through the fields far beneath me. What odors that fox must have shaken
out of himself, I thought, to be traced thus easily, and how great their
specific gravity not to have been blown away like smoke by the breeze!
The fox ran a long distance down the hill, keeping within a few feet of
a stone wall; then turned a right angle and led off for the mountain,
across a plowed field and a succession of pasture lands. In about
fifteen minutes the hound came in full blast with her nose in the air,
and never once did she put it to the ground while in my sight. When she
came to the stone wall she took the other side from that taken by the
fox, and kept about the same distance from it, being thus separated
several yards from his track, with the fence between her and it. At the
point where the fox turned sharply to the left, the hound overshot a few
yards, then wheeled, and feeling the air a moment with her nose, took
up the scent again and was off on his trail as unerringly as fate. It
seemed as if the fox must have sowed himself broadcast as he went along,
and that his scent was so rank and heavy that it settled in the hollows
and clung tenaciously to the bushes and crevices in the fence. I thought
I ought to have caught a remnant of it as I passed that way some minutes
later, but I did not. But I suppose it was not that the light-footed fox
so impressed himself upon the ground he ran over, but that the sense of
the hound was so keen. To her sensitive nose these tracks steamed
like hot cakes, and they would not have cooled off so as to be
undistinguishable for several hours. For the time being she had but one
sense: her whole soul was concentrated in her nose.
It is amusing when the hunter starts out of a winter morning to see his
hound probe the old tracks to determine how recent they are. He sinks
his nose down deep in the snow so as to exclude the air from above, then
draws a long full breath, giving sometimes an audible snort. If there
remains the least effluvium of the fox the hound will detect it. If
it be very slight it only sets his tail wagging; if it be strong it
unloosens his tongue.
Such things remind one of the waste, the friction that is going on all
about us, even when the wheels of life run the most smoothly. A fox
cannot trip along the top of a stone wall so lightly but that he will
leave enough of himself to betray his course to the hound for hours
afterward. When the boys play "hare and hounds" the hare scatters bits
of paper to give a clew to the pursuers, but he scatters himself much
more freely if only our sight and scent were sharp enough to detect the
fragments. Even the fish leave a trail in the water, and it is said the
otter will pursue them by it. The birds make a track in the air, only
their enemies hunt by sight rather than by scent. The fox baffles the
hound most upon a hard crust of frozen snow; the scent will not hold to
the smooth, bead-like granules.
Judged by the eye alone, the fox is the lightest and most buoyant
creature that runs. His soft wrapping of fur conceals the muscular play
and effort that is so obvious in the hound that pursues him, and he
comes bounding along precisely as if blown by a gentle wind. His massive
tail is carried as if it floated upon the air by its own lightness.
The hound is not remarkable for his fleetness, but how he will
hang!--often running late into the night and sometimes till morning,
from ridge to ridge, from peak to peak; now on the mountain, now
crossing the valley, now playing about a large slope of uplying pasture
fields. At times the fox has a pretty well-defined orbit, and the hunter
knows where to intercept him. Again he leads off like a comet, quite
beyond the system of hills and ridges upon which he was started, and his
return is entirely a matter of conjecture; but if the day be not more
than half spent, the chances are that the fox will be back before night,
though the sportsman's patience seldom holds out that long.
The hound is a most interesting dog. How solemn and long-visaged he
is--how peaceful and well-disposed! He is the Quaker among dogs. All
the viciousness and currishness seem to have been weeded out of him;
he seldom quarrels, or fights, or plays, like other dogs. Two strange
hounds, meeting for the first time, behave as civilly toward each other
as if two men. I know a hound that has an ancient, wrinkled, human,
far-away look that reminds one of the bust of Homer among the Elgin
marbles. He looks like the mountains toward which his heart yearns so
much.
The hound is a great puzzle to the farm dog; the latter, attracted by
his baying, comes barking and snarling up through the fields bent on
picking a quarrel; he intercepts the hound, snubs and insults and annoys
him in every way possible, but the hound heeds him not; if the dog
attacks him he gets away as best he can, and goes on with the trail; the
cur bristles and barks and struts about for a while, then goes back to
the house, evidently thinking the hound a lunatic, which he is for the
time being--a monomaniac, the slave and victim of one idea. I saw the
master of a hound one day arrest him in full course to give one of the
hunters time to get to a certain runaway; the dog cried and struggled to
free himself and would listen neither to threats nor caresses. Knowing
he must be hungry, I offered him my lunch, but he would not touch it. I
put it in his mouth, but he threw it contemptuously from him. We coaxed
and petted and reassured him, but he was under a spell; he was bereft of
all thought or desire but the one passion to pursue that trail.
IV. THE WOODCHUCK
Writers upon rural England and her familiar natural history make no
mention of the marmot or woodchuck. In Europe this animal seems to
be confined to high mountainous districts, as on our Pacific slope,
burrowing near the snow line. It is more social or gregarious than the
American species, living in large families like our prairie-dog. In
the Middle and Eastern States our woodchuck takes the place, in some
respects, of the English rabbit, burrowing in every hillside and under
every stone wall and jutting ledge and large bowlder, from whence it
makes raids upon the grass and clover and sometimes upon the garden
vegetables. It is quite solitary in its habits, seldom more than one
inhabiting the same den, unless it be a mother and her young. It is not
now so much a wood chuck as a field chuck. Occasionally, however, one
seems to prefer the woods, and is not seduced by the sunny slopes and
the succulent grass, but feeds, as did his fathers before him, upon
roots and twigs, the bark of young trees, and upon various wood plants.
One summer day, as I was swimming across a broad, deep pool in the creek
in a secluded place in the woods, I saw one of these sylvan chucks amid
the rocks but a few feet from the edge of the water where I proposed to
touch. He saw my approach, but doubtless took me for some water-fowl,
or for some cousin of his of the muskrat tribe; for he went on with his
feeding, and regarded me not till I paused within ten feet of him and
lifted myself up. Then he did not know me; having, perhaps, never seen
Adam in his simplicity, but he twisted his nose around to catch my
scent; and the moment he had done so he sprang like a jumping-jack and
rushed into his den with the utmost precipitation.
The woodchuck is the true serf among our animals; he belongs to the
soil, and savors of it. He is of the earth, earthy. There is generally
a decided odor about his dens and lurking-places, but it is not at all
disagreeable in the clover-scented air, and his shrill whistle, as he
takes to his hole or defies the farm dog from the interior of the stone
wall, is a pleasant summer sound. In form and movement the woodchuck is
not captivating. His body is heavy and flabby. Indeed, such a flaccid,
fluid, pouchy carcass, I have never before seen. It has absolutely no
muscular tension or rigidity, but is as baggy and shaky as a skin
filled with water. Let the rifleman shoot one while it lies basking on
a sidelong rock, and its body slumps off, and rolls and spills down the
hill, as if it were a mass of bowels only. The legs of the woodchuck are
short and stout, and made for digging rather than running. The latter
operation he performs by short leaps, his belly scarcely clearing the
ground. For a short distance he can make very good time, but he
seldom trusts himself far from his hole, and when surprised in that
predicament, makes little effort to escape, but, grating his teeth,
looks the danger squarely in the face.
I knew a farmer in New York who had a very large bob-tailed churn-dog by
the name of Cuff. The farmer kept a large dairy and made a great deal of
butter, and it was the business of Cuff to spend nearly the half of each
summer day treading the endless round of the churning-machine. During
the remainder of the day he had plenty of time to sleep, and rest, and
sit on his hips and survey the landscape. One day, sitting thus, he
discovered a woodchuck about forty rods from the house, on a steep
side-hill, feeding about near his hole, which was beneath a large rock.
The old dog, forgetting his stiffness, and remembering the fun he had
had with woodchucks in his earlier days, started off at his highest
speed, vainly hoping to catch this one before he could get to his hole.
But the woodchuck, seeing the dog come laboring up the hill, sprang to
the mouth of his den, and, when his pursuer was only a few rods off,
whistled tauntingly and went in. This occurred several times, the old
dog marching up the hill, and then marching down again, having had his
labor for his pains. I suspect that he revolved the subject in his mind
while he revolved the great wheel of the churning-machine, and that
some turn or other brought him a happy thought, for next time he showed
himself a strategist. Instead of giving chase to the woodchuck when
first discovered, he crouched down to the ground, and, resting his head
on his paws, watched him. The woodchuck kept working away from the hole,
lured by the tender clover, but, not unmindful of his safety,
lifted himself up on his haunches every few moments and surveyed the
approaches. Presently, after the woodchuck had let himself down from one
of these attitudes of observation, and resumed his feeding, Cuff started
swiftly but stealthily up the hill, precisely in the attitude of a cat
when she is stalking a bird. When the woodchuck rose up again, Cuff was
perfectly motionless and half hid by the grass. When he again resumed
his clover, Cuff sped up the hill as before, this time crossing a fence,
but in a low place, and so nimbly that he was not discovered. Again the
wood chuck was on the outlook, again Cuff was motionless and hugging the
ground. As the dog nears his victim he is partially hidden by a swell in
the earth, but still the woodchuck from his outlook reports "all right,"
when Cuff, having not twice as far to run as the 'chuck, throws all
stealthiness aside and rushes directly for the hole. At that moment the
woodchuck discovers his danger, and, seeing that it is a race for life,
leaps as I never saw marmot leap before. But he is two seconds too late,
his retreat is cut off, and the powerful jaws of the old dog close upon
him.
The next season Cuff tried the same tactics again with like success; but
when the third woodchuck had taken up his abode at the fatal hole,
the old churner's wits and strength had begun to fail him, and he was
baffled in each attempt to capture the animal.
The woodchuck always burrows on a side-hill. This enables him to guard
against being drowned out, by making the termination of the hole higher
than the entrance. He digs in slantingly for about two or three feet,
then makes a sharp upward turn and keeps nearly parallel with the
surface of the ground for a distance of eight or ten feet farther,
according to the grade. Here he makes his nest and passes the winter,
holing up in October or November and coming out again in April. This is
a long sleep, and is rendered possible only by the amount of fat with
which the system has become stored during the summer. The fire of life
still burns, but very faintly and slowly, as with the draughts all
closed and the ashes heaped up. Respiration is continued, but at longer
intervals, and all the vital processes are nearly at a standstill. Dig
one out during hibernation (Audubon did so), and you find it a mere
inanimate ball, that suffers itself to be moved and rolled about
without showing signs of awakening. But bring it in by the fire, and it
presently unrolls and opens its eyes, and crawls feebly about, and if
left to itself will seek some dark hole or corner, roll itself up again,
and resume its former condition.