OTHER LITTLE ANIMALS BESIDES WAHBOOS THE RABBIT--BEING AN ACCOUNT
OF MUSQUASH THE MUSK-RAT, SIKAK THE SKUNK, WENUSK THE BADGER, AND
OTHERS
I
_Musquash the Musk-rat_
Every chapter in the trapper's life is not a "stunt."
There are the uneventful days when the trapper seems to do nothing but
wander aimlessly through the woods over the prairie along the margin of
rush-grown marshy ravines where the stagnant waters lap lazily among the
flags, though a feathering of ice begins to rim the quiet pools early in
autumn. Unless he is duck-shooting down there in the hidden slough where
is a great "quack-quack" of young teals, the trapper may not uncase his
gun. For a whole morning he lies idly in the sunlight beside some river
where a roundish black head occasionally bobs up only to dive under when
it sees the man. Or else he sits by the hour still as a statue on the
mossy log of a swamp where a long wriggling--wriggling trail marks the
snaky motion of some creature below the amber depths.
To the city man whose days are regulated by clockwork and electric trams
with the ceaseless iteration of gongs and "step fast there!" such a
life seems the type of utter laziness. But the best-learned lessons are
those imbibed unconsciously and the keenest pleasures come unsought.
Perhaps when the great profit-and-loss account of the hereafter is cast
up, the trapper may be found to have a greater sum total of happiness,
of usefulness, of real knowledge than the multi-millionaire whose life
was one buzzing round of drive and worry and grind. Usually the busy
city man has spent nine or ten of the most precious years of his youth
in study and travel to learn other men's thoughts for his own life's
work. The trapper spends an idle month or two of each year wandering
through a wild world learning the technic of his craft at first hand.
And the trapper's learning is all done leisurely, calmly, without
bluster or drive, just as nature herself carries on the work of her
realm.
On one of these idle days when the trapper seems to be slouching so
lazily over the prarie comes a whiff of dank growth on the crisp autumn
air. Like all wild creatures travelling up-wind, the trapper at once
heads a windward course. It comes again, just a whiff as if the light
green musk-plant were growing somewhere on a dank bank. But ravines are
not dank in the clear fall days; and by October the musk-plant has
wilted dry. This is a fresh living odour with all the difference between
it and dead leaves that there is between June roses and the dried dust
of a rose jar. The wind falls. He may not catch the faintest odour of
swamp growth again, but he knows there must be stagnant water somewhere
in these prairie ravines; and a sense that is part _feel_, part
intuition, part inference from what the wind told of the marsh smell,
leads his footsteps down the browned hillside to the soggy bottom of a
slough.
A covey of teals--very young, or they would not be so bold--flackers up,
wings about with a clatter, then settles again a space farther ahead
when the ducks see that the intruder remains so still. The man parts the
flags, sits down on a log motionless as the log itself--and watches!
Something else had taken alarm from the crunch of the hunter's moccasins
through the dry reeds; for a wriggling trail is there, showing where a
creature has dived below and is running among the wet under-tangle. Not
far off on another log deep in the shade of the highest flags solemnly
perches a small prairie-owl. It is almost the russet shade of the dead
log. It hunches up and blinks stupidly at all this noise in the swamp.
"Oho," thinks the trapper, "so I've disturbed a still hunt," and he sits
if anything stiller than ever, only stooping to lay his gun down and
pick up a stone.
At first there is nothing but the quacking of the ducks at the far end
of the swamp. A lapping of the water against the brittle flags and a
water-snake has splashed away to some dark haunt. The whisky-jack calls
out officious note from a topmost bough, as much as to say: "It's all
right! Me--me!--I'm always there!--I've investigated!--it's all
right!--he's quite harmless!" And away goes the jay on business of state
among the gopher mounds.
Then the interrupted activity of the swamp is resumed, scolding mother
ducks reading the riot act to young teals, old geese coming craning and
craning their long necks to drink at the water's edge, lizards and
water-snakes splashing down the banks, midgets and gnats sunning
themselves in clouds during the warmth of the short autumn days, with a
feel in the air as of crisp ripeness, drying fruit, the harvest-home of
the year. In all the prairie region north and west of Minnesota--the
Indian land of "sky-coloured water"--the sloughs lie on the prairie
under a crystal sky that turns pools to silver. On this almost
motionless surface are mirrored as if by an etcher's needle the sky
above, feathered wind clouds, flag stems, surrounding cliffs, even the
flight of birds on wing. As the mountains stand for majesty, the
prairies for infinity, so the marsh lands are types of repose.
But it is not a lifeless repose. Barely has the trapper settled himself
when a little sharp black nose pokes up through the water at the fore
end of the wriggling trail. A round rat-shaped head follows this
twitching proboscis. Then a brownish earth-coloured body swims with a
wriggling sidelong movement for the log, where roosts the blinking
owlet. A little noiseless leap! and a dripping musk-rat with long flat
tail and webbed feet scrabbles up the moss-covered tree towards the
stupid bird. Another moment, and the owl would have toppled into the
water with a pair of sharp teeth clutched to its throat. Then the man
shies a well-aimed stone!
Splash! Flop! The owl is flapping blindly through the flags to another
hiding-place, while the wriggle-wriggle of the waters tells where the
marsh-rat has darted away under the tangled growth. From other idle days
like these, the trapper has learned that musk-rats are not solitary but
always to be found in colonies. Now if the musk-rat were as wise as the
beaver to whom the Indians say he is closely akin, that alarmed
marauder would carry the news of the man-intruder to the whole swamp.
Perhaps if the others remembered from the prod of a spear or the flash
of a gun what man's coming meant, that news would cause terrified flight
of every musk-rat from the marsh. But musquash--little beaver, as the
Indians call him--is not so wise, not so timid, not so easily frightened
from his home as _amisk_,[44] the beaver. In fact, nature's provision
for the musk-rat's protection seems to have emboldened the little rodent
almost to the point of stupidity. His skin is of that burnt umber shade
hardly to be distinguished from the earth. At one moment his sharp nose
cuts the water, at the next he is completely hidden in the soft clay of
the under-tangle; and while you are straining for a sight of him
through the pool, he has scurried across a mud bank to his burrow.
Hunt him as they may, men and boys and ragged squaws wading through
swamps knee-high, yet after a century of hunting from the Chesapeake and
the Hackensack to the swamps of "sky-coloured water" on the far prairie,
little musquash still yields 6,000,000 pelts a year with never a sign of
diminishing. A hundred years ago, in 1788, so little was musk-rat held
in esteem as a fur, the great North-West Company of Canada sent out
only 17,000 or 20,000 skins a year. So rapidly did musk-rat grow in
favour as a lining and imitation fur that in 1888 it was no unusual
thing for 200,000 musk-rat-skins to be brought to a single Hudson's Bay
Company fort. In Canada the climate compels the use of heavier furs than
in the United States, so that the all-fur coat is in greater demand than
the fur-lined; but in Canada, not less than 2,000,000 musk-rat furs are
taken every year. In the United States the total is close on 4,000,000.
In one city alone, St. Paul, 50,000 musk-rat-skins are cured every year.
A single stretch of good marsh ground has yielded that number of skins
year after year without a sign of the hunt telling on the prolific
little musquash. Multiply 50,000 by prices varying from 7 cents to 75
cents and the value of the musk-rat-hunt becomes apparent.
What is the secret of the musk-rat's survival while the strong creatures
of the chase like buffalo and timber-wolf have been almost exterminated?
In the first place, settlers can't farm swamps; so the musk-rat thrives
just as well in the swamps of New Jersey to-day as when the first white
hunter set foot in America. Then musquash lives as heartily on owls and
frogs and snakes as on water mussels and lily-pads. If one sort of food
fails, the musk-rat has as omnivorous powers of digestion as the bear
and changes his diet. Then he can hide as well in water as on land. And
most important of all, musk-rat's family is as numerous as a cat's, five
to nine rats in a litter, and two or three litters a year. These are the
points that make for little musquash's continuance in spite of all that
shot and trap can do.
Having discovered what the dank whiff, half animal, half vegetable,
signified, the trapper sets about finding the colony. He knows there is
no risk of the little still-hunter carrying alarm to the other
musk-rats. If he waits, it is altogether probable that the fleeing
musk-rat will come up and swim straight for the colony. On the other
hand, the musk-rat may have scurried overland through the rushes.
Besides, the trapper observed tracks, tiny leaf-like tracks as of little
webbed feet, over the soft clay of the marsh bank. These will lead to
the colony, so the trapper rises and parting the rushes not too noisily,
follows the little footprint along the margin of the swamp.
Here the track is lost at the narrow ford of an inflowing stream, but
across the creek lies a fallen poplar littered with--what? The feathers
and bones of a dead owlet. Balancing himself--how much better the
moccasins cling than boots!--the trapper crosses the log and takes up
the trail through the rushes. But here musquash has dived off into the
water for the express purpose of throwing a possible pursuer off the
scent. But the tracks betrayed which way musquash was travelling; so the
trapper goes on, knowing if he does not find the little haycock houses
on this side, he can cross to the other.
[Illustration: Fort MacPherson, now the most northerly post of the
Hudson's Bay Company, beyond tree line; hence the houses are built of
imported timber, with thatch roofs.]
Presently, he almost stumbles over what sent the musk-rat diving just at
this place. It is the wreck of a wolverine's ravage--a little wattled
dome-shaped house exposed to that arch-destroyer by the shrinking of the
swamp. So shallow has the water become, that a wolverine has easily
waded and leaped clear across to the roof of the musk-rat's house. A
beaver-dam two feet thick cannot resist the onslaught of the wolverine's
claws; how much less will this round nest of reeds and grass and
mosses cemented together with soft clay? The roof has been torn from the
domed house, leaving the inside bare and showing plainly the domestic
economy of the musk-rat home, smooth round walls inside, a floor or
gallery of sticks and grasses, where the family had lived in an air
chamber above the water, rough walls below the water-line and two or
three little openings that must have been safely under water before the
swamp receded. Perhaps a mussel or lily bulb has been left in the
deserted larder. From the oozy slime below the mid-floor to the
topmost wall will not measure more than two or three feet. If the
swamp had not dried here, the stupid little musk-rats that escaped the
ravager's claws would probably have come back to the wrecked house,
built up the torn roof, and gone on living in danger till another
wolverine came. But a water doorway the musk-rat must have. That he has
learned by countless assaults on his house-top, so when the marsh
retreated the musk-rats abandoned their house.
All about the deserted house are runways, tiny channels across oozy
peninsulas and islands of the musk-rat's diminutive world such as a very
small beaver might make. The trapper jumps across to a dry patch or
mound in the midst of the slimy bottom and prods an earth bank with a
stick. It is as he thought--hollow; a musk-rat burrow or gallery in the
clay wall where the refugees from this house had scuttled from the
wolverine. But now all is deserted. The water has shrunk--that was the
danger signal to the musk-rat; and there had been a grand moving to a
deeper part of the swamp. Perhaps, after all, this is a very old house
not used since last winter.
Going back to the bank, the trapper skirts through the crush of brittle
rushes round the swamp. Coming sharply on deeper water, a dank, stagnant
bayou, heavy with the smell of furry life, the trapper pushes aside the
flags, peers out and sees what resembles a prairie-dog town on
water--such a number of wattled houses that they had shut in the water
as with a dam. Too many flags and willows lie over the colony for a
glimpse of the tell-tale wriggling trail across the water; but from the
wet tangle of grass and moss comes an oozy pattering.
If it were winter, the trapper could proceed as he would against a
beaver colony, staking up the outlet from the swamp, trenching the ice
round the different houses, breaking open the roofs and penning up any
fugitives in their own bank burrows till he and his dog and a spear
could clear out the gallery. But in winter there is more important work
than hunting musk-rat. Musk-rat-trapping is for odd days before the
regular hunt.
Opening the sack which he usually carries on his back, the trapper draws
out three dozen small traps no larger than a rat or mouse trap. Some of
these he places across the runways without any bait; for the musk-rat
must pass this way. Some he smears with strong-smelling pomatum. Some he
baits with carrot or apple. Others he does not bait at all, simply
laying them on old logs where he knows the owlets roost by day. But each
of the traps--bait or no bait--he attaches to a stake driven into the
water so that the prisoner will be held under when he plunges to escape
till he is drowned. Otherwise, he would gnaw his foot free of the trap
and disappear in a burrow.
If the marsh is large, there will be more than one musk-rat colony.
Having exhausted his traps on the first, the trapper lies in wait at the
second. When the moon comes up over the water, there is a great
splashing about the musk-rat nests; for autumn is the time for
house-building and the musk-rats work at night. If the trapper is an
Eastern man, he will wade in as they do in New Jersey; but if he is a
type of the Western hunter, he lies on the log among the rushes, popping
a shot at every head that appears in the moonlit water. His dog swims
and dives for the quarry. By the time the stupid little musk-rats have
taken alarm and hidden, the man has twenty or thirty on the bank. Going
home, he empties and resets the traps.
Thirty marten traps that yield six martens do well. Thirty musk-rat
traps are expected to give thirty musk-rats. Add to that the twenty
shot, and what does the day's work represent? Here are thirty skins of a
coarse light reddish hair, such as lines the poor man's overcoat. These
will sell for from 7 to 15 cents each. They may go roughly for $3 at the
fur post. Here are ten of the deeper brown shades, with long soft fur
that lines a lady's cloak. They are fine enough to pass for mink with a
little dyeing, or imitation seal if they are properly plucked. These
will bring 25 or 30 cents--say $2.50 in all. But here are ten skins,
deep, silky, almost black, for which a Russian officer will pay high
prices, skins that will go to England, and from England to Paris, and
from Paris to St. Petersburg with accelerating cost mark till the
Russian grandee is paying $1 or more for each pelt. The trapper will ask
30, 40, 50 cents for these, making perhaps $3.50 in all. Then this idle
fellow's day has totaled up to $9, not a bad day's work, considering he
did not go to the university for ten years to learn his craft, did not
know what wear and tear and drive meant as he worked, did not spend more
than a few cents' worth of shot. But for his musk-rat-pelts the man will
not get $9 in coin unless he lives very near the great fur markets. He
will get powder and clothing and food and tobacco whose first cost has
been increased a hundredfold by ship rates and railroad rates, by
keel-boat freight and pack-horse expenses and _portage_ charges past
countless rapids. But he will get all that he needs, all that he wants,
all that his labour is worth, this "lazy vagabond" who spends half his
time idling in the sun. Of how many other men can that be said?
But what of the ruthless slaughter among the little musk-rats? Does
humanity not revolt at the thought? Is this trapping not after all
brutal butchery?
Animal kindliness--if such a thing exists among musk-rats--could hardly
protest against the slaughter, seeing the musk-rats themselves wage as
ruthless a war against water-worm and owlet as man wages against
musk-rats. It is the old question, should animal life be sacrificed to
preserve human life? To that question there is only one answer. Linings
for coats are more important life-savers than all the humane societies
of the world put together. It is probable that the first thing the
prehistoric man did to preserve his own life when he realized himself
was to slay some destructive animal and appropriate its coat.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 44: _Amisk_, the Chippewyan, _umisk_, the Cree, with much the
same sound. A well-known trader told the writer that he considered the
variation in Indian language more a matter of dialect than difference in
meaning, and that while he could speak only Ojibway he never had any
difficulty in understanding and being understood by Cree, Chippewyan,
and Assiniboine. For instance, rabbit, "the little white chap," is
_wahboos_ on the Upper Ottawa, _wapus_ on the Saskatchewan, _wapauce_ on
the MacKenzie.]
II
_Sikak the Skunk_
Sikak the skunk it is who supplies the best imitations of sable. But
cleanse the fur never so well, on a damp day it still emits the heavy
sickening odour that betrays its real nature. That odour is sikak's
invincible defence against the white trapper. The hunter may follow the
little four-abreast galloping footprints that lead to a hole among
stones or to rotten logs, but long before he has reached the
nesting-place of his quarry comes a stench against which white blood is
powerless. Or the trapper may find an unexpected visitor in one of the
pens which he has dug for other animals--a little black creature the
shape of a squirrel and the size of a cat with white stripings down his
back and a bushy tail. It is then a case of a quick deadly shot, or the
man will be put to rout by an odour that will pollute the air for miles
around and drive him off that section of the hunting-field. The
cuttlefish is the only other creature that possesses as powerful means
of defence of a similar nature, one drop of the inky fluid which it
throws out to hide it from pursuers burning the fisherman's eyes like
scalding acid. As far as white trappers are concerned, sikak is only
taken by the chance shots of idle days. Yet the Indian hunts the skunk
apparently utterly oblivious of the smell. Traps, poison, deadfalls,
pens are the Indian weapons against the skunk; and a Cree will
deliberately skin and stretch a pelt in an atmosphere that is blue with
what is poison to the white man.
The only case I ever knew of white trappers hunting the skunk was of
three men on the North Saskatchewan. One was an Englishman who had been
long in the service of the Hudson's Bay Company and knew all the animals
of the north. The second was the guide, a French-Canadian, and the third
a Sandy, fresh "frae oot the land o' heather." The men were wakened one
night by the noise of some animal scrambling through the window into
their cabin and rummaging in the dark among the provisions. The
Frenchman sprang for a light and Sandy got hold of his gun.
"Losh, mon, it's a wee bit beastie a' strip't black and white wi' a tail
like a so'dier's cocade!"
That information brought the Englishman to his feet howling, "Don't
shoot it! Don't shoot it! Leave that thing alone, I tell you!"
But Sandy being a true son of Scotia with a Presbyterian love of
argument wished to debate the question.
"An' what for wu'd a leave it eating a' the oatmeal? I'll no leave it
rampagin' th' eatables--I wull be pokin' it oot!--shoo!--shoo!"
At that the Frenchman flung down the light and bolted for the door,
followed by the English trader cursing between set teeth that before
"that blundering blockhead had argued the matter" something would
happen.
Something did happen.
Sandy came through the door with such precipitate haste that the topmost
beam brought his head a mighty thwack, roaring out at the top of his
voice that the deil was after him for a' the sins that iver he had
committed since he was born.
III
_Wenusk the Badger_
Badger, too, is one of the furs taken by the trapper on idle days. East
of St. Paul and Winnipeg, the fur is comparatively unknown, or if known,
so badly prepared that it is scarcely recognisable for badger. This is
probably owing to differences in climate. Badger in its perfect state is
a long soft fur, resembling wood marten, with deep overhairs almost the
length of one's hand and as dark as marten, with underhairs as thick and
soft and yielding as swan's-down, shading in colour from fawn to grayish
white. East of the Mississippi, there is too much damp in the atmosphere
for such a long soft fur. Consequently specimens of badger seen in the
East must either be sheared of the long overhairs or left to mat and
tangle on the first rainy day. In New York, Quebec, Montreal, and
Toronto--places where the finest furs should be on sale if anywhere--I
have again and again asked for badger, only to be shown a dull matted
short fawnish fur not much superior to cheap dyed furs. It is not
surprising there is no demand for such a fur and Eastern dealers have
stopped ordering it. In the North-West the most common mist during the
winter is a frost mist that is more a snow than a rain, so there is
little injury to furs from moisture. Here the badger is prime, long,
thick, and silky, almost as attractive as ermine if only it were
enhanced by as high a price. Whether badger will ever grow in favour
like musk-rat or 'coon, and play an important part in the returns of the
fur exporters, is doubtful. The world takes its fashions from European
capitals; and European capitals are too damp for badger to be in
fashion with them. Certainly, with the private dealers of the North and
West, badger is yearly becoming more important.
Like the musk-rat, badger is prime in the autumn. Wherever the
hunting-grounds of the animals are, there will the hunting-grounds of
the trapper be. Badgers run most where gophers sit sunning themselves on
the clay mounds, ready to bolt down to their subterranean burrows on the
first approach of an enemy. Eternal enemies these two are, gopher and
badger, though they both live in ground holes, nest their lairs with
grasses, run all summer and sleep all winter, and alike prey on the
creatures smaller than themselves--mice, moles, and birds. The gopher,
or ground squirrel, is smaller than the wood squirrel, while the badger
is larger than a Manx cat, with a shape that varies according to the
exigencies of the situation. Normally, he is a flattish, fawn-coloured
beast, with a turtle-shaped body, little round head, and small legs with
unusually strong claws. Ride after the badger across the prairie and he
stretches out in long, lithe shape, resembling a baby cougar, turning at
every pace or two to snap at your horse, then off again at a hulking
scramble of astonishing speed. Pour water down his burrow to compel him
to come up or down, and he swells out his body, completely filling the
passage, so that his head, which is downward, is in dry air, while his
hind quarters alone are in the water. In captivity the badger is a
business-like little body, with very sharp teeth, of which his keeper
must beware, and some of the tricks of the skunk, but inclined, on the
whole, to mind his affairs if you will mind yours. Once a day regularly
every afternoon out of his lair he emerges for the most comical sorts of
athletic exercises. Hour after hour he will trot diagonally--because
that gives him the longest run--from corner to corner of his pen,
rearing up on his hind legs as he reaches one corner, rubbing the back
of his head, then down again and across to the other corner, where he
repeats the performance. There can be no reason for the badger doing
this, unless it was his habit in the wilds when he trotted about leaving
dumb signs on mud banks and brushwood by which others of his kind might
know where to find him at stated times.
Sunset is the time when he is almost sure to be among the gopher
burrows. In vain the saucy jay shrieks out a warning to the gophers. Of
all the prairie creatures, they are the stupidest, the most beset with
curiosity to know what that jay's shriek may mean. Sunning themselves in
the last rays of daylight, the gophers perch on their hind legs to wait
developments of what the jay announced. But the badger's fur and the
gopher mounds are almost the same colour. He has pounced on some playful
youngsters before the rest see him. Then there is a wild scuttling down
to the depths of the burrows. That, too, is vain; for the badger begins
ripping up the clay bank like a grisly, down--down--in pursuit, two,
three, five feet, even twelve.
Then is seen one of the most curious freaks in all the animal life of
the prairie. The underground galleries of the gophers connect and lead
up to different exits. As the furious badger comes closer and closer on
the cowering gophers, the little cowards lose heart, dart up the
galleries to open doors, and try to escape through the grass of the
prairie. But no sooner is the badger hard at work than a gray form seems
to rise out of the earth, a coyote who had been slinking to the rear all
the while; and as the terrified gophers scurry here, scurry there,
coyote's white teeth snap!--snap! He is
here--there--everywhere--pouncing--jumping--having the fun of his life,
gobbling gophers as cats catch mice. Down in the bottom of the burrow,
the badger may get half a dozen poor cooped huddling prisoners; but the
coyote up on the prairie has devoured a whole colony.
Do these two, badger and coyote, consciously hunt together? Some old
trappers vow they do--others just as vehemently that they don't. The
fact remains that wherever the badger goes gopher-hunting on an
unsettled prairie, there the coyote skulks reaping reward of all the
badger's work. The coincidence is no stranger than the well-known fact
that sword-fish and thrasher--two different fish--always league together
to attack the whale.
One thing only can save the gopher colony, and that is the gun barrel
across yon earth mound where a trapper lies in wait for the coming of
the badger.
IV
_The 'Coon_
Sir Alexander MacKenzie reported that in 1798 the North-West Company
sent out only 100 raccoon from the fur country. Last year the city of
St. Paul alone cured 115,000 'coon-skins. What brought about the change?
Simply an appreciation of the qualities of 'coon, which combines the
greatest warmth with the lightest weight and is especially adapted for
a cold climate and constant wear. What was said of badger applies with
greater force to 'coon. The 'coon in the East is associated in one's
mind with cabbies, in the West with fashionably dressed men and women.
And there is just as wide a difference in the quality of the fur as in
the quality of the people. The cabbies' 'coon coat is a rough yellow fur
with red stripes. The Westerner's 'coon is a silky brown fur with black
stripes. One represents the fall hunt of men and boys round hollow logs,
the other the midwinter hunt of a professional trapper in the Far North.
A dog usually bays the 'coon out of hiding in the East. Tiny tracks,
like a child's hand, tell the Northern hunter where to set his traps.
Wahboos the rabbit, musquash the musk-rat, sikak the skunk, wenusk the
badger, and the common 'coon--these are the little chaps whose hunt
fills the idle days of the trapper's busy life. At night, before the
rough stone hearth which he has built in his cabin, he is still busy by
fire-light preparing their pelts. Each skin must be stretched and cured.
Turning the skin fur side in, the trapper pushes into the pelt a
wedge-shaped slab of spliced cedar. Into the splice he shoves another
wedge of wood which he hammers in, each blow widening the space and
stretching the skin. All pelts are stretched fur in but the fox. Tacking
the stretched skin on a flat board, the trapper hangs it to dry till he
carries all to the fort; unless, indeed, he should need a garment for
himself--cap, coat, or gantlets--in which case he takes out a square
needle and passes his evenings like a tailor, sewing.