The title of this article will doubtless recall to readers of
"Harper's Young People"[1] a paper upon a similar subject which
appeared in my calendar series two years ago. With the title the
resemblance ends, for the cocoons which I am about to describe are of
a sort that has never been mentioned in any previous article. These
curious cocoons had been familiar to me since my boyhood, having long
excited my wonder before finally revealing their mystery. They have
recently been brought freshly to my notice by a letter that I have
received, accompanied by a box of specimens, which reads as follows:
DEAR MR. GIBSON,--I have sent you to-day what I take to be
three cocoons. These with three others I picked up from a
gravel-walk in Po'keepsie over a year ago. They seemed
connected at the ends, but easily broke apart. I kept them,
purposing to see what would emerge, but nothing has rewarded my
watch, and they seem now to be shrivelling up. Can you give me
any information in regard to them? If so, I shall be very
grateful to you.
[1] Now "Harper's Round Table."
I had barely read half through the brief description when I guessed
the nature of the cocoons in question, having received similar letters
before, as well as verbal queries, from others who had been puzzled by
the non-committal specimens. The fact that they were found "on the
gravel-walk," and were loosely "connected at the ends," was in itself
strong evidence of their questionable nature, and I felt sure that I
should recognize the cocoons as old friends. And I did.
Upon opening the box, I found three of them packed in a mass of
cotton, two of them still loosely attached at the ends, the third one
somewhat disintegrated. Each was about an inch in length, and half an
inch in thickness, somewhat egg or cocoon shaped. Upon being
separated, one end of each was seen to be hollowed out, and had thus
previously received the pointed end of its fellow in the "connected"
condition in which they had been found. In color they were a mouse
gray precisely, and to the careless observer might have appeared to
consist of caterpillar silk, though in reality having a substance
more like felt. Yes, they might easily be mistaken for cocoons if we
simply contented ourselves with looking at them.
Who, by a mere glance, could imagine the materials that the little
bird called the vireo employs in building her peculiar nest? The
reader will remember how we pulled one of those nests apart, and what
strange materials we found woven in its fabric.[2] But they were
hardly more surprising than we may discover within this sly cocoon if
we dissect it. Now, to begin with, a true cocoon is not solid to the
core, as this one evidently is as we press it between our fingers, nor
can you pinch off a tuft of gray hair from the surface of an ordinary
cocoon when you will. True, there are some cocoons into whose silk
meshes the caterpillar weaves the hair of its body, but the felt thus
formed is only a shell, and is intermeshed with silken webs, and one
pinch alone will open up the hollow interior and show us the
caterpillar or chrysalis within. Such, for instance, is the little
brown winter snuggery of the woolly-bear caterpillar which we all
know, and whose prickly cocoons may be found beneath stones and logs
in the fields.
[2] See "Sharp Eyes,"
But what do we find in these cocoons that we now have before us? Not
only is there no vestige of silk to be seen, but there are hairs
enough in this single cocoon to have supplied a hundred caterpillars,
while we look in vain for any sign of the spinner within. Indeed,
there is no within; pinch after pinch reveals nothing but the same
gray felt. We are now a quarter of an inch below the surface, when
another pinch brings with it a small mass of white specks like crumbs
intermingled with the hair, and in the hollow thus deepened we observe
a shiny white object like ivory, with a minute ball at its tip. It
certainly looks like a tiny bone. We impatiently break open the
cocoon, when we see in truth a bone--indeed, a compact mass of bones
from some very small animal, whose identity we may guess from the
mouse-color of the felt. Here is the femur of a field-mouse--two of
them--also a part of the fibula, and a dozen or more other bones.
Breaking asunder the mass further, we find a few tiny teeth; and as we
continue the process in the remaining two specimens, we bring to light
parts of the skull, ribs, and vertebrae. A strange "cocoon" indeed.
A further examination of the remaining specimens disclosed similar
ingredients, until the entire mass presented a collection somewhat
like that shown in my illustration.
I well remember my first encounter with the queer specimens, and what
mysteries they were, though the "cocoon" idea had never suggested
itself to me, the felted mass having been found in a disintegrated
state.
It was on a winter's day, in a walk on the crusted snow, during my
early boyhood. Returning by the brink of a stream, I noticed a little
gray mass of fur on the snow, which on examination disclosed numerous
bones of what I took to be field-mice and parts of the anatomy of a
mole intermingled with the hair. No vestige of flesh appeared in the
mass, and I fell to wondering what manner of disease is this with
which the mouse world is afflicted that should consume the flesh and
leave nothing but a disjointed skeleton and a tiny pile of fur. Ah,
had I only known then what I discovered a year or two later--the
secret of that big hollow in the willow-tree above--my little pile of
fur and bones would easily have been explained, for there summer after
summer sat the little brown screech-owl, blinking in the sun at her
doorway, peeping through the tiny cracks of her closed eyelids at
noon, and at midnight commanding a view of the entire surrounding
sedgy swamp in her eager quest for the first unfortunate shrew or
deer-mouse that should peep its nose out of its nest or venture across
the ice in the field of her staring vision.
The new-fallen snow would doubtless show as many telltales of midnight
tragedies among the little bead-eyed folk--the tiny trail terminating
in a drop of blood, and a suggestive ruffling of the surrounding snow,
with its plain witness of the fatal swoop of "owl on muffled wing"
from its vantage-ground here in the willow-tree. To-night our little
deer-mouse ventured too far from its nest among the tussocks.
To-morrow night all that will be left of its sprightly squeaking
identity will be a tiny pile of fur and bones disgorged in the form of
pellets from the open beak of the owl on the willow-tree.
In regard to these specimen pellets which my correspondent has sent to
me for identification, I am not prepared to affirm that they are from
the digestive laboratory of the owl. Something in their size suggests
that a hawk is equally likely to be responsible for them, all the
birds of prey having this same singular habit of ejecting the
indigestible portions of animals which they devour. A pet red-tailed
hawk which I kept during the past summer littered its pen with
pellets of a similar size and consistency to these, varied on one
occasion with a number composed entirely of grass, which explained a
singular puzzle of the day previous, when I descried my hawk with its
craw largely distended, and wondered what squirrel or chipmonk or
snake had been thus caught napping in my absence.