the cold, damp earth, the fresh, bright forms of spring arose. The
purple and crimson trails of the periwinkle lengthened over the stones;
then the spear-shaped buds, prompted by the flow of pulsing sap, lifted
themselves above the glossy leaves and burst into flowers. The dandelion
and the celandine peeped from the grass; the primrose garlanded each
sunny mound on the margin of the wood; and the willow catkins, clothed
with silver and pearly grey, waved in the moist, warm breeze as it
wandered by the brook. The queen-ant, aroused by the increasing warmth,
carried her offspring from the deep recess where, in her tunnelled nest,
she had brooded over them while the north-east wind blew through the
leafless boughs, and laid them side by side in a roomy chamber
immediately beneath the stone that screened the spot to which, in the
autumn dusk, the father vole resorted that he might watch and wait
before the darkness deepened on the fields and woods. The bees from the
hives in the farm garden, and innumerable flies from their winter
retreats in the hedgerows, came eagerly to the golden blossoms of the
furze near the bank-voles' colony. The bees alighted with care on the
lower petals of the flowers, and thence climbed quickly to the hidden
sweets; but the flies, heedless adventurers, dropped haphazard among the
sprays, and were content to filch the specks of pollen dust and the tiny
drops of nectar scattered by the honey-bees. A spirit of restlessness,
of strife, of strange, unsatisfied desire, possessed all Nature's
children; it raised the primrose from amid the deep-veined leaves
close-pressed on the carpet of the grass, it tuned the carols of the
robin and the thrush, it caused the wild jack-hare to roam by daylight
along paths which hitherto he had not followed save by night. Kweek felt
the subtle influence; long before dark he would venture from his home,
steal through the "creeps," which had now become evident because of
frequent "traffic," and visit the distant colonies of his kindred beyond
the wood.
Of the flourishing community living in the burrow before the weasels'
raid none survived but Kweek and his parents. One night, however, the
father vole, while foraging near the hedgerow, was snapped up and eaten
by the big brown owl from the beech-wood across the valley. In the
woodlands the greatest expert on the ways of voles was the brown owl.
His noiseless wings never gave the slightest alarm, and never interfered
with his sense of hearing--so acute that the faint rustle of a leaf or a
grass-blade brought him, like a bolt, from the sky, to hover close to
the earth, eager, inquisitive, merciless, till a movement on the part
of his quarry sealed its doom.
The mother vole, feeling lonely and more than ever afraid, wandered far
away, and found another mate in a sleek, bright-eyed little creature
inhabiting a roomy chamber excavated in the loose soil around a heap of
stones on the crest of the hill. Kweek, nevertheless, remained faithful
to the place of his birth. Though most of his time was spent near the
colony beyond the wood, he invariably returned to sleep on the shapeless
litter which was all that now remained of the neat, round nest in which
he had been nursed.
Kweek's frequent visits to his kindred beyond the wood led to numerous
adventures. Every member of the colony seemed suddenly to have turned to
the consideration of household affairs, and a lively widow-vole flirted
so outrageously with bachelor Kweek that, having at last fallen a victim
to her persistent attentions, he was never happy save in her company.
Unfortunately a big ruffian mouse also succumbed to the widow's wiles,
and Kweek found himself awkwardly placed. He fought long and stubbornly
against his rival, but, unequally matched and sorely scratched and
bitten, was at last forced to rustle away in the direction of his burrow
as quickly as his little feet could carry him. He slept off the effects
of his exhaustion and the loss of a little blood and fur, then returned,
stealthily, to his well-known trysting place, but found, alas! that his
fickle lady-love had already regarded with favour the charms of the
enemy. Kweek caught a glimpse of her as she carried wisps of withered
grass to a hole in the middle of the burrow, and at once recognised that
his first fond passion had hopelessly ended.
Fortune continued to treat him unkindly: that night, while returning
homewards, he was almost frightened out of his wits by the shrieks of
some little creature captured by the cruel owl, and, immediately
afterwards, a rabbit, alarmed by the same ominous sounds and bolting to
her warren in the wood, knocked him topsy-turvy as he crouched in hiding
among the leaves. These adventures taught him salutary lessons, and
henceforth the confidence of youth gave place to extreme caution; he
avoided the risk of lying near a rabbit's "creep," and was quick to
discern the slightest sign, such as a shadowy form above the moonlit
field, which might indicate the approach of the slow-winged tyrant of
the night.
Among animals living in communities it is a frequent custom for a young
male, if badly beaten in his first love episode by a rival, to elope
with a new spouse, and seek a home at some distance from the scene of
his defeat. Kweek suffered exceedingly from his disappointment; it was a
shock to him that he should be bullied and hustled at the very time when
his passion was strongest and every prospect in his little life seemed
fair and bright.
For a time he dared not match himself against another of the older
voles. But in an unimportant squabble with a mouse of his own age, he
soon proved the victor, and, finding his reward in the favour of a young
she-vole that had watched the quarrel from behind a grass-tuft, ran off
with her at midnight to his old, deserted burrow in the pasture. After
thoroughly examining the various galleries in the underground
labyrinth, the fastidious little pair dug out a clean, fresh chamber at
right angles to the main tunnel, and, contented, began in earnest the
duties of the year.
April came; and often, as he sat by his door, Kweek watched the gentle
showers sweep by in tall pillars of vapour through the moonbeams falling
aslant from the illumined edges of an overhanging cloud, and through the
shadows stretching in long, irregular lines between the fallow and the
copse; and night after night the shadows near the copse grew deeper, and
still deeper, as the hawthorn leaf-buds opened to the warmth of spring.
The grass-spears lengthened; the moss spread in new, rain-jewelled
velvet-pile over the pasture floor; the woodbine and the bramble trailed
their tender shoots above the hedge; a leafy screen sheltered each
woodland home; and even the narrow path from the field-voles' burrow to
the corner of the copse led through a perfect bower of half-transparent
greenery. The birds were everywhere busy with their nests in the
thickets; sometimes, in the quiet evening, long after the moon had
risen and Kweek had ventured forth to feed, the robin and the thrush,
perched on a bare ash-tree, sang their sweet solos to the sleepy fields;
and, with the earliest peep of dawn, the clear, wild notes of the
missel-thrush rang out over the valley from the beech-tree near the
river. The rabbits extended their galleries and dug new "breeding
earths" in their warren by the wood; and often, in the deep stillness of
the night, the call-note of an awakened bird echoed, murmuring, among
the rocks opposite the pines far down the slope.
During the past few weeks great events had happened in the new-made
chamber of the field-voles' burrow. Hundreds of dry grass-bents,
bleached and seasoned by the winter frosts and rains, had been collected
there, with tufts of withered moss, a stray feather or two dropped from
the ruined nest of a long-tailed titmouse in the furze, and a few fine,
hair-like roots of polypody fern from the neighbouring thicket. And now,
their nursery complete, four tiny, hairless voles, with disproportionate
heads, round black eyes beneath unopened lids, wrinkled muzzles, and
abbreviated tails--helpless midgets in form suggestive of diminutive
bull-dog puppies--lay huddled in their tight, warm bed. It was a time of
great anxiety for Kweek. While his mate with maternal pride went
leisurely about her duties, doing all things in order, as if she had
nursed much larger families and foes were never known, he moved fussily
hither and thither, visiting his offspring at frequent intervals during
the night, creeping into the wood and back along his bowered path,
scampering noisily down the shaft if the brown owl but happened to hoot
far up in the glen, and doing a hundred things for which there was not
the slightest need, and which only served to irritate and alarm the
careful mother-vole.
Kweek inherited his timorous disposition from countless generations of
voles that by their ceaseless watchfulness, had survived when others had
been killed by birds and beasts of prey; and though, in his zeal for the
welfare of his family, he often gave a false alarm, it was far better
that he should be at all times prepared for the worst than that, in some
unguarded instant, death should drop swiftly from the sky or crawl
stealthily into his hidden home.
During spring, more frequently than at any other season, death waited
for him and his kindred--in the grass, in the air, in the trees along
the hedge-banks, and on the summit of the rock that towered above the
glen. Vermin had become unusually numerous in the valley, partly because
in the mild winter their food had been sufficient, and partly because
the keeper, feeble with old age, could no longer shoot and trap them
with the deadly certainty that had made him famous in his younger days.
Bold in the care of their young, the vermin ravaged the countryside,
preying everywhere on the weak and ailing little children of Nature. But
fate was indulgent to Kweek; though his kindred in the colony beyond the
wood, and the bank-voles in the sheltered hollow near the pines,
suffered greatly from all kinds of enemies, he and his mate still
managed to escape unhurt.
One night a fox, prowling across the pasture, caught sight of Kweek as
he hurried to his lair. Suspicious and crafty, Reynard paused at one of
the entrances to the burrow, thrust his sharp nose as far as possible
down the shaft, drew a long, deep breath, and commenced to dig away the
soil from the mouth of the hole. Suddenly changing his mind--perhaps
because the scent was faint and he concluded that his labour would not
be sufficiently repaid--he ceased his exertions and wandered off towards
the hedge. Next day a carrion crow, seeing the heap of earth that lay
around the hole, and shrewdly guessing it to mean a treat in store, flew
down from an oak-tree, and hopped sideways towards the spot. He peered
inquisitively at the opening, waddled over to another entrance,
returned, and listened eagerly. Convinced that a sound of breathing came
from midway between the two holes he had examined, he moved towards the
spot directly above the nest, tapped it sharply with his beak, and again
returned to listen near the entrance. But all his artifice was quite in
vain; the voles would not bolt; they were not even inquisitive; so
presently, baffled in his hopes of plunder, he moved clumsily away,
stooped for an instant, and lifted himself on slow, sable pinions into
the air.
The mother vole, assisted in questionable fashion by meddlesome Kweek,
spent several hours of the following night in repairing the damage done
by the fox. She drew most of the soil back into the shaft, and then,
where it accumulated in the passage beneath, made the opening towards
the inner chamber slightly narrower than before. Soon, moistened and
hardened by the constant "traffic" of tiny feet nearly always damp with
dew, the mound of earth formed a barrier so artfully contrived that even
a weasel might find it difficult to enter the gallery from the bottom of
the shaft.
III.
A BARREN HILLSIDE.
Living a secluded life in the pasture with his little mate, Kweek
escaped the close attention paid by the "vermin" to his kindred in the
colony beyond the wood. The brown owl still remembered where he dwelt,
but, loath to make a special nightly journey to the spot, seldom caused
him the least anxiety. She seemed to content herself with a strict watch
over the bank inhabited by the red voles, and over the fields on the far
side of the copse, where the grey voles, notwithstanding that they
supplied her with many a delicious supper, were becoming numerous. She
awaited an almost certain increase among the "small deer" of the
pasture, before commencing her raids on the grey voles there. As events
proved, however, her patience was unrewarded.
Kweek's first experience in rearing a family ended disastrously. Two of
the nurslings died a few hours after birth; one, venturing from the nest
too soon in the evening, was killed by a magpie; and two, while sitting
out near the hedge, were trampled to death by a flock of sheep rushing,
panic-stricken, at the sight of a wandering fox. By the middle of May,
when another vole family of six had arrived, the number of vermin in the
valley had perceptibly diminished. The old, asthmatic keeper in charge
of the Cerdyn valley died, and a younger and more energetic man from a
neighbouring estate came to take his place. Eager to gain the favour of
his master by providing him good sport in the coming autumn, the new
keeper ranged the woods from dawn till dusk, setting pole-traps in the
trees, or baiting rabbit-traps in the "creeps" of stoat or weasel, and
destroying nests, as well as shooting any furred or feathered creature
of questionable character. The big brown owl from the beech-grove, the
kestrel from the rock on the far side of the brook, the sparrow-hawk
from the spinney up-stream, together with the weasels, the stoats, the
cats, the jays, and the magpies--all in turn met their doom.
A pair of barn-owls from the loft in the farm suffered next. These owls
were great pets at the old homestead. For many years they had lived
unmolested in their gloomy retreat under the tiles, and regularly at
nightfall had flown fearlessly to and fro among the outbuildings, or
perched on the ruined pigeon-cote watching for the rats to leave their
holes.
The farmer, less ignorant than the keeper, recognised the owls as
friends, and treated them accordingly. They were his winged cats, and
assisted to check the increase of a plague. Like the brown owl, they
knew well the habits of the voles; but their attention was diverted by
the rats and the mice at the farm, and they seldom wandered far afield
except for a change of diet or to stretch wings cramped by a long summer
day's seclusion. The rats, however, were far from being exterminated;
and so, when a little child who was all sunshine to his parents in the
lonely homestead died from typhoid fever, the village doctor, fearing an
epidemic, advised that the pests should be utterly destroyed. Loath to
use strychnine, since he knew that in a neighbouring valley some owls
had died from eating poisoned rats, the farmer sought the aid of the
village poachers, who, with their terriers and ferrets, thoroughly
searched the stacks and the buildings. During the hunt it was noticed
that about a score of rats took refuge in a narrow chamber under the
eaves. The farmer, directing operations in another part of the yard, was
unaware of what had occurred. The poachers, knowing nothing of the
presence of the owls, pushed a terrier through the opening beneath the
rafters of the loft, and blocked the hole with the rusty blade of a
disused shovel. For a few moments the quick patter of tiny feet
indicated that the terrier was busily engaged with his task; then cries
of rage and terror came from the imprisoned dog, while with these cries
were mingled the sounds of flapping wings. When at last the poachers
unstopped the hole and dragged the terrier out, they found that every
rat had been killed, and that the place was thickly strewn with the
feathers of two dying owls.
During the rest of the summer, Kweek led a strangely peaceful life,
having little to fear beyond an occasional visit from Reynard, or from
an astute old magpie that, evading with apparent ease the keeper's gun
and pole-traps, lived on till the late autumn, when, before a line of
beaters, he broke cover over some sportsmen waiting for their driven
game. As soon as the leaves began to fall and exhausted Nature longed
for winter's rest, the burrow in the pasture became the scene of
feverish activity. Kweek was now the proud sire of five or six healthy
families, and the grand-sire of many more. Even the youngest voles were
growing fat and strong; and, when the numerous members of the colony set
about harvesting their winter stores, ripe, delicious seeds were
plentiful everywhere along the margin of the wood.
The winter was uniformly mild, with exception of one short period of
great cold which brought a thorough, healthful sleep to the voles; and
in the earliest days of spring, when the love-calls of chaffinches and
tits were heard from almost every tree, Kweek and his tribe resumed
their work and throve amazingly. Every circumstance appeared to favour
their well-being. But for the fox, that sometimes crouched beside an
opening to the burrow and snapped up an incautious venturer peeping
above ground, a young sheep-dog, whose greatest pleasure in life seemed
to be found in digging a large round hole in the centre of the burrow,
and an adder, that stung a few of the weaklings to death, but found them
inconveniently big for swallowing, the voles were seldom troubled. Their
numbers, and those of every similar colony in the neighbourhood,
increased in such a fashion that, before the following autumn, both the
pasture and the near ploughland were barren wastes completely
honeycombed with their dwellings. Every grass-root in the pasture was
eaten up; every stalk in the cornfield was nibbled through so
that the grain might be easily reached and devoured; and the
root-crops--potatoes, turnips, and mangolds--on the far side of the
cornfield were utterly spoiled; and in the hedgerows and the copse the
leaves dropped from the lifeless trees, each of which was marked by a
complete ring where the bark was gnawed away close to the ground.
But capricious Nature, as if regretting the haste with which she had
brought into the world her destructive little children, and desiring,
even at the cost of untold suffering and the loss of countless lives, to
restore the pleasant Cerdyn valley to its beauty of green fields and
leafy woods, sent her twin plagues of disease and starvation among the
voles, till, like the sapless leaves, they withered and died. And from
far and near the hawks and the owls, the weasels, the stoats, and the
foxes hastened to the scene. The keeper, at a loss to know whence they
came, and not understanding the lesson he was being taught, bewailed his
misfortune, but dared not stay their advent. At almost any hour of the
day, five or six kestrels might be seen quartering the fields or
hovering here and there among the burrows. And, long before dark, the
stoats and the weasels, as if knowing that, fulfilling a special
mission, they were now safe from their arch-enemy, the keeper, hunted
their prey through the "trash" of the hedge-banks, or in and out of the
passages underground.
The farm labourers, in desperate haste, dug numerous pitfalls, wide at
the bottom but narrow at the mouth, and trapped hundreds of the voles,
which, maddened by hunger but unable to climb the sloping sides,
attacked one another--all at last dying a miserable death. Not only did
the customary enemies of the voles arrive on the scene: Nature called to
her great task a number of unexpected destroyers--sea-gulls from the
distant coast, a kite from a wooded island on a desolate, far-off mere,
and a buzzard from a rocky fastness, rarely visited save by keepers and
shepherds, near the up-country lakes. Food had gradually become scarce
even for the few hundred voles that yet remained. No longer were they to
be seen at play together, in little groups, during the cool, hazy
twilight, that, earlier in the year, shimmered like a wonderful
afterglow on the mossy pasture-floor. Now their only desire was for
food and sleep.
Unnoticed by a passing owl, Kweek, worn to a skeleton by sickness and
privation, crawled from his burrow into the moonlight of a calm, clear
autumn night, and lay in the shadow of the stone where the old male vole
had watched and listened for the cruel "vear." A big blow-fly,
attracted, with countless thousands of his kind, to the place of
slaughter and decay, had gone to sleep on the side of the stone, and
Kweek, in a last desperate effort to obtain a little food, moved forward
to secure his prize; but at that moment his strength failed him, his
weary limbs relaxed, and the dull, grey film of death overspread his
half-closed eyes.
The owl, hearing a faint sound like the rustle of a dry grass-bent,
quickly turned in her flight; then, slanting her wings, dropped to the
ground, and presently, with her defenceless quarry in her talons, flew
away towards the woods.
THE FOX.
I.
THE LAST HUNT.
A dark and wind-swept night had fallen over the countryside when Reynard
left the steep slope above the keeper's cottage, and stole through gorse
and brambles towards the outskirts of the covert, where a narrow dingle,
intersected by a noisy rill and thickly matted with brown bracken,
divided the furze from some neighbouring pine-woods.
For months nothing had occurred to disturb the peace of his woodland
home. Once, about a year ago, he had fled for his life before the
hounds; and again, during the last autumn, while lying hidden in the
ditch of the root-crop field above the pines, he had been surprised by
two sheep-dogs that nipped him sorely before he could make good his
escape. But at no other time had he been in evident peril, and so,
though naturally cunning and suspicious, he had grown bolder, and better
acquainted with the neighbourhood of cottage and farmstead than were
certain members of his family living on the opposite side of the valley,
among thickets hunted regularly, where guns and spaniels might be heard
from early morning till close of day.
Here and there, as the fox crept stealthily among the blackthorns and
the gorse-bushes, he stopped for a moment on the scent of a rabbit; but
the night was not such as to induce Bunny to remain outside her cosy
burrow in the bank. He examined each "creep" in the tangled clumps along
his way, and sometimes, resting on his haunches, sniffed the air and
listened intently for any sign to indicate the presence of a feeding
coney; but even the strongest taint was "stale," and no sound could be
detected that might betray the whereabouts of any creature feeding in
the grass. Disappointed, the fox turned towards the uplands and crossed
the hedgerow into the nearest stubble. Louping leisurely along, he
surprised and killed a sleeping lark. Further on he crossed the scent
of a hare, but Puss was doubtless some distance away, feeding in a quiet
corner of the root-crop field. Reynard now instinctively made for the
farmyard among the pines, trusting meanwhile that luck would befriend
him. Across the gap, by the side of the hedgerow, and through an open
gateway, he went, seeking spoil everywhere, but finding none. With all
his senses alert, he climbed the low wall around the yard, peeped into
the empty cart-house, and stealthily approached an open shed. There,
unluckily, the dogs were sleeping on a load of hay in the furthest
corner. Careful not to arouse his foes, the fox retreated, and, passing
the pond at the bottom of the yard, moved silently towards another shed,
in which, as he knew from a former visit, the poultry roosted. Though
the door was shut, an opening for the use of the fowls seemed to afford
the possibility of success. With difficulty Reynard managed to squeeze
himself in, only, however, to no purpose. Just beyond the door lay a
loose coil of wire, brought home by the labourers after fencing and
thrown here out of the way. The fox, fearing a trap, reluctantly
abandoned his project, returned to the bank by the pond, and crept down
the lane to a spot where the ducks were housed in a neat shelter built
in the wall. But here he found everything securely fastened. At this
moment a door of the farmstead creaked loudly, the light of a lantern
flooded the yard, and the baffled marauder sprang over the wall and
trotted across the field towards the wood.