MAN AND BEAST IN THE FAR NORTH—TRAPS THAT ARE SEEN THROUGH—A
NEW DISCOVERY—CUNNING OF ARCTIC FOXES—THE TRAPPER AND THE
WOLVERINE.
The various ruses mentioned in the preceding chapter were all of an
offensive character, employed, that is to say, by one animal in order
to entrap and prey upon another. But as much cunning may be shown by a
creature in avoiding death as in inflicting it, or in securing its food.
The two kinds, indeed, are often combined, as was seen in the last case
mentioned, where, but for its ingenious method of attack, the dog must
soon have been impaled on the horns of the sable antelope, an animal in
comparison with whose size and strength its own are quite insignificant.
The same remark applies to those crowning instances of animal strategy in
which the endeavour—constantly successful—is to avoid the artifices of
man himself, since the successful springing of the trap is followed by a
triumphant meal upon the bait with which it is set. There is nothing, in
its way, more interesting than that keen, hard, close competition between
the brain of man and beast that is going on day by day and year by year
in the fur-bearing regions of the North, especially over the snowy
wastes of the Hudson Bay territories in the far north of North America.
The cunning shown by the arctic foxes, especially in avoiding the various
kinds of snares laid by the trappers for their destruction, is truly
wonderful, and we should be justified in disbelieving many of the facts
narrated were they not well authenticated and, indeed, notorious in those
parts.
It is, for instance, quite a common “dodge” for a trapper to set his
spring-jaw traps upside-down, and the reason for his doing so is that the
foxes, having discovered the principle of the mechanism, are accustomed
to scratch away the earth from under the trap, and then, putting their
paw up—through the jaws, indeed, but from the outside, so that it cannot
be enclosed between them, as they fly up—to press upon the pan and start
the trap. When the trap is set upside-down, therefore, the fox is taken
by surprise, and for a short time the trapper may have success. But very
quickly the new experience is gained, and the traps are now started
from above instead of from below. Another change may be resorted to,
but this is not likely to be successful unless some time has gone by,
and, of course, the natural result of continued variation in the way of
setting the traps, is to make the foxes more and more observant of the
way in which they lie. They become, therefore, more and more difficult
to catch, and the trapper’s best plan is to keep moving from one part
of the country to another, in the hope of getting a few skins in each.
The reason why the foxes learn so quickly by experience is that they
are not solitary-living animals, but go about either in pairs or small
companies. When, therefore, one is caught, its mate or its fellows are
witness of its misfortune, and have the dreadful incident stamped upon
their memory, not only by reason of the fear which it inspires on their
own account, but also through the sorrow and sympathy which the sight of
a suffering and often, perhaps, a tenderly loved companion arouses in
them.
Another way of trapping, or of trying to trap, the foxes is by setting
a loaded gun, with a string tied, at one end, to the trigger, and, at
the other, to a piece of meat. The meat lies some thirty yards from the
muzzle of the gun, with which, of course, it is in a straight line, and
the string, for the whole distance, is buried under the snow, the gun
being also concealed, either in the same or some other way. All that
appears is the piece of meat, which lies, by itself, on the snow, as if
it had nothing to do with anything. When the fox seizes it, however,
he pulls the string, which in its turn pulls the trigger, and the gun,
going off, shoots him dead[16]—a very humane sort of trap indeed. But
it is just the same as with the other kinds. After a very few foxes,
or, sometimes, after only a single one has been shot, no more are to
be got in this way. The first poor victim lies upon the bloodstained
snow, but over him bends his affectionate consort, whining and wretched,
yet not so given up to grief but that the intellectual faculties are
rather sharpened than obscured by the bitterness of the loss. The fatal
cord attached to the meat, which, in despite of tears, she has perhaps
managed to swallow down, lies now exposed. She follows it up, sniffing
it and sometimes touching it with her paw, and soon arrives at the
evil-looking object, which she knows has, for the time, exhausted its
death-dealing power. A careful examination imprints it on her memory,
and through life, now, in particular, she carries a picture in her mind
of that string attached to the trigger. It was the pull that did it.
With that there came a sudden flame, and the roar of death was in her
ears. Three feet, at least, she leaped into the air—higher, possibly, if
perchance a pellet or two struck her—and then raced away over the snow
that was her husband’s winding-sheet. She returned to find him dead, and
there, from his very jaws, from the protruded tongue that would never
be passed over her in kindness and affection again, lay that thin dark
line upon the snow, that connected him visibly with death. Never, in all
her earthly pilgrimage, hereafter, will she forget that lumps of meat,
though seeming to lie loose upon the ground, may yet make part of a trap,
full twenty-five or thirty yards away, and that to touch them, whilst
they do make part of it, means swift and certain death. But they may be
disconnected. That thin and subtle ligament from which the whole danger
proceeds is easy to sever; but how to sever it without setting in motion
the thing to which it is attached—that little, insignificant-looking
thing, which, as it is the part that the string touches, must be the key
to set in motion the whole infernal machine? Smaller even than the pan
of the well-known toothed trap, which, by being pressed on, causes the
jaws to fly up, it must act on the same diabolical principle. Something
is set loose by it—something that flies out to where the meat is, and
kills the fox that is eating it. Something—but what? No matter; whatever
it is, it is death. It comes and it kills, and it can only come from that
long, ominous-looking tube, which is hollow at one end, and only one.
Just from that end it was—quite a long way in front of the trigger—that
the flame of fire flashed out. To be in front of that, then, and to pull
the string, is death; but once behind it, the string may be pulled with
impunity. Still, there is the trigger. To be behind that must be safer
still, and if the string can be gnawed so as not to pull the trigger
at all, that will be the safest of all. As for the string, there is
no danger in _it_. It is to start the trap merely. It is not the trap
itself. _That_ is obvious. Even a cub might see that. The whole thing
lies in the trigger. If you pull that, you let off the trap: but if you
can gnaw through the string without pulling it, you can take the meat
without the trap going off, or if you can let the trap off without its
hurting you, you can take the meat afterwards.
It may be thought that not even foxes, though they are known to be
cunning, could reason in this way; but if facts are to be taken as
evidence, they must reason still more strongly. Not only do they draw the
conclusion that to be behind the muzzle of the gun is to be in safety,
but they even adopt a plan by which they are able, with almost equal
safety, to go up to the meat and let the gun off, by taking it in their
mouth. In the latter case, of course, the string need not be cut at
all—except, indeed, afterwards, to eat the meat—but when it has to be, it
is always that part of it which is near the trigger, that the fox gnaws
through. This shows plainly that the danger must be connected in the
animal’s mind not only with the string and trigger, but with the muzzle
of the gun; but though it must, therefore, know that, being where it is
the gun might be fired with impunity, the fox, having decided to sever
the string before seizing the bait, does not do this, but leaves the
trigger still on the cock. Now, as it must be as easy to gnaw through the
string without discharging the gun, at one part as at another, it must
be as a precaution against a possible accident that the fox does so at a
point where, if it did go off, it could not hurt him: since it assures
itself doubly, it cannot be said that it has not room for more than one
idea in its head, at the same time.[17]
But now comes the second plan—not quite so perfect as the other, as the
fox may get a pellet or two in its skin, but, perhaps, involving even a
greater degree of intelligence. Instead of going to the gun, the fox,
in this case, digs a trench in the snow up to the meat, which it then
seizes and pulls into the trench, where it lies flat. The gun goes off,
but the fox is not hurt, for—and this is the most wonderful part of
it—it has drawn the trench at right angles to the muzzle of the gun—to
the line of fire, that is to say—so that the shot, instead of raking the
channel, as it would do if it were in a straight line with the gun and
string, only strikes the edge of the cutting, and goes flying over it. If
men were besieging a hostile town, and wished to approach it under cover
of a trench, so as to avoid, as much as possible, the bullets from the
walls, this is just how they would manage it. They would not, any more
than the foxes, draw it all in one line with the line of fire, for then
the bullets would fly down, instead of over it, and every man in it would
be killed. The brain of the fox, therefore, as far as this particular
thing is concerned, is equal to that of man, and as the trench is always
drawn in the same way, we may be sure that mere chance has nothing to
do with it. The reason why the fox is able to draw the meat into the
trench before the gun goes off, is that the cord which connects the bait
with the trigger is always a little longer than the distance between the
two, for if it were not, as it is liable to shrink during changes of the
atmosphere, when the weather changes from dry to moist, the gun would
sometimes go off of itself. As a rule, therefore, the meat can be moved
five or six inches, without anything happening, and this just allows the
fox to pull it down into the ditch, where he lies with it, out of harm’s
way. So here are two quite different ways—each as cunning as can well be
imagined—by which the fox gets the better of the trapper, and though the
human element enters into such episodes as these, they still make part of
the romance of animal life, seeing that the life of an animal whose skin
is in demand is one long pitched battle with man.
But cunning as are these arctic foxes, there is one animal which seems to
outdo even them in its instinct, as one may almost call it, for avoiding
all danger, and especially snares, traps, or pitfalls of any and every
description. This is the celebrated glutton or wolverine, an animal
which, as it is not only never to be taken itself, but enjoys nothing
so much as destroying all traps that it finds set for other animals, is
the very despair of the trapper. It belongs to the weasel family, but
in form and general appearance is more like a bear than one of these
animals, being stout in the body, with long large limbs and shaggy fur,
whilst it walks on the soles of its feet, which is an ursine mode of
progression. Its tail, however, is a conspicuous feature, being thick
and bushy, though short. In size it surpasses every other member of the
family to which it belongs, so that it is able to make so large and
strong an animal as the beaver its prey. It is even said that it will
occasionally attack and overpower some of the larger species of deer,
dropping upon them from out of the branches of trees, and then tearing at
their throats. Whether this is true, however, I do not know, nor, for our
present purposes, does it much matter, for it is only from the standpoint
of its cunning, or, perhaps one should rather say, of its intellectual
competition with man, that I am going to discuss the wolverine here.
It is not that the trapper has any wish to catch him—not for his fur, at
least, which is worth little or nothing. The wolverine is not wanted,
and would be let alone if he would let other people alone, but this he
will not do. Nothing pleases him better than to come across a trapper
engaged in his occupation, for then he knows that for some time to come
he can have meat without the trouble of killing it. Where he lives—in the
great pine forests of North America—the marten lives, too, and the fur of
the marten is very valuable indeed. The trapper goes through the woods
setting a long line of traps, and when once the wolverine has come upon
this line, he follows it day by day, and never leaves off doing so till
he has destroyed every trap, eaten the bait, and sometimes the marten
that he finds inside it. These traps are not the steel ones that are set
for the foxes, nor are they the spring guns either. The marten’s skin is
so valuable and, at the same time, so small, that the trapper does not
want it to be injured anywhere. The skin of a fox that has been shot in
the head or caught by one of the legs, is almost as valuable as if it
had not been damaged at all, but it is not the same with the marten. His
skin is wanted intact—without a flaw upon any part of it. The trapper,
therefore, makes a curious trap of branches—or “poles,” as he calls
them—which are set in the ground, so as to make a sort of little chamber
or wigwam, which has only one way into it, and across that way a noose,
or something, is arranged—I am not quite sure what; they never tell one
in the books—so as to kill the marten, but without injuring his skin, as
he gets inside.
The wolverine comes to one of these little wigwams, and knows exactly
what it means. There is something inside to be got, and a door to walk
in by. That something he means to have, but he is not going in by the
door. He knows what would happen if he did. That is one of man’s horrible
treacheries—pretending to be kind and nice to animals, but meaning to
destroy them all the while. It is a trap, and the way to get the better
of a trap is never to do what it asks you to do, or, at least, not in the
way that it asks you to do it. So, being asked to go in by the door, the
wolverine pulls out some of the poles at the other end, and goes in that
way, taking the bait from behind. Having done this, he generally proceeds
to show his contempt of the whole thing, and especially, perhaps, of the
man who thought he could take him in, by destroying the trap _in toto_,
scattering the poles all about, and then going off to do the same with
the next. In this way the whole line of traps are treated one after
another, and if a marten has been caught in any of them, the wolverine
eats as much as he wants and hides the rest—for he is very fond of taking
things away and hiding them. One may imagine the rage of the trapper
when he comes back to look at his traps. Either he must get rid of the
wolverine in some way, or leave that part of the country altogether. To
lie in wait with a gun, himself, would be a tedious business, and the
chances are that the wolverine would either smell him or find out his
whereabouts in some other way, and so take care not to come near. He
determines to trap him, or at least to try to. Half a dozen traps of
different sorts—acting upon different principles of destruction—he makes
himself, with all the skill and ingenuity that his own cunning, sharpened
by a lifelong experience, can suggest, and he sets several steel ones as
well. Every three or four days he comes to look at them, but always, if
the wolverine has been there at all, he finds one of two things. Either
the baits have been taken and the traps pulled to pieces, or else both
trap and bait have been left severely alone. In this latter case the
cunning animal has feared to touch them. There are his tracks all about,
and in some places the marks of his body, where he has lain down and
gazed intently at the things he was trying to understand. But he was not
quite satisfied, had not entirely grasped the principle, not penetrated
as deeply into the matter as, under the circumstances, he would like to
do. Therefore he would not touch it. Until he saw clearly just what the
idea was, the trapper must really excuse him: he would much rather leave
it alone. As soon as he had discovered it, he might be relied upon—the
bait was most attractive—but until then he preferred to go on with the
marten-traps. They were quite simple: no difficulty at all about them.
For, of course, all the while, the trapper, who cannot afford to lose
time, and hopes every day to catch the wolverine, keeps setting his
marten-traps as before.
At last he gives up what he has been trying, and determines to set a
spring-gun—not in such a way as he might hope that an ordinary animal
would get shot by it, but more cunningly than he has ever done it before.
So not only does he lay the gun amidst bushes, so that it is quite
concealed by them, but blockades the way to it, as it were, with a small
pine-tree, so that it is neither to be seen nor got at. The bait—a nice
juicy piece of meat—lies temptingly just on the top of a bank that rises
from a little lake where the wolverine goes sometimes—when the trapper is
not there—to drink. As he turns to walk up the bank, he is sure to see
it, and likely this time—as the trapper would fain hope—to take it, too.
So he arranges everything, obliterates his footmarks by trailing a bush
over them, as he goes away, and comes again, a day or two afterwards.
There lies the bait, just as it was, and close beside it are the tracks
of the wolverine, where he has stood and looked at it. It was a sore
temptation, doubtless, so near his nose, but he has resisted it, and gone
away to get a meal that is safe, though hard earned.
[Illustration: A MISCHIEVOUS BEAST.
A wolverine, finding a backwoodsman’s house empty, will clear it of
everything movable down to the gridiron.]
Still the memory of such a lump of meat as that will be sure to linger,
so next day the trapper comes again, hoping that the wolverine will
have been there before him. And so he has been, but he has gone, again,
with the bait, having first drawn the pine-tree out of the way, and
then cut the string—which, if pulled, would have fired off the gun—only
just behind the muzzle. His tracks lead down to the shores of the lake,
at a part where it stretches out widely, so as to give a good view all
round. There he has eaten the meat, and there the trapper finds his
string, which he can use again if he likes. He does use it again two or
three times, first tying it where it has been bitten through, and then
arranging things in the same way. But each time it all happens over
again, just as before, except that now the wolverine is careful to gnaw
the string a little behind the knot, where it has, each time, been tied,
as if it had thought that it might be as dangerous to be in front of this
as in front of the muzzle of the gun. So the trapper, at last, thinking
that there must be a human spirit in the body of the wolverine—and a very
cunning and malicious one, too—gives it up, and goes into another part of
the country, so far away that he is not likely to be followed.
It is not only traps that the wolverine is fatal to. If he finds the
house of a backwoodsman empty, he will get into it through a hole which
he makes in the wall—never through the door, even if this should be
open—and then takes away whatever there may be inside. It does not matter
what the things are. Guns, kettles, knives, axes, blankets, boxes, or
cans of tinned meat, it is all the same to the wolverine, he carries them
all off or pushes them along with his paws, to hide them in different
places—for he is like the magpie or the bizcacha in this; whatever he
sees seems to have an attraction for him. Thus it has sometimes happened
that a hunter and his family, having been so imprudent as to leave their
“lodge” unguarded for a day or two—or perhaps having to go and there
being no one to leave there—have come back and found it quite empty, only
the bare walls with nothing inside them. The misfortune, however, is
not so great as it seems, for the tracks of the wolverine, or sometimes
the pair of them, can be followed up, and, little by little, everything
is found hidden about in the bushes. It is not often, however, that the
animal itself is discovered.
Indeed the wolverine’s presence is much more often felt than seen. One
ill deed after another comes to light, and is surely traced to his door,
but their author remains, for long periods, invisible. With a cunning
that seems human, he devises, plans, and executes, and with equal
astuteness he chooses his time. When he does happen to meet a man, how
does he act? He sits up on his haunches, like a dog begging, and holding
one of his big, flat fore paws just above his eyes, so as to shade them
from the light, looks long and earnestly at the intruder—for as such he
considers him. This he will do, sometimes, three or four times, before
deciding that he had better go, unless, indeed, he sees any special
reason for alarm, in which case he quickly disappears. There is no other
known animal, as far as I am aware, that has this odd human-like habit.
No wonder the American backwoodsman, besides looking upon the wolverine
(or carcajou as he calls him) as a very malignant animal, thinks him a
little uncanny as well.