You’ve had so much corn now that you’ll have to ride in a grain elevator
if you ever get home.” This Rabbit lived high up in a hollow tree to be
out of the reach of draughts, as he was old and rheumatic, and so the
speech had a double-edged meaning that set all the company to sneezing
with suppressed mirth.
Other observers have described a Rabbit entertainment, but I doubt if
any of them have ever seen such a one as fell to my lot to witness and
even take part in, the night before I left my home in the wilderness to
take my vacant place in the city. I do not know that I had been missed
in the city, but it was pleasant to think so when the Fall rains fell
upon me, and the woods had a penetrating chill which my bravest fire
could not subdue.
I was packing, and Jenny and Chee-Wee sat sadly by, heartbroken at the
prospect of separation. When I packed my little pincushion, Jenny went
out and got a few pine needles to put in; when I gathered up my pens and
ink, Chee-Wee scampered away to his treasure box and brought the skin of
a Field Mouse for a penwiper. He had prepared and cured the skin
himself, and I have it still.
I sat down on the side of my cot, and using the deaf-and-dumb alphabet,
I spelled out with my fingers: “I would take you back with me, but you
would not like the town, and I shall return next Summer.”
Surprised beyond measure, they were dumb animals for a moment, then
Jenny’s ears began to work nervously. “We would not go,” she answered;
“we have Winter flannels and are very comfortable here. There is going
to be a party to-night. Will you not come?”
“Gladly,” I returned, with all sincerity. “What shall I bring?”
With one accord, Jenny and Chee-Wee ran to the opposite corner of the
cabin and sat down on my concertina. They did not know how to spell the
name of it, so they chose the more primitive manner of expression.
At eight o’clock they called for me. They were freshly washed and
combed, had picked all the burrs out of themselves, and looked very
spruce indeed.
We walked about eight miles to a clearing in the midst of the woods—a
clearing where some hunters had once camped. This is the kind of a place
that Rabbits love. I had matches in my pocket, and as soon as I got
there I gathered materials for a fire, and peeled a large, straight
piece of very white birch bark, which I set up on a forked stick behind
the cheerful flame. This rude reflector served very well, and threw
great pieces of ruddy light into the black shadows beyond us.
There were about twenty Rabbits in the gathering, all of whom I knew by
sight if not by name. Some were brown and some were white, and there
were an equal number of ladies and gentlemen.
While preparations were going on, the ladies and gentlemen promenaded in
couples around the clearing, arm in arm, doubtless whispering tender
nothings to each other. They were not afraid of me at all, and some of
them would even come and jump over my foot as it was stretched out in
front of me.
The first number on the programme was a tug of war engaged in by the
gentlemen Rabbits, brown on one side and white on the other. The rope
was a long strand of Virginia creeper from which the leaves had been
stripped. The brown Rabbits won, and Jenny wig-wagged to me with her
curiously intelligent ears that the brown Rabbits were the stronger,
because they did not bathe as often as the white ones. This was very
interesting. I believe there was some old Greek who renewed his strength
every time he touched the ground, and the Rabbits seem to have caught
the idea.
Then there was a hurdle race, a game of Leap Frog, another of Follow the
Leader, and a very fine game of Base Ball. The ball was a perfectly
round gourd which they had found somewhere, and at the proper time
Chee-Wee brought in a stuffed Bat, which gave great interest to the
game. The old rheumatic Rabbit did not play, but continually made love
to Jenny while the sport went on. Poor Jenny! I hope she had too much
sense to go and be an old man’s darling.
Presently the moon came up and I let the fire go out. It had warmed the
clearing pleasantly, and the birch bark reflector was charred so much
that it was of no further use.
Refreshments consisted of clover blossoms, dried, preserved rose petals,
and toadstools. The lady Rabbits did not eat the toadstools, and when I
asked Jenny why, she patted her stomach suggestively, and then with her
delicate ears spelled out to me that they took up too mushroom.
I was enjoying myself exceedingly, and after the refreshments had been
cleared away a committee of the gentlemen waited upon me, and, not
knowing that I understood their language, pointed suggestively to my
concertina.
I took up the instrument and began to play the cake-walk which had first
attracted Jenny to my side. Instantly the clearing was full of flying
feet, and those who were not dancing were thumping with their hind feet
and patting out the tune with their paws. One Rabbit, who seemed to be
the clown of the party, would dash around the clearing like the ponies
at the circus, now and then taking a high jump, or two or three
ungraceful hops in imitation of a Bear trying to dance. It was very
amusing.
Round and round they went, their mobile noses whizzing like an
automobile as they passed. It was like nothing so much as fireworks of
brown and white fur.
When I changed the tune, they changed their steps also. There was a
minuet, in which the ladies did themselves proud, and a quadrille in
which all joined but the rheumatic Rabbit, who knew the calls and thus
served the first useful purpose of the evening. To do him justice,
however, I believe that after he had eaten all the clover he could hold,
he took a few choice blossoms to a little brown mouse of a Rabbit who
seemed not to know anyone.
While the ladies were cooling off, there was a boxing match between two
of the most athletic of the gentlemen, and it was declared a draw at the
end of the fifth round. These gay young bloods refreshed themselves with
liberal draughts of beer, which was very innocent, however, being made
of Frog hops. I tried it, but it was not to my taste, being clammy in
flavour and not cold enough.
The play lasted till long past midnight, and I do not believe the merry
party would have broken up then had I not risen to go home. My little
furry friends clustered around me with many unspoken regrets, but I fear
that the loss of the concertina was uppermost in their thoughts. They
had never had music to dance to before.
My suspicion was strengthened the next day when I finished my packing.
As before, Jenny and Chee-Wee came and camped on the instrument,
refusing to move when I attempted to put it into my suit case. A
generous impulse struck me, and, attracting her attention, I spelled
out: “You can use it this Winter if you will be very careful of it and
not leave it outdoors. I shall want it again in the Spring.”
They forgot me, then, and dragged it away to some secret treasure-house.
Such was the ingratitude of the beasts that I never saw either of them
again, not to mention my instrument, but there are drawbacks in all
callings, so why should there not be in mine? When you come to think of
it, the work of a concertina is wholly composed of drawbacks.
Sometimes on moonlight nights, when the earth is exquisitely still, I
fancy I see the Rabbits dancing in the clearing, and when a faint,
far-off melody comes to my listening ears, so delicate that it might be
fairies touching cobweb strings, I think perhaps it may be Chee-Wee or
Jenny Ragtail, playing on my lost concertina.
HOOT-MON
I was in the woods one night at twilight, sitting on a stump, with my
face hidden in my hands, thinking. I had written about everything I knew
for the magazines, and my work was still in demand, but, seemingly,
there were no new animals.
While I was thinking, I was knocked senseless by a blow on the head.
When I came to, there was nothing in sight, and no tracks on the smooth
mould around me. Only the blood which streamed down my face convinced me
that I was not suffering from an hallucination.
The doctor who sewed up my head gave me a very queer look when I told
him how it had happened, and then tapped his forehead suggestively. I
suppose he was endeavouring to comprehend the situation and was trying
to stimulate the place in which the phrenologists have located the
faculty of comprehension.
After my head got well, I went out and sat on the stump once more,
determined to pursue my investigations at whatever cost. Just as I
expected, I was hit again, only this time not quite so hard. I chased
around madly through the underbrush, but, as before, I saw nothing.
That night, when I got up to put another bandage on my aching dome of
thought, an idea struck me. “You blithering idiot,” said my inner
consciousness, “it was an Owl that hit you on the head!”
Of course it was—what else should it be? I went to sleep much reassured,
and in the morning I determined to prove myself right.
It must have been my head that attracted Hoot-Mon. Owls live on Weasels,
Rabbits, Squirrels, and Hares. At dusk I took my grandmother’s old Mink
muff, tied a long string to it, and went out to the stump. I poised the
muff airily upon the undergrowth and retired to a safe distance. Then I
imitated the Owl’s song and twitched the muff a bit.
A great white shape swooped down and took up the muff in its talons,
tearing at it until the interior fell out. Greedily, the Owl ate of
this, then immediately coughed and disgorged the whole thing. I laughed
wickedly. “Hoot-Mon, my dear old friend,” said I to myself, “that is the
time you muffed it.” I was fully revenged for his attack upon me.
I followed him to his nest, which was in a birch tree about three miles
from my cabin. I made no attempt to climb to it then, deeming the
location of it sufficient work for the time being. His home was there;
his watch-tower was a blasted tree which commanded my front door.
A few days later I made the ascent. Very few observers have ever seen an
Owl’s nest. This one was not round, but long and narrow, with a great
bundle of feathers at one end for a pillow. Hoot-Mon was asleep, lying
flat on his back, with a blanket made of Rabbit skins over him, and
snoring audibly. In the bottom of the nest was a Hare mattress. I did
not disturb him, for he works at night and needs his sleep in the
daytime.
An Owl is really a very peculiar beast and one that will amply repay
study. His sight and hearing are wonderful, and his eyes are just as
good by daylight as by dark, some amateurs to the contrary
notwithstanding.
The next time you get hold of a stuffed Owl, part the feathers and
closely examine his ears. You will find that they are long,
crescent-shaped excavations in his face, coming to a point over his
eyes. They are barbed with hairs which act like telephone wires and
double and redouble the intensity of every sound. His eyes are set in
deeply, so that when he wants to look around, he has to turn his head.
He cannot see behind him like a Rabbit, or a Horse without blinders.
An Owl’s stomach is also very peculiar. The alimentary tract is shaped
like a wide-mouthed vase, with no intervening crop, as in most Birds.
Hoot-Mon packs his food into the flaring top, which is his mouth, and
without chewing, crowds it with one foot down through the narrow
opening, into the bulb-shaped base. In his stomach is a gland which
secretes hydrochloric acid.
With this he digests practically everything but fur and feathers. The
facile stomach rolls these into small balls and pushes them out through
that same door where in they went.
In fact, you can track an Owl by these little balls of undigested
securities. Sometimes they incorporate them into the lining of the nest,
but more often build a wall, like the defence of a fort, around their
homes. Seeing so much fur, the enemy is not disposed to go any further.
I have often seen an Owl sitting on the lower branch of a tree in the
early dusk, and throwing these balls to his children, one at a time, as
though they were bean-bags. Once, when I was watching, one little Owl
mistook one of them for a Mouse and ate it. The father laughed heartily,
knowing that the plaything would soon be returned in the original
package.
The white Owls are very scarce, but I saw a great many of them that
year. Summer was very late, and they had flown around the Arctic Circle
until they got dizzy and had come down to chase each other around the
larger meridians. In the Winter, they get their living by fishing. I
have often seen a big white Owl, sailing around on a cake of ice which
perfectly matched his plumage, taking his ease like any fisherman in a
rowboat.
They are very clever with their claws and will bait their hooks with
Worms and Frogs which they have caught in the Summer and kept on ice
until they were ready to use them. It is a charming sight to see a white
Owl bait his hook, toss his line overboard, and wait, with sublime
patience, until there is a nibble at the other end. You can almost hear
his wild eerie laughter as he draws in his catch and eats it, bones and
all, without stopping to cook it.
One Winter when some fishermen spilled a cargo of dead Fish overboard,
the beach was so thick with white Owls that you could not see the sand.
They used nets and gathered in the Fish by wholesale, though sometimes
an Owl would sail out over the water like a Seagull, catch up a Fish in
his claws, and come back, laughing, amidst the plaudits of his
companions who were waiting in a row upon the shore. No other observer
has seen this on so large a scale as I have, according to the books, but
I have a photograph of the beach and of one of the Owls, which I shall
be glad to show to the doubting ones.
Once, while I was shooting Ducks, I had a strange experience. My decoy
was a lady Duck with a string tied around her leg. I had fastened the
other end to my boat anchor to restrain her natural wandering
propensities. She was sailing around on the cold water, protesting at
her unhappy plight, when a big white Owl heard her profane remarks.
He sat on a dead branch and giggled for a while, then began to make fun
of her. At this her composure vanished and she began to sob, so he
rushed to her, on his big, perfectly silent wings, lifted her up, gently
and tenderly, with one great claw, poising her body meanwhile against
his wing, and with the file on the inside of his other leg, deliberately
filed away my string and gave her her freedom.
I thought she deserved it, so I said nothing, and the last I saw of
them, they were walking down the beach together, wing to wing,
coquetting like lovers on a moonlight night. I never shot any more
Ducks, and refused, ever afterward, to wear Duck trousers in the Summer
time. These garments are really a luxury, being made of canvasback Duck.
[Illustration:
“Coquetting like lovers on a moonlight night.”]
In the Winter, the Owls nearly starve, and get so thin that they cannot
fly. Their big wings overbalance them, like a craft carrying too much
sail, and the wind carries them in every direction. In the Winter, if
the wind is right, you can stand on the beach any day and more Owls than
you can ever hope to study will blow almost into your arms. They are not
good eating, however, for in the early Spring and late Fall they live
mainly upon mussels and this makes their bodies too muscular to carve.
They get so hungry in the Winter that they will even eat Cats. In this
way I once lost a very pretty black and white pussy to whom I was much
attached. A red Squirrel had hidden some walnuts in a little cave near
my cabin door, and while he was digging them up, the Cat saw him and
began to stalk him, merely by way of amusement. Hoot-Mon swooped down
upon poor pussy, and she nearly scratched his eyes out. Both were game,
but he finally killed her with a terrific blow on the head, such as he
once gave me, and bore her away in triumph to his nest.
I was inconsolable, and with the fine instinct of the animal, Hoot-Mon
must have known it. Two weeks afterward I found on my doorstep one
morning a small, soft, furry ball. I unrolled it and discovered that it
was the complexion of my lost pet, nicely prepared, a necklace made of
her delicate teeth, pierced and strung on a fine wire, with a locket
made of her claws. It was very pretty and touching. I would have been
glad to have had one of her eyes, for a cat’s-eye scarf-pin, but that
was too much to expect. I had long known that Owls make an ointment of
Cats’ eyes, with which they rub their own. It is this that enables them
to see in the dark.
Once I had a very peculiar adventure. I had caught a Rat in my cabin and
had buried the body just outside, in some sand. In the night I was
awakened by a prolonged clucking and a long drawn _whoo-oo-oo_, the
characteristic hunting note of the Owl. Fortunately it was bright
moonlight.
I looked out of my window and there was Hoot-Mon, a big white furry
thing, clucking like a Hen and scratching furiously in the sand, which
rose in a cloud around him and nearly obscured him from my scientific
gaze. My quick, active mind immediately guessed that he was excavating
for the Rat, and when the dust subsided, I saw that I was right. He took
his prize and hurried away, still clucking. Two weeks later, he brought
me the ball representing the inedible portions, but this I threw away,
having no sentimental attachment for the Rat.
It is interesting to see Owls eat. When they are very hungry, they are
savage about their food and tear it apart like the other wild things,
but when their eagerness is partially satisfied, they are as dainty
about it as any lady. Once I gave Hoot-Mon a bit of nicely broiled
beefsteak and he received it with unmistakable notes of pleasure in his
clucking.
With the file which Nature has provided on the inner side of his right
leg, he cut it into small, neat morsels and ate it with his left foot as
though it were a fork. Afterward he came and wiped his beak upon my
handkerchief. He had evidently enjoyed the meal very much and for some
days he hung about my camp-fire, watching eagerly for more.
The following week he flew into my presence with a long stake to which a
link or two of chain was still attached. I recognised it as the peg to
which a neighbour’s Cow was fastened in a distant pasture. He had filed
off the chain, dug up the peg, and brought me the beef stake in the hope
that I would broil it for him. With gestures I made him understand that,
even so, it would not be edible, and he flew away, broken-hearted.
An Owl moves so silently that you can never see him come. Where other
Birds have feathers he has hair, and this makes no noise when he moves.
You can hear the rustle of a Duck’s wings, the flutter of a Sparrow or a
Lark, and the wind fairly screams through the Eagle’s pinions when you
spend a dollar, but the breeze makes no more noise blowing through an
Owl’s wings than it does in passing over your own head.
Owls are as fond of Rats as Chinamen are. If you can only catch an Owl
you will need no Rat-trap, for he will clear the premises of the vermin
in no time. I caught Bre’r Hush-wing once when I was a boy and put him
into our oat bin. When I went to get him again he was dead from
indigestion. I dissected him and found the heads of eighteen Rats in his
stomach. The skins of twenty-three more were tacked up around the oat
bin with their own claws.
I have devoted the preliminary part of this paper to the general nature
and habits of the Owl in order that my readers may fully understand what
is to follow. I do not claim that my Owl was more brilliant than the
Owls of my fellow Unnaturalists, but only that I had superior
opportunities to study. When a Little Brother of the Woods sees anything
that I have missed, I do not call him a liar, and I expect others to pay
the same courtesy to me.
I became so interested in Owls that I determined to spend the Winter in
my cabin. The Snowy Owl is abroad only in Winter—in Summer he is grey.
Nature changes his flannels for him to make him feel safer. “Death loves
a shining mark.”
For two weeks and more I went to town every day, and each time brought
home all the provisions I could carry. I bought more ink, a ream of
paper, and a dozen blue pencils also, in order to anticipate the
editors.
It is terrible to live in the woods and see Winter come. The Birds and
Squirrels go south at the first sign of changing foliage, but the
Rabbits, Weasels, Minks, and other small furred creatures remain. There
was no snow until late in December, but it was bitterly cold. When I
went out, my breath froze in lateral chunks and I would have to break
off the icicles with a hatchet before I could get into my cabin. I had
no idea that I breathed so much until I saw it in solid form. I had
piled enough wood at my back door to last an army all Winter, and I was
very glad indeed that I had it when the first snow fell.
It was an unusually heavy storm for so early in the season, being nearly
two feet deep on the level. Nothing was left for the little creatures of
the woods but the rose hips, the seeds of the pine cones, and each
other. Indeed, it was scanty fare.
That night while I lay in my warm bed, with the fire blazing merrily
upon my hearth, I heard the deep, long-drawn, sonorous notes of an Owl.
Something in the sound filled me with foreboding. I felt that a
fellow-creature of mine was out in the woods starving. The impulse was
strong upon me to get up, put on my snow-shoes, and go out to find him,
but my reason battled steadily against it.
The mournful cry was repeated, closer still, and at last I got up, threw
open the door wide, and imitated the sound as nearly as possible. Almost
immediately, cold, wet wings beat against my face and a big white Owl,
more dead than alive, fell full length on the floor of my cabin.
I grasped my brandy bottle and poured a liberal quantity down the Bird’s
throat. Presently he sat up, blinked, dragged himself over to the fire,
and bowed twice to me, very gravely, as though to say, “Thank you.”
All that night we sat there, watching each other. By nature we were
enemies; by force of circumstances we were friends.
Toward morning Hoot-Mon got up and tried to dance, but fell over and
went to sleep instead. I fixed him up a bed on the floor and lifted him
over on to it. There he stayed, snoring loudly, until the middle of the
afternoon. Then he awoke, sighed heavily, yawned, and rubbed his eyes
with the backs of his hands.
“Well, Hoot-Mon,” I asked, “do you feel better?”
He came to me, sat down on the table in front of me, and nodded, with
something very like a smile upon his face. It could not rightly be
characterised as an exact smile, because he was too preternaturally
solemn.
I fed him, then opened the door. “Do you want to go now?” I inquired.
With a scream of dismay, he flew back into the darkest corner of the
cabin and refused to budge. I understood then. He had made up his mind
to live with me.
The next day, he found my watch and took it out from under my pillow. He
seemed greatly interested in the mechanism and held it to his ear that
he might hear it tick. I did not especially mind, for the wild animals
had always taken up my time, more or less, but I hid my jewelled
repeater and gave him the alarm clock, which did just as well. In time
he learned to set the alarm and would laugh like a Parrot when I jumped
out of my chair at the unexpected report.
All that Winter, Hoot-Mon and I lived together. Often he got hungry for
his own kind of food, and at such times I would put on some red flannel
stockings I had made for him, without feet, a red flannel shawl, pinned
closely at the throat, and a face mask, also of red flannel, with
openings for the eyes and beak and those wonderful ears of which I have
spoken before.
He got so that whenever he wished to go hunting, he would search out
these articles from the corner of the cabin where they were kept,—never
forgetting the safety-pin that fastened the shawl,—bring them to me, and
stand very still while I put them on.
He usually had conspicuous success upon these hunting trips. He would
come back with three or four beach Rats, two Rabbits, the body of a
belated Squirrel who had not yet gone south, and more Weasels and
Muskrats that a person could count without more knowledge of arithmetic
than I had. Hoot-Mon would skin all of these animals, preferably doing
the work in the house, and then he would store them in a natural cave of
ice just beyond the wood-pile.