HOW ANIMALS TALK
And Other Pleasant Studies of Birds and Beasts
BY
William J. Long
Author of
“School of the Woods” “Northern Trails”
“Brier-Patch Philosophy” etc.
Illustrations and Decorations by
CHARLES COPELAND
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. A Little Dog-Comedy 3
II. Cries of the Day and Night 10
III. Chumfo, the Super-sense 34
IV. Natural Telepathy 74
V. The Swarm Spirit 111
VI. Where Silence Is Eloquent 137
VII. On Getting Acquainted 175
VIII. On Keeping Still 195
IX. At Close Range 211
X. The Trail 237
XI. Woodsy Impressions 247
XII. Larch-trees and Deer 256
XIII. Black Mallards 266
XIV. Memories 283
XV. Beaver Work 298
ILLUSTRATIONS
The Old Vixen Lies Apart Where She Can Overlook
the Play and the Neighborhood Frontispiece
He Flings Out a Single “Haw!” and the Ducks Spring
Aloft on the Instant and Head Swiftly Out to Sea Facing p. 20
A Shadow Moved from the Darker Shadow of an Upturned
Root—and a Great Buck Stood Alert on the Open Shore 54
They Stood Tense as They Searched the Plain and
Surrounding Woods for the Source of Danger 102
The Course He Took Was Entirely Different from That
Taken by the Man Who Brought the Vixen Home 166
So Innocent and So Appealing that It is Hard to Keep
Your Hands from Him 192
His Massive Head Thrust Forward as He Tried to
Penetrate the Far Distance with His Near-sighted Eyes 252
At Such a Time My Pond Seemed to Awaken and Shed Its
Silence Like a Garment 270
HOW ANIMALS TALK
I
A LITTLE DOG-COMEDY
Did you ever see two friendly dogs meet when one tried to tell the
other of something he had discovered, when they touched noses, stood
for a moment in strange, silent parley, then wagged their tails with
mutual understanding and hurried off together on a canine junket?
That was the little comedy which first drew my attention to the matter
of animal communication, many years ago, and set my feet in the
unblazed trail we are now to follow. And a very woodsy trail you shall
find it, dim and solitary, with plenty of “blind” spots where one may
easily go astray, and without any promise of what waits at the other
end of it.
One summer afternoon I was reading by the open window, while my old
setter, Don, lay at on his side in the shade of a syringa-bush. He had
scooped out a hollow to suit him, and was enjoying the touch of the
cool earth when a fat little terrier, a neighbor’s pet, came running
with evident excitement to wake the old dog up. Don half raised his
head, recognized his friend Nip and thumped the ground lazily with his
tail.
“It’s all right, little dog. You’re always excited over something of no
consequence; but don’t bother me this hot day,” he said, in dog-talk,
and dropped his head to sleep again.
But Nip was not to be put aside, having something big on his mind. He
nudged Don sharply, and the old dog sprang to his feet as if
galvanized. For an interval of perhaps five seconds they stood
motionless, tense, their noses almost touching; then Don’s plume began
to wave.
“Oh, I see!” he said; and Nip’s stubby tail whipped violently, as if to
add, “Thank Heaven you do, at last!” The next moment they were away on
the jump and disappeared round a corner of the house.
Here was comedy afoot, so I slipped out through the back door to follow
it. The dogs took no notice of me, and probably had no notion that they
were observed; for I took pains to keep out of sight till the play was
over. Through the hay-field they led me, across the pasture lot, and
over a wall at the foot of a half-cultivated hillside. Peering through
a chink of the wall, I saw Nip dancing and barking at a rock-pile, and
between two of the rocks was a woodchuck cornered.
For weeks Nip had been laying siege to that same woodchuck, which had a
den on the hillside in a patch of red clover, most convenient to some
garden truck. A dozen times, to my knowledge, the little dog had rushed
the rascal; but as Nip was fat and the chuck cunning, the chase always
ended the same way, one comedian diving into the earth with a defiant
whistle, leaving the other to scratch or bark impotently outside.
Any reasonable dog would soon have tired of such an uneven game; but a
terrier is not a reasonable dog. At first Nip tried his best to drag
Don into the affair; but the old setter had long since passed the
heyday of youth, when any kind of an adventure could interest him. In
the presence of grouse or woodcock he would still become splendidly
animate, and then the years would slip from him as a garment; but to
stupid groundhogs and all such “small deer” he was loftily indifferent.
He was an aristocrat, of true-blue blood, and I had trained him to let
all creatures save his proper game severely alone. So, after following
Nip once and finding nothing more exciting than a hole in the ground,
with the familiar smell of woodchuck about it, he had left the terrier
to his own amusement.
When speed failed, or wind, it was vastly amusing to watch Nip try to
adopt cat-strategy, hiding, creeping, scheming to cut off the enemy’s
retreat. Almost every day he would have another go at the impossible;
but he was too fat, too slow, too clumsy, and also too impatient after
his doggy kind. By a great effort he could hold still when his game
poked a cautious head out of the burrow for a look all around; but no
sooner did the chuck begin to move away from his doorway than the
little dog began to fidget in his hiding-place, and his tail (the one
part of a dog that cannot lie) would wildly betray his emotions.
Invariably he made his rush too soon, and the woodchuck whistled into
his den with time to spare.
On this summer afternoon, however, Nip had better luck or used better
tactics. Whether he went round the hill and came over the top from an
unexpected quarter, or lay in wait in his accustomed place with more
than his accustomed patience, I have no means of knowing. By some new
device or turn of luck he certainly came between the game and its
stronghold; whereupon the chuck scuttled down the hill and took refuge
among the rocks. There Nip’s courage failed him. He was a little dog
with a big bark; and the sight of the grizzled veteran with back
against a stone and both flanks protected probably made him realize
that it is one thing to chase a chuck which runs away, but quite
another thing to enter his cave while he stands facing you, his beady
eyes snapping and his big teeth bare. So after a spell of brave barking
Nip had rushed off to fetch a larger dog.
All that was natural enough, and very doglike; at least it so appeared
to me, after seeing other little dogs play a similar part; but the
amazing feature of this particular comedy was that Nip had no
difficulty in getting help from a champion who had refused to be
interested up to that critical moment. Through the wall I saw him lead
Don straight to the rocks. The old dog thrust in his head, yelped once
as he was bitten, dragged out the chuck, gave him a shake and a
quieting crunch; then, without the slightest evident concern, he left
Nip to worry and finish and brag over the enemy.
It is part of the fascination of watching any animal comedy that it
always leaves you with a question; and the unanswerable question here
was, How did Nip let the other dog know what he wanted?
If you are intimate enough with dogs to have discovered that they
depend on their noses for all accurate information, that they have, as
it were, a smellscape instead of a landscape forever before them, you
will say at once, “Don must have smelled woodchuck”; but that is a
merely convenient answer which does not explain or even consider the
facts. Don already knew the general smell of woodchuck very well, and
was, moreover, acquainted with the odor of the particular woodchuck to
which his little dog-chum had been laying siege. He knew it at first
hand from the creature itself, having once put his nose into the
burrow; he got a secondary whiff of it every time Nip returned from his
fruitless digging; and he was utterly indifferent to such foolish
hunting. Many times before the day of reckoning arrived Nip had rushed
into the yard in the same excitement, with the same reek of earth and
woodchuck about him; and, so far as one may judge a dog by his action,
Don took no interest in the little dog’s story. Yet he was off on the
instant of hearing that the familiar smell of woodchuck now meant
something more than a hole in the ground.
That some kind of message passed between the two dogs is, I think,
beyond a reasonable doubt; and it is precisely this silent and
mysterious kind of communication (the kind that occurs when your dog
comes to you when you are reading, looks intently into your face, and
tells you without words that he wants a drink or that it is time for
him to be put to bed) that I propose now to make clear. Before we enter
that trail of silence, however, there is a much simpler language, such
as is implied in the whistle of a quail or the howl of a wolf, which we
must try as best we can to interpret. For unless our ears are keen
enough to distinguish between the food and hunting calls of an animal,
or between bob-white’s love note and the yodel that brings his
scattered flock together, it will be idle for us to ask what message or
impulse a mother wolf sends after a running cub when she lifts her head
to look at him steadily, and he checks his rush to return to her side
as if she had made the murky woods echo to her assembly clamor.
II
CRIES OF THE DAY AND NIGHT
The simplest or most obvious method of animal communication is by
inarticulate cries, expressive of hunger, loneliness, anger, pleasure,
and other primal needs or emotions. The wild creatures are mostly
silent, and so is the bulk of their “talk,” I think; but they
frequently raise their voice in the morning or evening twilight, and by
observing them attentively at such a time you may measure the effect of
their so-called language. Thus, you see plainly that to one call the
animal cocks his ear and gives answer; at another call he becomes
wildly excited; a third passes over him without visible result; a
fourth sets his feet in motion toward the sound or else sends him
flying away from it, according to its message or import.
That animal cries have a meaning is, therefore, beyond serious doubt;
but whether they have, like our simplest words, any definite or
unchanging value is still a question, the probable answer being “No,”
since a word is the symbol of a thought or an idea; but animals live in
a world of emotion, and even our human emotions are mostly dumb or
inarticulate. I must give this negative answer, notwithstanding the
fact that I have learned to call various birds and beasts, and that I
can meet Hotspur’s challenge on hearing Glendower boast that he can
call spirits from the vasty deep:
Why, so can I, or so can any man;
But will they come when you do call for them?
Yes, the birds and beasts will surely come if you know how to give the
right call; but I am still doubtful whether among themselves their
audible cries are ever quite so intelligible as is their silence.
This question of animal speech has received a different and more
positive answer, by the way, from a man who has spent many years in
persistent observation of wild apes and monkeys. After watching the
lively creatures from his cage in the jungle, attracting them by means
of various fruits and recording their jabber in a phonograph, he claims
to have discovered the monkey words for food, water, danger and other
elementary matters. Moreover, when his phonograph repeats these simian
words the monkeys of another locality seem to understand them, since
they run to the proper dish at the word “food” or show evident signs of
alarm at the word “danger.”
It is doubtless much easier to deny such a conclusion than to prove or
disprove it; but denial is commonly the first refuge of ignorance and
the last of dogmatism, and with these we are not concerned. I do not
know whether Garner claims too much or too little for his monkeys; I
have never had opportunity to test the matter in the jungle, and the
caged monkeys with which I have occasionally experimented are too
debased of habit or too imbecile in their affections to interest one
who has long dealt with clean wild brutes. At times, however, when I
have watched a monkey with an organ-grinder, I have noticed that the
unhappy little beast displays a lively interest in the chitter of
chimney-swifts—a lingo which to my dull ears sounds remarkably like
monkey-talk. But that is a mere impression, momentary and of little
value; while Garner speaks soberly after long and immensely patient
observation.
To return to first-hand evidence: among wild creatures of my
acquaintance the crows come nearer than any others to something
remotely akin to human speech. Several times I have known a tame crow
to learn a few of our words and, what is much more significant, to show
his superiority over parrots and other mere mimics by using one or more
of the words intelligently. There was one crow, for example, that would
repeat the word “hungry” in guttural fashion whenever he thought it was
time for him to dine. He used this word very frequently when his dinner
or supper hour drew nigh, giving me the impression, since he did not
confuse it with two other words of his vocabulary, that he associated
the word with the notion of food or of eating; and if this impression
be true to fact, it indicates more than appears on the surface. We
shall come to the wild crows and their “talk” presently; the point here
is, that if this bird could use a new human word in association with a
primal need, there is nothing to prevent him from using a sound or
symbol of his own in the same way. In other words, he must have some
small faculty of language.
Another tame crow, which an imaginative boy named Pharaoh Necho because
of his hippety-hop walk, proved himself inordinately fond of games,
play, social gatherings of every kind. To excitement from any source,
whether bird or brute or human, he was as responsive as a weather-vane;
but his play ran mostly to mischief, or to something that looked like
joking, since he could never see a contemplative cat or a litter of
sleepy little pigs without going out of his way to tweak a tail and
stir up trouble. At times he would watch, keeping out of sight in a
leafy tree or on the roof of the veranda, till Tabby, the house cat,
came out and sat looking over the yard, her tail stretched out behind
her. If she lay down to sleep, or sat with tail curled snugly around
her forepaws, she was never molested; but the moment her tail was out
of her sight and mind Necho saw the chance for which he had apparently
been waiting. Gliding noiselessly down behind the unconscious cat he
would tiptoe up and hammer the projecting tail with his beak. It was a
startling blow, and at the loud squall or spitting jump that followed
he would fly off, “chuckling” immoderately.
When Necho saw or heard a gang of boys assembled he would neglect even
his dinner to join them; and presently, without ever having been
taught, he announced himself master of a new art by yelling, “Ya-hoo!
Come on!” which was the rallying-cry of the clan in that neighborhood.
He said this in ludicrous fashion, but unmistakably to those who knew
him. Sometimes he would croak the words softly to himself, as if
memorizing them or pleased at the sound; but for the most part he
waited till boys were gathering for a swim or a ball game, when he
would launch himself into flight and go skimming down the road,
whooping out his new cry exultantly. What meaning he attached to the
words, whether of boys or fun or mere excitement, I have no means of
knowing.
After learning this much of our speech Necho took to the wild,
following a call of the blood, I think; for it was springtime when he
disappeared, and the crows’ mating clamor sounded from every woodland.
These birds are said to kill every member of their tribe who returns to
them after living with men, and the saying may have some truth in it. I
have noticed that many tame crows are like tame baboons in that they
seem mortally afraid of their wild kinsmen; but Necho was apparently an
exception. If he had any trouble when first he returned to his flock,
the matter was settled without our knowledge, and during the following
autumn there was evidence that he was again in good standing. Long
afterward, as I roamed the woods, I might hear his lusty “Ya-hoo! Come
on!” from where he led a yelling rabble of crows to chivvy a sleeping
owl or jeer at a running fox; and occasionally his guttural cry sounded
over the tree-tops when I could not see him or know what mischief was
afoot. He never returned to the house, and never again joined our play
or allowed a boy to come near him.
Not all crows have this “gift of speech”; and the fact that one tame
crow learns to use a few English words, while five or six others hold
fast to their own lingo, has led to the curious belief that, if you
want to make a crow talk, you must split his tongue. How such a belief
originated is a mystery; but it was so fixed and so widespread when I
was a boy that no sooner was a young crow taken from a nest than
jack-knives were sharpened, and the leathery end of the crow’s tongue
was solemnly split after grave debate whether a seventh or a third part
was the proper medicine. If the crow talked after that, it was proof
positive that the belief was true; and if he remained dumb, it was a
sign that there was something wrong in the splitting; which is
characteristic of a large part of our natural-history reasoning. The
debates I have heard or read on the “unanswerable” question of how a
chipmunk digs a hole without leaving any earth about the entrance (a
question with the simplest kind of an answer) are mostly suggestive of
the split-tongue superstition of crow language.
Of the tame crows I have chanced to observe, only a small proportion
showed any tendency to repeat words; and these gifted ones are, I
judge, the same crows that in a wild state may occasionally be heard
whistling like a jay, or “barking” or “hooting” or making some other
call which ordinary crows do not or cannot make, and which shows an
individual talent of mimicry. This last, which I have repeatedly
observed among wild crows, is a very different matter from speech; but
from the fact that these mimics learn to use a few English words more
or less intelligently one might not be far wrong in concluding that
every crow has in his brain a small undeveloped nest of cells
corresponding to our “bump” of language.
A closer observation of the wild birds may confirm this possibility.
Thus, when you hear a solitary crow in a tree-top crying, “Haw! Haw!”
monotonously, dipping his head or flirting his tail every time he
repeats it, you may be sure that somewhere within range of his eye or
voice a flock of his own kind are on the ground, feeding. That this
particular haw is a communication to his fellows, telling them that the
sentinel is on watch and all is well, seems to me very probable. There
are naturalists, I know, who ingeniously resolve the whole phenomenon
into blind chance or accident; but that does not square very well with
the intelligence of crow nature as I have observed it; nor does it
explain the fact that once, when I avoided the sentinel and crept near
enough to shoot two members of the flock he was supposedly guarding,
the rest were no sooner out of danger than they whirled upon the
recreant and beat him savagely to the ground.
If you are interested enough to approach any crow-sentinel in a casual
or indifferent kind of way (he will take alarm if you approach quickly
or directly), you must note that his haw changes perceptibly while you
are yet far off. It is no longer formal or monotonous; nor is it
uttered with the same bodily attitude, as your eyes plainly see. You
would pronounce and spell the cry exactly as before (it should be
written aw or haw, not caw, for there is no consonant sound in it); but
if your ears are keen, they will detect an entirely different accent or
inflection, as they detect different accents and meanings when a
sailor’s casual or vibrant “Sail ho!” sings down from the crow-nest of
a ship. Now run a few steps toward the sentinel, or pretend to hide and
creep, and instantly the haw changes again. This time the accent is
sharper even to your dull ears; and hardly is the cry uttered when all
the crows of the unseen flock whirl into sight, heading swiftly away to
the woods and safety.
Apparently, therefore, this simple haw of the crow is like a root word
of certain ancient languages, the Chinese, for example, which has
several different intonations to express different ideas, but which all
sound alike to foreign ears, and which are spelled alike when they
appear in foreign print. To judge by the crows’ action, it is certain
that their elementary haw has at least three distinct accents to
express as many different meanings: one of “all’s well,” another of
“watch out,” and a third of “be off!” Moreover, the birds seem to
understand these different meanings as clearly as we understand plain
English; they feed quietly while haw means one thing, or spring aloft
when it means another; and though you watch them a lifetime you will
see nothing to indicate that there is any doubt or confusion in their
minds as to the sentinel’s message.
Not only the crows, but the wild ducks as well, and the deer and the
fox and many other creatures, seem to understand crow-talk perfectly,
or at least a part of it which concerns their own welfare. Thus, on the
seacoast in winter you hear the crows hawing continually as they follow
the tide-line in search of food. For hours this talk goes on, loudly or
sleepily, and the wild ducks pay absolutely no attention to it; though
they must know well that hungry crows will kill a wounded or careless
duck and eat him to the bones whenever they have a chance. Because of
this dangerous propensity you would naturally expect the water-fowl to
be suspicious of the black freebooter and to be alert when they see or
hear him; but no sooner do you begin to hunt with a gun than you learn
a thing to make you respect the crow, and perhaps to make you wonder
how much or how very little you know of the ways of the wood folk.
Many of the ducks, the black or dusky mallards especially, like to come
ashore every day in a secluded spot under the lee of a bank, there to
rest or preen or take a quiet nap in company. It is a tempting sight to
see a score or a hundred of the splendid birds in a close group, their
heads mostly tucked under their wings; but it is practically impossible
to stalk them, for the reason that the crows are forever ranging the
shore, and a crow never passes a group of sleeping ducks without
lifting his flight to take a look over the bank behind them. What his
motive is no man can say; we only note that, in effect, he stands
sentinel for the ducks against a common enemy, as he habitually does
for his own kind. There is no escaping that keen, searching glance of
his; he sees you creeping through the beach-grass or hiding behind a
bush. He flings out a single haw! with warning, danger, derision in it;
and now the same ducks that have heard him all day without concern
spring aloft on the instant and head swiftly out to sea.
The crows have several other variations of the same cry, expressive of
other matters, which all the tribe seem to understand clearly, but
which are meaningless to human ears. When I imitate the distress-call
of a young crow, for example, I can bring a flock over my head at
almost any time, the only condition being that I keep well concealed.
At the first glimpse of a man in hiding they sheer off, and it is
seldom that I can bring them back a second time to the same spot; yet I
have a companion, one who utters a call very much like mine to ordinary
ears, who can bring the flock back to him even after they have seen him
and suffered at his hands. More than once I have stood beside him in
the woods and fired a gun repeatedly, killing a crow and scattering the
flock pell-mell at every shot; but no sooner does he begin to talk
crow-talk than back they come again. What he says to them that I do not
or cannot say is something that only the crows understand.
It is commonly assumed that they come to such a call because they hear
in it a cry for help from one of their own kind. That is undoubtedly
true at times; for a help-call, especially from a cub or nestling, is a
summons to which most animals and birds instinctively respond. And,
strangely enough, the smaller they are the braver they seem to be. A
mother-partridge has more than once flown in my face or beaten me with
her wings, while “fierce” hawks, owls and eagles have merely circled
around me at a safe distance when I came near their young. In the
majority of cases, however, I think that birds come to a distress-call
simply because the excitement of an individual spreads to all creatures
within sight or hearing, just as a crowd of men or women will become
excited and rush to a common center before they know what the stir is
all about.
In confirmation of this theory, it is not necessary to cry like a
distressed young crow to bring a flock over your head. The imitated
hawing of an old crow will do quite as well, if you throw the proper
excitement into it. Again, on any summer day you will hear in your own
yard the pip-pip of arriving or departing robins. The same call is
uttered by both sexes, at all times and in all places; yet if you
listen closely you must note that there is immense variety in the
accent or inflection of even this simple sound. The call is clear,
ringing, joyous when the robins first arrive in the spring; it is
subdued when they gather for the autumn flight; it is sleepy or
querulous when they stand full-fed by the nest, and most business-like
when they launch themselves into flight, which is the moment when you
are most sure to hear it. A robin utters this call hundreds of times
every day, in one accent or another, and neither the other robins nor
their feathered neighbors seem to pay any attention to it; but when a
red squirrel comes plundering a nest, and the mother robin sends forth
the same pip-pip with a different intonation, then the response is
instantaneous. The alarm spreads swiftly over wood and field; clamor
uprises, and birds of many species come rushing in from all directions;
not because they have heard that Meeko is again killing young robins
(at least, it does not seem so to me), but because excitement is afoot,
and they are bound to join it or find out about it before they can
settle down comfortably to their own affairs.
There is an interesting way by which you may test this contagion of
excitement for yourself. Hide at the edge of the woods or in any other
bird neighborhood in the early morning, preferably at a season when
every nest has eggs or fledglings in it; press two fingers against your
lips and draw the breath sharply between them, repeating the squeaky
cry as rapidly as possible. The sound has a peculiarly exciting quality
even to human ears (twice have I seen men run wildly to answer it), and
birds come to it as boys to a fire alarm. In a few moments you may have
them streaming in from the four quarters of bird world, all highly
excited, and perhaps all ready to protect some innocent nest from snake
or crow or squirrel. Because the response is most electric at the
season when fledglings are most helpless, you are apt to think that
this call of yours is mistaken by mother birds for a cry for help. That
may be true; but be not too sure about it. The fledglings themselves
will come almost as readily to the call when the nesting season is over
and gone.
I have tried that same exciting summons in many places, wild or
settled, and commonly but not invariably with the same result, as if it
were a word from the universal bird language. Once in a secluded valley
of northern Italy I saw a hunter with his gun, and promptly forgot my
own errand in order to chum with him and find out what he had learned
of the wood folk. He was hunting birds to eat. “Those birds there!” he
said, pointing to a passing flock which I did not recognize, but which
seemed pitifully small game to me. Presently I learned that he could
not shoot flying, and was having such bad luck that, he said, the devil
surely had a hand in it. He was a smiling, companionable loafer, and
for a time I tagged after him, watching him amusedly as he made careful
but vain stalks of little birds that seemed to have been made wild by
much hunting. In a spirit of thoughtless curiosity, and perhaps also to
test bird nature in a strange land, I invited the hunter to hide with
me in a thicket while I gave the call which had so often brought the
feathered folk of my own New England woods. At my cry a wisp of birds
whirled in to light at the edge of the covert; the Italian’s gun
roared; and then I discovered that the wretch was killing skylarks.
I have since had many an uncomfortable moment at the thought of how
many lovely songsters may have paid with their lives for that ungodly
experiment; for my companion hailed me as a master Nimrod from the New
World; and when I refused, on the plea of bad luck, to teach him the
call, I heard him give a distressingly good imitation of it. Yet the
experiment seemed to prove that everywhere birds quickly catch the
contagion of excitement; that in many cases they respond to a call
because it stirs their anger or curiosity rather than because it
conveys any definite summons for help or warning of danger.
When you open your ears among the beasts you hear precisely the same
story; that is, certain cries apparently have definite meaning, like
the accented haw of a crow, while others convey and also spread a wild
emotion. Of all beasts, the wolves are perhaps the keenest, the most
intelligent, and these seem to have definite calls for food or help or
hunting or assembly. Such calls are strictly tribal, I think, like the
dialects of Indians, since the call of a coyote is quite different from
the call of a timber wolf even when both intend to convey the same
meaning. A friend of mine, an excellent mimic, who spent many years in
the West, has shot more than a score of coyotes after drawing them
within range by sending forth the food-call in winter; but though he
knows also the food-call of the timber wolf, he has never once deceived
these larger brutes by his imitation of it; nor has he ever seen a wolf
of one species respond to the food or hunting call of another.
Like most other wild animals, timid or savage, the sensitive wolves all
respond, but much more warily than the birds, to almost any
inarticulate cry expressive of emotional excitement; just as your dog,
who is yesterday’s wolf, grows uneasy when you whine in your nose like
a distressed puppy, or leaps up, ready to fly out of door or window,
when a wild ki-yi breaks out in the distance. Indeed, it is easier to
keep a boy from a fire than a dog from a crowd or excitement of any
kind; and the same is true of their wild relatives, though the wariness
of the latter keeps them hidden where you cannot follow their action.
The greatest commotion I ever witnessed in a timber-wolf pack was
occasioned by the moaning howl of a wounded wolf on a frozen lake in
midwinter. It was a cry utterly unlike anything I had ever recorded up
to that time, and every time they heard it the grim beasts ran wildly
here and there, howling like lunatics. Then, when the wounded one grew
quiet, they would approach and sniff him all over; after which some
would sit on their tails and watch him closely, while others circled
about on the ice, using their noses like hounds in search of a lost
trail.
Occasionally, when I have had these uncanny brutes near me in the
North, I have tried to call them or make them answer by giving what
seemed to me a very good imitation of their cries; but seldom has a
howl of mine been returned. On the contrary, the brutes almost always
stop their howling whenever I begin to talk wolf-talk, as if they were
listening and saying, “What under the moon is that now?” Then old
Tomah, the Indian, comes out of his blanket and gives a howl exactly
like mine, but with something in it which I cannot fathom or master,
and instantly from the snow-filled woods comes back the wild wolf
answer.
Likewise, I have called moose in many different localities, and am
persuaded that it makes very little difference what kind of whine or
grunt or bellow you utter, since anything resembling a moose-call will
do the trick if you know how to put the proper feeling into your voice.
After listening carefully to many callers, I note this characteristic
difference: that one man invariably makes the game wary, suspicious,
fearful, no matter how finely he calls; while another in the same
place, with the same trumpet and apparently with the same call, manages
to put something into his voice, something primal, emotional and
essentially animal, which brings a bull moose hurriedly to investigate.
Thus it happens that the worst caller I ever heard—worst in that he had
no sense, no cunning, no knowledge of moose habits, and uttered a
blatant, monstrous roar unlike anything a sane man ever heard in the
heavens above or the earth beneath—was still the most successful in
getting his game into the open. Three nights in succession I heard him
call in a region where moose were over-shy from much hunting, and where
my own imitation of the animal’s natural voice brought small response.
In that time fourteen bulls answered him, all that were within hearing,
I think; and every one of the great brutes threw caution to the dogs
and came out on the jump.
From such observations, and from others which I have not chronicled, I
judge that the higher orders of birds and beasts have a few calls which
stand for definite things, or mental images of things, but that their
ordinary cries merely project an emotion or excitement in such a way
that it stirs a similar emotion in other birds or beasts of the same
species; just as the sound of hearty laughter invariably stirs the
feeling of mirth in men who hear it, or any inarticulate cry of fear
sets human feet in motion—toward the cry if the hearer be brave, or
away from it if he be of cowardly disposition. Yet even among men, who
by civilization have lost some of their natural virtues, the primal
impulse still lives. Like the wolf or the raccoon, the man’s first
impulse is to rush to his distressed or excited fellows. If he turns
and runs the other way, it means simply that his artificial habit or
training has deadened his natural instincts.
In speaking of “man” here I refer to the genus homo, not to the male
specimen thereof. Among brutes most of the natural instincts are the
same in both sexes; they vary in degree, not in kind, and the instincts
of the female are commonly the stronger or keener. Yet I have noticed,
or think I have noticed, this difference: when a cry of distress is
uttered in the woods, the first bird or beast to appear is almost
always a female; but the male is quicker on his toes at a battle-yell
or a senseless clamor.
This last is a personal impression, and cannot well be verified. The
only record I have which might pass for evidence in the matter comes
from my observation of the crows. In the spring many of these
questionable birds indulge their taste for eggs or tender flesh and
soon become incurable nest-robbers; and for that reason I often shoot
them, to save other and more useful birds. The method is very simple:
one hides and calls, and takes the crows as they appear in swift
flight, the number shot being commonly limited to one or two at a time.
And I have observed repeatedly, at different times and in different
localities, that when I use the distress-call of a young crow as a
decoy, the first to appear over the tree-tops is a female. This is the
common rule, with occasional exceptions to point or emphasize it. But
whenever I clamor like a crow that has discovered an owl, or send forth
a senselessly excited hawing, almost invariably the first crow to come
whooping over is a long-winged and glossy old male.
Does it seem to you like thoughtless barbarity on my part to kill crows
in this fashion? Perhaps it is barbarous; I do not quite know; but it
certainly is not thoughtless. One cannot blame the crows for their
taste in eggs or nestlings; but one must note that they destroy an
enormous number of insectivorous birds, and that the harm they do in
this respect outweighs their usefulness in destroying field-mice and
beetles. I write this with regret; for I admire the crow, and consider
him as, of all birds, the most intelligent and the most considerate of
his own kind. I know that it is a moot question whether the crow does
more harm or good, and that some naturalists have settled it in his
favor; but I have too often caught him plundering nests in the
springtime to be much impressed by his alleged usefulness at other
seasons. I think that he may have been once useful in preserving the
so-called balance of nature; but that balance is now dangerously
unequal. The crow has flourished even in well-settled regions, thanks
to his superior wit, while other useful birds have fearfully
diminished, and this at a time when our orchards and gardens call more
and more insistently for their help. Because of his disproportionate
numbers the crow now appears to me, like our destructive and useless
cats, as a positive menace in a country where he once occupied a modest
or inconspicuous place—such a place as he still occupies in the
wilderness, where I meet him but rarely, and where I am glad to leave
him in peace, since he does not seriously interfere with his more
beautiful or more useful neighbors. But we are wandering from the dim
trail of animal communication, which we set out to follow.
The inarticulate but variously accented cries of which we have spoken
constitute the only animal language to which our naturalists have thus
far paid any attention; and doubtless some of them would object to the
use of the word “language” in such a connection. In all matters of real
natural history, however (real, that is, in the sense of dealing at
first hand with individual birds or beasts), I am much more inclined to
listen to old Tomah, who says, when I ask him whether animals can talk:
“Talk? Course he kin talk! Eve’ting talk in hees own way. Hear me now
make-um dat young owl talk.” And, stepping outside the circle of
camp-fire light, Tomah utters a hoot, which is answered at a distance
every time he tries it. After parleying with the stranger in this
tentative fashion, Tomah sends forth a different call; and immediately,
as if in ready acceptance of an invitation, a barred owl glides like a
gray shadow into a tree over our heads. I have heard that same old
Indian use horned-owl talk, wolf and beaver and woodpecker talk, and
several other dialects of the wood folk, in the same fascinating and
convincing way.
One must judge, therefore, that most cries of the day or night have
their meaning, if only one knows how to hear them; yet they constitute
but a part, and probably a very small part, of the animal’s habitual
communication with his fellows. The bulk of it appears to be of that
silent kind which passed between Don and Nip, and which, I have reason
to believe, is the common language of the whole animal kingdom.
To prove such a matter is plainly impossible. Even to investigate it
frankly is to enter a shadowy realm between the conscious and
subconscious states, where no process can be precisely followed, and
where the liability to error is always present. Let us therefore begin
on familiar ground by examining certain phenomena which we cannot
explain, to be sure, but which have been observed frequently enough to
give us confidence that we are dealing with realities. I refer
especially to that curious warning or “feeling” of impending danger,
which is supposed (erroneously, I think) to depend upon the so-called
sixth sense of animals and men.
III
CHUMFO, THE SUPER-SENSE
For the word chumfo I am indebted to a tribe of savages living near
Lake Mweru, in Africa, and am grateful to them not only for naming a
thing which has no name in any civilized language, but also for an
explanation of its function in the animal economy. We shall come to the
definition of the word presently, after we have some clear notion of
the thing for which the word stands. As Thomas à Kempis says, if I
remember correctly, “It is better to feel compassion than to know how
to define it.”
By way of approach to our subject, let it be understood that chumfo
refers in a general way to the animal’s extraordinary powers of sense
perception, which I would call his “sensibility” had not our novelists
bedeviled that good word by making it the symbol of a false or
artificial emotionalism. Every wild creature is finely “sensible” in
the true meaning of the word, his sensitiveness being due to the fact
that there is nothing dead or even asleep in nature; the natural animal
or the natural man is from head to foot wholly alive and awake. And
this because every atom of him, or every cell, as a biologist might
insist, is of itself sentient and has the faculty of perception. Not
till you understand that first principle of chumfo will your natural
history be more than a dry husk, a thing of books or museums or stuffed
skins or Latin names, from which all living interest has departed.
I am sometimes asked, “What is the most interesting thing you find in
the woods?” the question calling, no doubt, for the name of some bird
or beast or animal habit that may challenge our ignorance or stir our
wonder. The answer is, that whether you search the wood or the city or
the universe, the only interesting thing you will ever find anywhere is
the thrill and mystery of awakening life. That the animal is alive, and
alive in a way you ought to be but are not, is the last and most
fascinating discovery you are likely to make in nature’s kingdom. After
years of intimate observation, I can hardly meet a wild bird or beast
even now without renewed wonder at his aliveness, his instant response
to every delicate impression, as if each moment brought a new message
from earth or heaven and he must not miss it or the consequent
enjoyment of his own sensations. The very sleep of an animal, when he
seems ever on the thin edge of waking, when he is still so in touch
with his changing world that the slightest strange sound or smell or
vibration brings him to his feet with every sense alert and every
muscle ready,—all this is an occasion of marvel to dull men, who must
be called twice to breakfast, or who meet the violent clamor of an
alarm-clock with the drowsy refrain:
Yet a little sleep, a little slumber,
A little more folding of the hands to sleep!
You will better understand what I mean by the animal’s aliveness, his
uncloying pleasure in the sensation of living, if you can forget any
tragical theories or prejudices of animal life which you have chanced
to read, and then frankly observe the first untrammeled creature you
meet in the outdoor world. Here at your back door, for example, is a
flock of birds that come trooping from the snowy woods to your winter
feast of crumbs. See how they dart hither and yon between mouthfuls, as
if living creatures could not be still or content with any one thing,
even a good thing, in a world of endless variety. Look again, more
closely, and see how they merely taste of the abundance on your table,
and straightway leave it for a morsel that the wind blows from under
their beaks, and that they are bound to have if it takes all winter.
Every other minute they flit to a branch above the table, look about
alertly, measure the world once more, make sure of the dog that he is
asleep, and of the sky that it holds no hawk; then they wipe their
bills carefully, using a twig for a napkin, and down to the table they
go to begin all over again. So every bite is for them a feast renewed,
a feast with all the spices of the new, the fresh, the unexpected and
the adventurous in it.
Or again, when you enter the wilderness remote from men, here is a deer
slipping shadow-like through the shadowy twilight, daintily tasting
twenty varieties of food in as many minutes, and keeping tabs on every
living or moving or growing thing while she eats; or a fox, which seems
to float along like thistle-down in the wind, halting, listening,
testing the air-smells as one would appreciate a varied landscape,
playing Columbus to every nook or brush-pile and finding in it
something that no explorer ever found before. Such is the natural way
of a fox, which makes a devious trail because so many different odors
attract him here or there.
In fine, to watch any free wild creature is to understand the singing
lines from “Saul”:
How good is man’s life, the mere living, how fit to employ
All the heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy!
It is to understand also the spirit of Browning, who is hardly a world
poet, to be sure, but who has the distinction of being the only famous
poet who is always alive and awake. Homer nods; Dante despairs and
mourns; Shakespeare has a long period of gloom when he can write only
terrible tragedies of human failure; other great poets have their weary
days or melancholy hours, but Browning sings ever a song of abounding
life. Even his last, the Epilogue to “Asolando,” is not a swan-song,
like Tennyson’s; it is rather a bugle-call, and it sounds not the
“taps” of earth, but the “reveille” of immortality. But we are
wandering from our woodsy trail.
Those who make an ornithology of mere feathers, or who imagine they
know an animal because they know what the scientists have said about
him, see in this instant responsiveness of the wild creature only a
manifestation of fear, and almost every book of birds or beasts repeats
the story of terror and tragedy. Yet every writer of such books
probably owns a dog that displays in less degree (because he is less
alive) every single symptom of the wild creature, including his alleged
fears; and the dog, far from leading a tragic or terror-governed life,
is hilariously disposed to make an adventure or a picnic of every new
excursion afield. Moreover, if one of these portrayers of animal fears
or tragedies has ever had an adventure of his own; if he has penetrated
a wild region on tiptoe, or run the white rapids in a canoe, or heard
the wind sing in his ears on a breakneck gallop across country, or
trailed a bear to his covert, or hunted bandits in the open, or
followed the bugles when they blew for war,—then he must know well that
these unforgetable moments, when a man’s senses all awaken and his
nerves tingle and he treads the earth like a buck in spring, are the
only times in a man’s dull life when he feels himself wholly alive and
a man. That a naturalist should forget this when he sees an alert wild
animal, and deny his dog and his own experience of life by confounding
alertness with fear, is probably due not so much to his own blindness
as to his borrowed notions, such as the “struggle for existence,” the
“reign of terror,” and other hallucinations which have been packed into
his head in the name of science or natural history.
Just to take a walk with your dog may be a revelation to you, as most
simple matters are when you dare to view them for yourself without
prejudice. In fact, what is any revelation or discovery but seeing
things as they are? This daily walk over familiar ground, which bores
you because you must take it for exercise, leaving out of it the fun
which is the essential element of any exercise, is to your dog another
joyous and expectant exploration of the Indes. He explored the same
ground yesterday, to be sure, but all sorts of revolutions and
migrations take place overnight; and if he be a real dog, not a spoiled
pet, he will uncover more surprises on the familiar road than you
uncover in the morning newspaper. Follow him sympathetically as he
finds endlessly interesting things where you find little but boredom,
and you may learn that there are three marked differences between you
and a normal animal: first, that he keeps the spirit of play, which you
have well-nigh lost; second, that he lives in his sensations and is
happy, while you dwell mostly in your thoughts and postpone happiness
for the future; and third, that he is alive now, every moment, and you
used to be alive the day before yesterday.