Summer is past its height. The songless bobolink has forsaken the shorn
meadow. Grain fields, save the battalioned maize, have fallen from
gracefulness and beauty of bending heads and ripple of mimic waves to
bristling acres of stubble. From the thriftless borders of ripening
weeds busy flocks of yellowbirds in faded plumage scatter in sudden
flight at one's approach like upblown flurries of dun leaves. Goldenrod
gilds the fence-corners, asters shine in the dewy borders of the woods,
sole survivors of the floral world save the persistent bloom of the wild
carrot and succory--flourishing as if there had never been mower or
reaper--and the white blossoms of the buckwheat crowning the filling
kernels. The fervid days have grown preceptibly shorter, the lengthening
nights have a chilly autumnal flavor, and in the cool dusk the katydids
call and answer one to another out of their leafy tents, and the
delicate green crickets that Yankee folks call August pipers play their
monotonous tune. Above the katydid's strident cry and the piper's
incessant notes, a wild tremulous whinny shivers through the gloom at
intervals, now from a distant field or wood, now from the near orchard.
One listener will tell you that it is only a little screech owl's voice,
another that it is the raccoon's rallying cry to a raid on the
cornfield. There is endless disputation concerning it and apparently no
certainty, but the raccoon is wilder than the owl, and it is pleasanter
to believe that it is his voice that you hear.
The corn is in the milk; the feast is ready. The father and mother and
well grown children, born and reared in the cavern of a ledge or hollow
tree of a swamp, are hungry for sweets remembered or yet untasted, and
they are gathering to it, stealing out of the thick darkness of the
woods and along the brookside in single file, never stopping to dig a
fiery wake-robin bulb nor to catch a frog nor harry a late brood of
ground-nesting birds, but only to call some laggard, or distant
clansfolk. So one fancies, when the quavering cry is repeated and when
it ceases, that all the free-booters have gained the cornfield and are
silent with busy looting. Next day's examination of the field may
confirm the fancy with the sight of torn and trampled stalks and munched
ears. These are the nights when the coon hunter is abroad and the
robbers' revel is likely to be broken up in a wild panic.
Hunted only at night, to follow the coon the boldest rider must
dismount, yet he who risks neck and limbs, or melts or freezes for
sport's sake, and deems no sport manly that has not a spice of danger or
discomfort in it, must not despise this humble pastime for such reason.
On leaving the highway that leads nearest to the hunting ground, the way
of the coon hunters takes them, in darkness or feeble lantern light,
over rough and uncertain footing, till the cornfield's edge is reached
and the dogs cast off. Away go the hounds, their course only indicated
by the rustling of the corn leaves, as they range through the field,
until one old truth-teller gives tongue on the track of a coon who
perhaps has brought his whole family out on a nocturnal picnic. The
hounds sweep straight away, in full cry, on the hot scent to hill or
swamp, where their steadfast baying proclaims that the game is treed.
Then follows a pell-mell scramble toward the musical uproar. Stones,
cradle knolls, logs, stumps, mud holes, brambles and all the inanimate
enemies that lie in wait for man when he hastens in the dark, combine to
trip, bump, bruise, sprain, scratch, and bemire the hurrying hunters.
Then when all have gathered at the centre of attraction, where the
excited hounds are raving about the boll of some great tree, the best
and boldest climber volunteers to go aloft into the upper darkness and
shake the quarry down or shoot him if may be. If he succeeds in
accomplishing the difficult task, what a melee ensues when the coon
crashes through the branches to the ground and becomes the erratic
centre of the wild huddle of dogs and men.
Fewer voices never broke the stillness of night with sounds more
unearthly than the medley of raging, yelping, growling, cheering, and
vociferous orders given forth by dogs, coon, and hunters, while hillside
and woodland toss to and fro a more discordant badinage of echo. The
coon is not a great beast, but a tough and sharp-toothed one, who
carries beneath his gray coat and fat ribs a stout heart and wonderful
vitality; and a tussle with a veteran of the tribe of cornfield robbers
tests the pluck of the dogs.
If the coon takes refuge in a tree too tall and limbless for his
pursuers to climb, there is nothing for them but to keep watch and ward
till daylight discovers him crouched on his lofty perch. A huge fire
enlivens the long hours of guard keeping. A foraging party repairs to
the nearest cornfield for roasting ears, and the hunters shorten the
slow nighttide with munching scorched corn, sauced by joke and song and
tales of the coon hunts of bygone years.
The waning moon throbs into view above a serrated hill-crest, then
climbs the sky, while the shadows draw eastward, then pales in the dawn,
and when it is like a blotch of white cloud in the zenith, a sunrise gun
welcomes day and brings the coon tumbling to earth. Or perhaps not a
coon, but some vagrant house cat is the poor reward of the long watch.
Then the weary hunters plod homeward to breakfast and to nail their
trophies to the barn door.
When the sweet acorns, dropping in the frosty night, tempt the coon to a
later feast, there is as good sport and primer peltry. In any of the
nights wherein this sport may be pursued, the man of lazy mould and
contemplative mind loves best the hunt deemed unsuccessful by the more
ardent hunters, when the hounds strike the trail of a wandering fox and
carry a tide of wild music, flooding and ebbing over valley and hilltop,
while the indolent hunter reclines at ease, smoking his pipe and
listening, content to let more ambitious hunters stumble over ledges and
wallow through swamps.
When winter begins, the coon retires for a long and comfortable sleep,
warmly clothed in fur and fat. A great midwinter thaw awakens him,
fooled out of a part of his nap by the siren song of the south wind, and
he wanders forth in quest of something. If food, he never finds it, and
as far as I have been able to determine, does not even seek it. I should
imagine, reading the record of his journey as he prints it in his course
from hollow tree or hollow ledge to other hollow trees and hollow
ledges, that he had been awakened to a sense of loneliness and was
seeking old friends in familiar haunts, with whom to talk over last
year's cornfield raids and frogging parties in past summer
nights--perchance to plan future campaigns. Or is it an inward fire and
no outward warmth that has thawed him into this sudden activity? Has he,
like many of his biggers and betters, gone a-wooing in winter nights?
At such times the thrifty hunter who has an eye more to profit and prime
peltry than to sport, goes forth armed only with an axe. Taking the
track of the wanderers, he follows it to their last tarrying place. If
it be a cave, they are safe except from the trap when they come forth to
begin another journey; but if it is a hollow tree, woe betide the poor
wretches. The hunter saps the foundation of their castle, and when it
crashes to its fall he ignominiously knocks the dazed inmates on the
head. It is fashionable for others to wear the coat which becomes the
raccoon much better than them and which once robbed of he can never
replace.
During the spring and early summer little is seen of the raccoon. His
tracks may be found on a sandy shore or margin of a brook and
occasionally his call can be heard, if indeed it be his, but beyond
these he gives little evidence of his existence. There must be nocturnal
excursions for food, but for the most part old and young abide in their
rocky fortress or wooden tower. They are reported to be a playful
family, and the report is confirmed by the pranks of domesticated
members of it. Sometimes there will be found in one of their ravaged
homes a rounded gnarl worn smooth with much handling or pawing, the
sole furniture of the house and evidently a plaything.
This little brother of the bear is one of the few remaining links that
connect us with the old times, when there were trees older than living
men, when all the world had not entered for the race to gain the prize
of wealth, or place, or renown; when it was the sum of all happiness for
some of us to "go a-coonin'." It is pleasant to see the track of this
midnight prowler, this despoiler of cornfields, imprinted in the mud of
the lane or along the soft margin of the brook, to know that he
survives, though he may not be the fittest. When he has gone forever,
those who outlive him will know whether it was his quavering note that
jarred the still air of the early fall evenings or if it was only the
voice of the owl--if he too shall not then have gone the inevitable way
of all the wild world.