NUISANCES, INHUMAN AND HUMAN.--PETS--THE CHARM OF COUNTRY LIFE.
“Musquitoes! You’ll never be troubled with them. You may be surprised to
hear it, but musquitoes at Flushing never come into the house. They will
often be plenty outside, but they disappear the moment your foot touches
the piazza. Another strange thing about them is, that they may be
abundant in the grass, and, as you walk through, may rise up in
thousands, but they seem to be frightened at man, and fly away at once
without waiting to bite. It is my opinion they get some other kind of
food, and are too well supplied to overcome the instinctive animal
repugnance to a human being.”
Thus remarked Weeville, in his usual enthusiastic way over every thing
that “lives, moves, or has its being” in or about Flushing, and no one
who heard him could doubt for a moment his firm conviction in the entire
accuracy of his statements. Historic truth, however, compels me to
admit that his views were not entirely borne out by experience; for,
although Flushing musquitoes have amiable tempers for musquitoes, they
do occasionally bite.
But if the musquitoes are not bad in this delectable spot, another
torment exists, which, in spite of learned arguments proving its utility
to man, is certainly trying--flies are occasionally abundant. Now it may
be that flies are great scavengers, and save us from epidemics, and
noxious smells, and dangerous vapors, and that their presence is a sure
indication of a healthy locality; but in the early morning, when one is
in bed, enjoying that most enjoyable season for sleep--the forbidden
hours between sunrise and eight o’clock--two or three hundred flies
buzzing about, alighting on one’s face, crawling into one’s nostrils,
tickling every inch of exposed skin, are aggravating enough. In saying
two or three hundred, I do not wish to be understood as positively
confining myself to that number for the reputation of the place and the
salability of my five acres of lots. I wish to avoid exaggerating, and
there may have been two or three thousand.
After they had routed me out of bed at an hour when there was nothing
whatever to do--for the daily papers can not be obtained in Flushing
before
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half past seven o’clock--they pursued me all day long. They crawled into
the cream, they scalded themselves to death in my coffee, they clambered
over the butter, dragging their greasy legs heavily and slowly; they
planted themselves on my paper if I tried to write; they filled up my
inkstand and clogged the ink; they scratched in my hair, selecting the
tenderest and least thickly covered spots, and always returning to them
after being frightened away; and when, exhausted with loss of rest and
worn out with their attacks, I endeavored to take a nap, they fell upon
me and banished sleep from my eyes.
“Flies!” said Weeville, when he heard of my miseries; “why do you not
kill them off? I used to be troubled with them, but I bought some of the
gray fly-paper--Berensohn’s lightning-killer--and soon brought matters
to an issue. The very first day we killed forty or fifty, and the girl
swept them up in the kitchen by tea-cups full: the supply was not equal
to the demand, and I have not been waked by a fly since. What a comfort
it is to sleep through the morning in peace, and not a single buzz!”
Before night I had the famous death-dealer, and, according to
directions, set it out in saucers, covered with a little water, and
watched complacently, and with somewhat of an about-to-be-gratified
revengeful feeling in my breast, for the result. I waited and waited;
the flies buzzed, and crawled, and tickled, but not one went near the
fatal saucer; in every part of the room were they except in that spot.
They crawled up and down the walls, they perched on the ceiling, they
committed suicide in the water-pitcher, they collected in masses on the
crumbs lying about, and chased one another around in playful and amatory
mood, but touch that saucer they did not. I moved it from place to
place, and set it near where they were thickest, but they only flew
hurriedly away with louder buzz, as much as to say, “Get out with your
old fly-killer.” In a rage, I caught some and threw them into the
poisoned chalice, but they whisked out again with a shake of their
wings, and went off as diabolically busy and buzzy as ever. I poured out
some of the water, fearing the attraction was too much diluted; then,
finding that that did not answer, I added an extra quantity, but the
result was the same. The only part of the room entirely free from flies
was the neighborhood of the fly-paper. I was in despair till a happy
thought struck me: taking two of the sheets, which are conveniently
stuck together at the edges, I laid them over my face and composed
myself to sleep. The effect was magical. Not a fly came near me, and my
nap was deliciously unbroken.
Next day, Weeville, on hearing my account, abused me because I had not
put some sugar in the water; but, as sugar was not mentioned in the
direction, it is hardly to be expected a person would divine its
necessity. With that addition, the paper afterward killed flies enough;
but, unfortunately, the sugar attracted ten where the poison killed one,
and recourse was finally had to nets, which kept the breeze and the
flies out together.
I have said that Patrick, among his other acquisitions for our second
year’s operations, had obtained two pups and two kittens. This was with
a view to the extermination of the rats and mice that ate our oats and
danced nocturnal jigs in the partitions and ceilings of the house. As
Patrick explained it, he wanted the dogs to catch the rats, and the cats
to catch the mice, which was certainly a fair division of labor; but the
former evidently considered that they were merely designed to carry into
practice one link in the story of the “House that Jack Built,” and
devoted their time mainly to worrying the latter. Whether the pups would
have caught rats or the kittens mice is hard to tell, as they were
altogether too busy worrying or being worried to devote much attention
to the chase, and many was the battle waged between the belligerents.
The entire science of strategy could be learned from studying the
conduct of this feline and canine war, and I have always believed that
Grant and Lee had both gone to the cats and dogs to acquire their
knowledge. Felis, being the weaker, retires behind her intrenchment of
boxes or chairs, and takes advantage of the natural defenses of corners
and holes, while canis, being driven to the attack, exhausts his
ingenuity in endeavoring to turn his opponent’s flank, or to inveigle
her from her intrenchments. I called my dogs Gran and Sher (it seemed
almost sacrilegious to copy the names literally), and the cats Lee and
John.
Gran was a bull-dog, although not of quite pure blood, and my conscience
troubled me somewhat on that score; but his grip was most tenacious, and
no punishment could make him “sing out;” while Sher was a full-blooded
Scotch terrier, as ugly as possible, but a sly little fellow, great on
unexpected attacks, and dodging in on exposed places. Apart from his
permanent battle with the kittens, and a most inveterate dislike to boys
and beggars, Gran was the gentlest of dogs. He would beg for his dinner,
and would howl out his affection if asked whether he loved his master
and simultaneously offered a piece of sugar, of which he was
extravagantly fond. His countenance was expressive of the strongest
devotion, and his curly tail had a kindly wag for all his acquaintances.
But let a dirty boy appear--and Flushing abounds with this nuisance--or
let a beggar attempt to enter the front gate, and Gran went into a
paroxysm of rage; his hair bristled up, his tail straightened and became
twice its natural thickness, and his eyes glared with the wildest fury.
If the offending party carried a bag, his fate was sealed, and many was
the time that I had to rush out and interpose to save some tramp from
the fate of the gentleman mentioned in Scripture, whose flesh was eaten
by dogs. On these occasions Sher was true to himself; and while Gran
rushed headlong on the enemy, he would suddenly bounce out from under a
bush, or slip round through the fence, and make a diversion in the rear.
My dogs were soon a terror to the neighborhood, and a much more
effectual protection than patting the children on their heads. To be
sure, there were a few drawbacks to set off these advantages. It was
difficult to keep any work-people round the place; and I had to pay for
a pair of pantaloons that my painter left principally in Gran’s mouth
ere he could escape up his ladder when a sudden attack caught him
unprepared.
There was but one matter in which the kittens and pups all four agreed,
and that was to steal whatever they had the slightest fancy for. Milk
was the weakness of the kittens, and, provided they could discover any
unguarded pan, a truce was declared, and friend and foe united in
foraging upon their master. On such occasions they were content to drink
together from the same dish in the most amicable way, although the
moment the feast was exhausted the cats fled to their intrenchments,
without so much as cleaning their whiskers, and hostilities were
renewed. The pups preferred meat, and great was the genius exhibited by
Sher in obtaining it surreptitiously. He would pretend he was asleep,
waiting till the cook’s back was turned; or he would ostentatiously go
out of the door, and then, slipping back, hide and watch his
opportunity. When he obtained it he always divided with Gran, and a bone
would occasionally alternate half a dozen times between them ere it was
exhausted.
Their playful moods were their most destructive; digging holes was one
of their chief pastimes. Why they dug holes I never could imagine; they
neither buried nor discovered any hidden treasure; but they worked away
with a zeal and patience that would have been most praiseworthy if
properly applied. Some of my favorite “herbaceous” plants, as Bridgeman
calls them, were rooted up, and my grass-plot--one which I had laid out
in a beautiful oval beneath our solitary cedar, and had planted with the
most delicate lawn-grass--was fairly honeycombed with burrows. At first
I filled these holes and restored my plants, but the pups only seemed to
regard this as a challenge to their industry, and immediately proceeded
to dig them up again; so I was compelled to let them have their way,
although it gave rather a strange appearance to the place, and left an
impression that a family of prairie-dogs resided there.
The pups were particularly fond of roaming round the flower garden. When
the seeds had pushed their delicate sprouts above ground, I used to walk
through the neatly-boxed paths, and admire the thriving way in which
every thing was growing. The pups invariably watched for such occasions,
and rushed toward me in an apparent burst of affection, bounding up and
down over the beds, and dancing with delight on my frailest seedlings.
If I took no notice of them, they seized one another by the ears, and,
thus coupled, rushed about, sweeping away the flowers in their course;
if I scolded them, Sher slipped into the nearest bush, and, lying down
in the centre, watched my actions with a wary eye, while Gran, on the
other hand, came directly to me, and, seating himself on a bed, looked
me honestly and affectionately in the face, while his wagging tail swept
away the sprouting plants by dozens.
Sher was particularly fond of a gilia; its delicate leaves seemed to
please him both as a bed and a hiding-place, and he soon rolled the life
out of it; if I charged upon him, he fled, taking refuge in some other
bushy plant; and when I did catch him, he would not walk, but insisted
upon being dragged in a most destructive manner from off the bed. If I
took hold of Gran he retained his sitting posture, which was almost
equally injurious. I soon found my only plan was to match my cunning
against theirs, and, the moment they appeared, to rush out of the
garden, calling them “good dogs,” which was a falsehood of the blackest
dye, and pretending I was ready for a romp. By this means they would be
induced to follow me with great hilarity, and occasionally forget to go
back; but I lost much of my enjoyment of the garden.
When not busy with the flowers, they devoted themselves to the
vegetables; Gran was delighted with hunting “hop-toads,” as children
call them, and as these abounded in our five acres, and were
particularly fond of hiding in the water-melon patch, he hunted it over
and over again, fairly plowing it up with his nose, crushing the vines,
tearing the leaves to pieces, and breaking off the fruit. If he had
killed the toads his proceedings might have come to an end with the
exhaustion of the game; but he was too tender-hearted for this, and only
pushed them with his nose to make them jump. He pursued this exciting
sport till the water-melons were almost ruined, while Sher devoted
himself mainly to hiding under the okras or among the carrots, and
darting out at any passers-by in a playful mood. In the course of his
strategic movements he broke down most of the brittle okras, and
trampled rows of string-beans into the earth.
They had seen Patrick chase the chickens from the garden, and, having
constituted themselves his adjutants, proceeded to keep the sacred
precincts clear of these unholy intruders. Never would a wandering
pullet or youthful rooster step within the fatal bounds but the two dogs
would dart out with loud yelps, and would frequently follow her or him,
naturally bewildered, and not knowing which way to escape, several times
round the garden, over the beds and through the vegetables, doing more
harm in five minutes than an entire brood of chickens would do in a
month. It was in vain that we endeavored to explain to them that zeal
was dangerous; and their manner of self-congratulation, and of demanding
approval when they had finally succeeded in ejecting the trespasser,
disarmed blame or correction.
There was one idiosyncrasy in Patrick’s mind--he never could punish an
animal. If the pups destroyed an entire bed, or broke down a dozen
plants, he would only utter an exclamation or two of horror and
reproach, and then add, apologetically, “Ah! the poor bastes do not know
any better.” This threw the duty of correction upon my shoulders, and I
never was a subscriber to that horrible doctrine that punishment must
not be inflicted in anger. There is something fiendish in a person
nursing up his wrath, and then, with deliberate cruelty, venting it upon
child or pet who has been trembling for hours with dread anticipation.
When the pups had dug up some favorite and expensive plant, or crushed
my only plantation of some pet seed, and when I was naturally in a
towering rage, I could fall upon them and drive them howling to some
secret place of safety; but when, after an hour’s delay had dissipated
my passion, Gran would approach with deprecating wag and loving smile,
and Sher, following more cautiously, would lick his hairy chops in a
contrite way, it went against my very nature to beat them. Therefore,
although the pups met with some cuffs, and occasionally received the
blow of a well-directed stone, they were not punished with absolute
regularity, had it a good deal their own way with the place and its
surroundings, and inflicted no little damage upon the growing crops.