-built
descension to the microbes, which kill smaller creatures to us
invisible. Life feeds upon life, and can be nourished from no other
source; that is the first rule of the game, a rule which governs the
lowly grass as well as the lordly lion. But forgetting our serpent, a
questionable character since Eve first met him, the natural man has no
sense of struggle or tragedy when he eats eggs for breakfast, since
most eggs were laid for just that purpose; neither does a fox dream
of tragedy when luckily he finds a partridge’s nest, nor a partridge
when she uncovers a swarm of fat young grubs. If you could get the
instinctive attitude of such wild creatures toward their world, it
would be precisely that of Dante, who called his great work _Divina
Commedia_ with the thought that the cosmos is a mighty comedy because
all things are divinely ordered, balanced, harmonized, turning out well
and fair for all in the end.
That is no new or romantic notion; on the contrary, it is the oldest
and most persistent notion of Nature in the thinking world. Because it
comes straight from Nature herself, all poets have it, all prophets,
all simple out-door men. It is your own notion, harsh and artificial,
which you get not from Nature but from modern books, that is without
warrant of reason or observation. The accepted fashion now is to put
yourself in the skin of a fox running before the dogs, or of a buck
that springs up alert at the hunting howl of a wolf, and from your own
fears, your vivid imagination, your weak legs or weak heart, and your
ignorance of animal psychology, to fill the quiet woods with advancing
terror and tragedy.
Now I have followed many fox hunts in the New England woods, and have
yet to meet the first fox that does not appear to be getting more
fun out of the chase than comes to the heavy-footed hounds as their
portion. Except in damp weather or soft snow, which weights his brush
and makes him take to earth, a fox runs lightly, almost leisurely,
stopping often to listen, and even snatching a nap when his speed or
his criss-crossed trail has put a safe distance between him and danger.
He has a dozen fastnesses among the ledges, where he can find safety
at any time; but the simple fact is that a red fox prefers to keep his
feet in the open, knowing that he can outrun or outwit any dog if he be
given a fair field.
Also I have witnessed the death of a buck at the fangs of a wolf, and
it was utterly different from what I had imagined. The buck ran down
a ridge through deep snow, and out on a frozen lake, where he might
easily have escaped had he put his mind into the running, since his
sharp hoofs clung to the ice where the wolf’s paws slithered wildly,
losing grip and balance at every jump. Instead of running for his life,
the buck kept stopping to look, as if dazed or curious to know what the
chase was all about. The wolf held easily close at heel, stopping when
the buck stopped, until he saw his chance, when he flashed in, threw
his game, and paralyzed it by a single powerful snap. Before that buck
found out what was up, he was dead or beyond all feeling. The wolf
raised his head in a tingling cry that rang over the frozen waste like
an invitation; and out of the woods beyond the lake raced a wolf pack
to share in the feast.
That might appear a tragic or terrible ending, I suppose, if you
viewed it imaginatively from the side of Hetokh the buck; but how
would it appear if you looked at it imaginatively from the viewpoint
of Malsun the wolf, a hungry wolf, who must take whatever good thing
his Mother Nature offers to satisfy his hunger? If you elect to stand
by the buck, as the better animal, it is still unreasonable to form a
judgment from the last event of his life, ignoring all the happy days
that went before. He had lived five or six years, as I judged from his
development, and he died in a minute. This also is to be remembered,
that the idea of death and the fear of death are wholly the result of
imagination. And of imagination--that marvelous creative faculty which
enables us to picture the unseen or to follow the unknown, and which
is the highest attribute of the human mind--the buck had probably very
little; certainly not enough either to inspire or to trouble him. Life
was all that he knew when the end came quickly. He had absolutely no
conception of death, and therefore no fear of it. Any such thing as
tragedy was to him unthinkable.
The point is, you see, that in our modern view of nature, which we
imagine to be scientific when it is merely bookish and thoughtless,
we are prone to let the moment or the passing incident of death
obscure the entire vista of life,--life with its leisure hours, its
changing seasons, its work and play and rest. To go out-of-doors and
look upon nature with unprejudiced eyes is to learn that death is
but a curtain let down on a play. Of the stage to which the play is
removed, as of that other stage whence it came here, we have as yet
no knowledge; but this much we see plainly, that for its completion
every life, however small or great, must have its exit as well as its
entrance. The quality of that life is to be judged not by either of its
momentary and mysterious extremes, but by the long, pleasure-seeking,
pleasure-finding days which lie between its end and its beginning.
[Illustration]
THE END
FOOTNOTES:
[1] “I use this term [struggle] in a large and metaphorical sense,
including dependence of one being on another, and including success in
leaving off spring.” (Darwin, _Origin of Species_ sixth London edition,
page 59). This loose definition of the metaphor--which makes the baby
playing with his toes a struggler because he depends on his mother, and
which makes the guinea hen a better struggler than the eagle because
one lays fifty eggs and the other only two--shows the absurdity of the
whole struggle notion. All illustrations used by Darwin, such as the
succession of forest trees, are of the same loosely-metaphorical kind.
So long as English words have any meaning, there is no more “struggle”
in the growth or death of forest trees than in waking to healthy life
at the call of the sun or in going to sleep in the drowsy twilight.
[2] The interior arrangements vary in different localities; but all
beaver houses I have examined seem to be built on the same general
plan. The following description is copied from a lodge of eight beavers
which I laid open on the Mirimichi River, in New Brunswick. It was
very clean, and a faint aroma of musk pervaded it three or four months
after the animals had gone away. The description applies to other
lodges I have opened, and is typical, I think, of all winter lodges in
the north. A beaver’s summer house is more carelessly built, and the
interior is a single large room, as described on page 275.
[3] For a description of the winter lodge, see page 197-200.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.