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More Little Beasts
of Field and Wood
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4
HARES IN THEIR FORM, OR SLEEPING PLACE
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
OF FIELD AND WOOD
William Everett Cram
25.
aA 3
Vf ovo D}|SCIENDVM[¥ ooh:
WEEE
. Boston
Small, Maynard and Company
| Publishers
COPYRIGHT, 1912
By SMALL, MAYNARD AND COMPANY
(INCORPORATED)
Entered at Stationers’ Hall
THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.
B/r.
©01A328449
Mm 7
Preface
EIN who dwell in the forest are much
given to superstition. It may be that
this should be enclosed between quotation
marks, for, while the wording may vary, the thought
itself is as old as truth. That which to one is
superstition, to another 1s merely to believe in all one
sees or has reasonable evidence for believing, whether
these things happen to be in compliance with the
known laws of science (regarding matter) or are con-
trary to them. For one who has but a passing ac-
guaintance of life in the woods and wishes to acquire
the ability to observe Nature, I would offer this
suggestion. Geta copy of Shakespeare's Midsummer-
Night's Dream illustrated by Arthur Rackham and
study carefully the drawings. In this way, better
Vil
PREPACE
than in any other I believe, will he get an idea of
what he must train his eye to See. ; |
The untrained eye sees only these birds and beasts
and insects which, either through lack of fear, con-
tinue the activity of their daily life undisturbed by
his presence, or else, because of fear, make themselves
conspicuous in fught. After he has passed them by,
many a contorted root or knot or mossy, lichen-cov-
ered stone or stump relaxes its rigidity and, shaking
out its fur or feathers as the case may be, goes about
whatever it may have been interrupted in by his
approach. The trained eye and that of the born
observer peers searchingly through the shadows
without conscious direction from its owner; dwells
long on withered leaves and lines of bark without
knowing why some one particular object holds it,
until, under its gaze, a leafless bough changes to the
antlers of a deer, a distant speck of light or shadow
advances to combine with shimmering leaves and
form the mottling on an owl’s wing; a mossy stump
discovers eyes and ears and, at his nearer approach
Vill
PREFACE
bounds off a frightened hare or lynx. He may gaze
down through still water at fish and water beetles
swimming there until the warier ones, unseen be-
fore, resume their wonted shapes again and, where he
saw but wet reed stems or pellucid wavering water
shadows, 1s now a living, active thing which passes,
it may be, too near a certain mud-buried, old, slimy
stone that seizes 1t with sudden, outstrecthed, gaping
jaws and backs away, down into deeper water, amid
all the roil and confusion it has created in gaining
ats dinner.
Al terrified rabbit dashes past over new snow
leaving, as it goes, its trail of footprints, and follow-
ing with these are smaller tracks in widely separated
pairs, yet the eye keen enough to see these, even as
they form, sees not the snow-white ermine making
them invisible, save for the one black tuft of fur,
as if it were the very spirit of the forest itself:
Is it to be wondered at if, seeing these hundreds
of apparently impossible things occurring repeatedly
in his daily walks, the inhabitant of the forest
1X
“PREFACE
learns to believe, or at the least dares not to dis-
believe in anything for which he has the evidence
of his own eyesight, or the agreeing testimony of
men of different tribes and races during the past and
present ages in the short time that men have lived
upon the Earth?
Introduction
HE purpose of this book is not so much to
instruct or give information of the ways
and private lives of our wild animals, as
it is to encourage all natural interest in such mat-
ters in order that those who have the inclination and
the time may be helped to find out for themselves and
so encourage the habit of acquiring at least a portion
of their knowledge at first-hand.
For all knowledge and learning of whatsoever
sort that we may get from books is only second-hand
knowledge, at best, something that the other fellow
found out for himself, and, at the worst, something
whith he in his turn accepted at the hands of
another.
The tendency for the past several generations has
unfortunately been in the direction of depending upon
this sort of second-hand learning, though of late we
Xl
INTRODUCTION
see increasing signs of a healthy reaction to a more
independent study of things where this 1s possible.
Yet even second-hand knowledge of a subject is
better than none and we certainly cannot acquire for
ourselves information on all subjects; and while a few
things gleaned for ourselves may outvalue, in their
educational worth, whole volumes of “the written
word” committed to memory, the written word should
not be wholly neglected nor despised, but thankfully
accepted for just what it may be worth.
— So for those who have an interest in Nature, but
whose lifework affords neither the opportunity nor
the leisure for the study of such things as I have
been writing about in these pages; what I have
found to tell of my own observation of the ways of
the woodland folk, may, I trust, offer something both
of interest and information without at the same time
spoiling the other fellow’s fun by telling that which he
might better have found out for himself—a delicate
problem which must worry the mind of every teacher
and instructor of those who are eager to learn.
XU
INTRODUCTION
Many have expressed surprise that Thoreau
should have told us so little of the lives of the wild
creatures of the forest and meadow. The little that
he has left us shows a keenness of observation and
insight coupled with a power of putting what he
saw into words, surpassing that of any other nat-
uralist. It has frequently been suggested that his
philosophical trend of thought so often held him in a
brown study in his walks that he failed to see many
things directly under his eyes. For my own part, I
cannot believe this for a moment. He was unquestion-
ably a born observer of Nature and the gift of ob-
serving 1s an instinct that, like instinct of any kind,
works for itself, free and unhampered by the working
of the mind or the body. It sees and hears and reg-
isters every track in the clay, every rustle in the
shadow and the nibbled edge of a grass blade by the
way, whether its owner be philosophizing or chop-
ping down a tree for firewood, or both at the same
time.
Thoreau was continually regretting (as what true
Xill
INTRODUCTION
naturalist has not) the days of Audubon and Nut-
tal and Wilson, when the charm of the unknown and
the spell of the wilderness still enveloped the lives of
so many of our common birds and beasts that now
are catalogued and described in minutest detail.
Thoreau was a true sportsman, though not given
to shooting, and apparently preferred to fish for horn-
pout instead of trout, for your true sportsman 1s
ever loath to spoil the sport of those who come after
him. There 1s still much to learn of even our com-
moner wild things, and opportunities of endless de-
light in the finding it out for ourselves and in finding
the right words to tell of what we have seen. And
if ever in a single line we find ourselves consciously
overstating or misrepresenting the plain truth, take
that as a sign of utter unworthiness of all the good
that might otherwise come to us from Nature. And
may the time be long in coming when Nature shall
be so thoroughly chronicled here as it is already in
Europe and Great Britain. I would not under-
value the great and valuable share which Science
X1V
INTRODUCTION
has taken in the work of Nature-study, while pro-
testing against the danger of carrying it too far.
Science's part in this work is one which could be
achieved in no other way and quite beyond the reach
of the born observer (if he would continue as such).
The born observer, by close application to scientific
methods of study, may, it 1s true, gather his share of
such facts for himself, but must pay the necessary
penalty in the loss of his natural gifts of observation
and insight, just as present-day methods of educa-
tion, while bestowing the valuable gifts of concentra-
tion and scholarly research, which fit one for routine
and professional work, deaden or even entirely de-
stroy creative power. My position in this is backed
up by the personal testimony of Darwin and Edison
and others. To quote Mrs. ‘fohn Martin in her
book, “Is Mankind Advancing.” “I have for
some years been looking for some recognition on the
part of scientists of the uselessness of large portions of
their labors. At last it has come and from the high-
est authority. Prof. Simon Newcomb, seconded by
XV
INTRODUCTION
Prof. Carl Pearson, Lord Rayleigh, Mr. G. H.
Darwin, and others, in the Carnegie Institute Re-
port for 1914 calls a halt on the frenzied accumula-
>]
tion of more facts...’ The men of science are as
fine a body of earnest, untiring, truth-seeking men as
could well be got together, yet the very intenseness of
research necessary for the success of their share of
the work, places the other and (I think it may be
fairly said) equally valuable side of Nature-study,
beyond their reach. I have taken long walks with
men of scientific mind, and they have pointed out to
me many interesting and beautiful things, which, but
for them, I should have failed to see, while they in
turn were equally blind to much that to me appeared
as obvious as a signboard on the street.
Contents
CHAPEER( 3
PAGE
Cree PU ROS Goss
CHAPTER II
Witp Cats anD Lynxes—- HarREs AND RaBBITS = 37
Memmeenevax, bob Cat’ 9. ee
Northern Hare, Gray Rabbit . . . . . 59
CHAPTER III
INIT Sy Sg SR
CHAPTER: “IV
RP ee OF
xv
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
Brown Rat— Houst Mouse— MEapow Mouse
— WuiteE-FooTtED Woop Mouse — Jump-
iwc Mousr .. °. |. 2) a
CHAPTER VI
Raccoon — Opossum — SKUNK — PoRCUPINE . 174
CHAPTER VII
Mo tes, SHREWs AND Bats . . . 2). 350
CHAPTER VIII
LIFE 0 we wee fw
CHAPTER IX
Tue Home PasrurE . . . . « = = =90n
XVill
List of Illustrations
PAGE
HARES IN THEIR FORM, OR SLEEPING PLACE . . Frontispiece
AIEEE eS 7
Mr SS ae
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eammaeiwne op LoUP CERVIER . 2... - s 43
Sota mAELIT, OR COTTONTAIL, IN SUMMER . . . =~ 47
DOeMMEEOEEEEOEN WINTER 2 . . . ee ew eee Be
ummmetinttrertAEE IN WINTER - .-. «>. . «©. + « 63
ee aERN Pree OUMMER 25. | ge eae oe 71
NORTHERN Hare IN LaTE PASE EMUE NG Co) yg trie Meghan In sc a7
SEE 83
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UREN a eee RG
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X1X
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
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JUMPING MOUSE. .- . 3 0.0. ws ee
RACCOON (00 {sesh oe a ee ws Se ee
OPOSSUM. 20 ee a a he a er
SR UMAR: icc seen eeecrery demesne ae | : vr . = =
PORCUPINE 2 60. 8 8 ee) Et
WaTeER SHREW (very rare) <5.) 3) 3) er
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XX
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WEG i
Chapter I
Wild Deer
HE first settlers of this country found wild
deer very common everywhere in the pri-
meval forest. The name “ Virginia” deer would
seem to indicate that in the latitude of the Middle
States they were most abundant. Venison was the
staple meat of the families of the pioneers; deer
were hunted at all seasons with dogs, shot with
rifles, or smooth bores loaded with slugs or buck-
3
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
shot, or even snared in their paths like rabbits.
In the north, where the snow lay deep in the woods
all winter, the deer were surrounded in their
yards by parties of hunters on snowshoes, who
slaughtered bucks, does and fawns without mercy
or forethought. As early as the middle of the
eighteenth century deer had become very scarce,
or even entirely exterminated over a large part of
the country. [Early in the nineteenth century they
had probably reached their lowest ebb in numbers.
Even in northern Maine and New Hampshire, in
the Adirondacks and Alleghanies, and in the Ever-
glades of Florida they seemed on the verge of
extinction, though a very few still lingered in the
pitch-pine barrens of New Jersey and in south-
eastern Massachusetts.
Then the game law came to the rescue of the
few persecuted survivors, though almost every-
where meeting with the utmost opposition.
When, as a boy, armed with a single-barreled
muzzle-loader, I first began hunting the fields
4
WILD DEER
and woods for squirrels, woodchucks, hawks and
crows, I should as soon have expected to get a
shot at a bear as a deer. A report then of a deer
having been seen in one of the neighboring towns
was greeted by everyone with the greatest incre-
dulity: “‘ Evidently some stray calf lost in the
woods.” A few years later more circumstantial
reports by various gunners and berry pickers, of
a buck with antlers, stirred local hunters to scour
the woods, as intent upon its destruction as if it
had been a panther or a wolf. I remember ex-
postulating with one of these who said in answer:
“If I don’t kill 1t somebody else will, or, still
worse, cripple it with a charge of small shot.”
Fhe general explanation then was that it must
have been a tame deer escaped from captivity.
At that time deer were increasing in numbers
throughout northern Maine, New Hampshire
and Vermont, and gradually working southward.
As a matter of fact— though most abundant
there — the climate of northern New England is
5
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
less favorable to them than is that farther south.
Where the snow lies deep for months, often
crusted with an icy surface that prevents them
from wandering from their yards in search of
forage, they are at the mercy of the pot hunters
and lumbermen, who take slight notice of the
law. In particularly hard winters, it is said that
large numbers of fawns and even does die from
starvation. It is to the great stretches of moun-
tain forest and wild, unsettled country that the
deer owe their safety. South of the White Moun-
tains it is only very rarely that deep snow remains
crusted long enough to put the deer on short
commons, and Just as soon as the law came to
protect them from the hunters for the greater
part of the year, the wanderers of the species
began each season to move farther and farther
southward. y
Here they found the land less rough and hilly,
and the forest area more restricted, yet with plenty
of thick evergreen forest and tangled swamps for
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WILD DEER
their concealment. Finally in small numbers they
reached the salt sea marshes and tide-water river
meadows, which evidently suited their taste par-
ticularly well, probably because of the salty taste
of the wild marsh grass that grows there.
Here in Rockingham County, in the southern-
most corner of New Hampshire, after ten years
of almost complete immunity from being hunted,
a two-weeks open season was decided upon, be-
ginning on the first of December of each year.
It so happened that in 1907, the first year when
deer shooting was allowed, the first of December
brought four inches of tracking snow, followed
by cold weather and more snow, which lasted until
almost the end of the open season.
Men and boys turned out and ranged the woods
in all directions, following the tracks of the
frightened deer, that, inexperienced in this sort .
of thing, were driven first into range of one gun
and then another. The slaughter which followed
was most unsportsmanlike, and at the end of the
9
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
season only a few deer were left to profit by the
bitter experience which had taught them wariness.
In each of the four years since then, the first half
of December has brought but little snow, and the
deer having learned caution are well able to
take care of themselves. Comparatively few have
been killed, and as a consequence the species has
increased in this vicinity almost to its former
abundance. For the first two years the law in-
sisted upon the use of shotguns with buckshot
only; many more deer were wounded than were
killed outright. My own experience during those
first few seasons of shooting deer with buckshot
pretty thoroughly disheartened me for that sort
of thing, and I was very glad when the law was
changed to permit the use of single ball in
shotguns.
On the second day of December, 1907, I found
the trail of two bucks. After following this
for an hour or so I became convinced that the
larger of the two was by no manner of means
Io
WILD DEER
unsophisticated. He led the way for the other,
circling and doubling back on his track, and then
leaping to one side into the thick undergrowth
repeatedly threw me off the trail. At last I caught
the flicker of a white tail as they dashed away,
and fired, but without effect; then after follow-
ing them for another half hour, I tried the
plan of trailing them with the utmost caution,
until from their footprints in the freezing snow
I felt certain that I was near my quarry. I
would then go thirty or forty yards to the lee-
ward and keep along parallel with their course
with a sharp lookout into every thicket and clump
of evergreens where they might be hiding. Grad-
ually working up to the windward, and finding
the trail still leading away ahead of me, I would
make another detour, and at last was rewarded
by the sight of them standing in a thick birch
growth not forty yards away. I fired at the big
buck, aiming at his neck, and he went down into
the snow, but was instantly on his feet only to fall
II
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
again at my second shot, then rise and dash
away. Meo:
I took up the trail again and followed for a
mile or more in the failing light of the short
winter day, with only one glimpse of my game
running through a swamp out of gunshot; then
the night shut down and I was unable to follow
the track any farther.
The next morning came clear and cold, and
with an early start I took up the trail where
I had dropped it the night before; within less
than half a mile I saw the great buck lying in the
snow sorely wounded. He was not twenty yards
away, and as he struggled to his feet I fired at
his neck, but even at that short range it took three
charges of buckshot to put an end to his misery.
He proved to be an old nine-point stag, and his
wariness was explained by the scars of almost a
whole charge of No. 2 shot beneath the skin of
his back, and the long-healed wound of a small
rifle bullet or slug in his neck.
i
WILD DEER
My next shot, two or three days later, was at a
spike buck that ran past me across the open pas-
ture land at a distance of about fifty yards; in
the brilliant sunlight of a winter noon I could see
the spot where my buckshot struck him behind the
shoulder. He winced and went bounding on his
way up the side of alittle knoll, then stumbled
and fell and was quite dead when I reached him.
The year following, 1908, the ground was bare
and hard-frozen, without snow, for the first ten
days of December, making deer tracking out of
the question. Then there fell ten inches of dry
snow, but deer were scarce and had learned to
keep close and lie low beneath the cover of the
young evergreens for the first few days after the
snowfall. On the fourteenth, I had been unsuc-
cessfully looking for tracks all the morning, when
most unexpectedly I caught sight of a splendid
buck standing among the young pines at the foot
peat a low rocky hill. It was a long shot, but I fired
before I realized the distance, and saw him go
13
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
bounding away up the stony slope: when I reached
his track I found the snow spotted here and there
with drops of blood.
He led me away over wind-swept ledges and
down long gullies and frozen water-courses,
through thick tangled underbrush and dark hem-
lock woods, until at last, looking ahead, I saw
three tracks in the snow instead of one and knew
that, as is the habit of deer before lying down,
he had gone back, retracing his footsteps for a
little distance, in order to see if an enemy were
following. Then I moved along parallel with
his course and half a gunshot to the leeward of
it, and saw among other half snow-buried boul- —
ders in the shadow of the pines, one which held
my attention. I raised my gun, but before I had
sighted he leaped into the air and away as I fired
both barrels in quick succession. Half a mile
farther on, in making the circuit of a clump of
young pines at the edge of a stump-dotted clearing,
I saw no sign of his hoofprints and knew that,
14
WILD DEER
either he was in hiding there, or else had doubled
back on his tracks and outwitted me. Retreating
in my own footsteps until I had the northwest
wind in my face, I pushed my way cautiously in
among the little pines, which covered perhaps
half an acre, and though hardly higher than my
head were so dense and thickly crowded together
as to be almost impenetrable.
Suddenly I saw the deer dash across a little
opening; I fired both barrels, saw him stumble, but
regain his feet and vanish among the trees. Fol-
lowing his hoofprints, which now showed him to
be traveling with enormous bounds, down into a
hollow and up the slope beyond, I came face to
face with a startled woodchopper standing open-
mouthed and astounded. WHe declared that the
biggest buck he had ever seen had almost run him
down, had turned its course when almost upon
him, and gone from sight as quickly as it had come.
After that I followed the wounded deer for
miles, but he was traveling down the wind, having
1s
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
succeeded in getting to the lecwranet of me, and I
saw him no more. Darkness came down over the
forest and I made my way home disheartened with
my day’s work, the last of the hunting season for
that year. |
In 1909 conditions for deer shooting were very
similar to those of the previous year, though with
one or two light snowfalls and warm, thawy days
for tracking. On one of these I followed a
trail through low, wet woodland, picking my way
with caution between fallen twigs, any one of
which if trod upon might have startled my quarry.
Peering through wet blueberry bushes and maple
saplings I saw the merest flicker of a white tail -
not thirty yards away. I felt certain that a deer
was there, but could not be sure that it was not a
fawn. After waiting motionless for what seemed
a long time, I took a few cautious steps, still keep-
ing my eye on that point among the bushes where
I felt certain that a deer was hiding; a twig
snapped beneath my moccasin and the deer sprung :
16
WILD DEER
into sight, clearing bushes higher than a man’s
head at a bound. I fired while he was in the air
and he stumbled and fell as he came down, but
gathered himself and was away out of gunshot
before I could reload. In the soft earth of the
swampland I followed him without much diff-
culty, till coming to the ledgy slope of a hill over-
grown with ground junipers and dense young pines,
I lost the trail, and though [| circled the place in
ever-widening rings for an hour or more, I failed
to pick it up again and was forced to the conclu-
sion that the unfortunate deer must be lying in
hiding or dead somewhere beneath that thick,
matted growth of junipers. I then and there fore-
swore the use of buckshot in deer hunting.
Last year, 1910, on the afternoon of the first
day of the open season, | trailed a deer over soft
pine needles and wet leaves through an alder
swamp until I heard the faint rustle of his feet
beneath the pines, and then crouched motionless,
watching for a sight. For some time I heard him
17
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
moving about, evidently feeding. The light was
failing fast, and when finally I caught sight of my
quarry it was just the merest glimpse as he crossed
a little vista between the tree trunks. A little
later I saw him again, but not clearly enough for
a safe shot, and I was determined, if possible, not
to have another wounded deer escape me as the
last two had done.
I crouched, listening to faint sounds of little
hoofs moving about here and there, until the soft
night wind springing up, sighed among the pine
boughs overhead and carried my scent in his
direction. With a whistle of alarm he dashed
away, stopping at a safe distance among the dark
forest shadows to stamp defiance, or a warning
to his fellows that danger lurked near. It was
then too dark to follow him farther and I gave -
up the chase.
A few days after that I woke in the morning to
find the ground sprinkled with snow and a cold
north wind clearing the sky of clouds.
18
WILD DEER
About midforenoon I found the tracks of three
buck deer in a hardwood upland growth. They
led down the wind and had evidently been made
several hours, but I followed until they showed
more freshly made and led away along a rocky
ridge toward a thick pine growth on a southern
hillside. Believing the deer to be in hiding there,
I bore away to the eastward, following down the
course of a narrow rock-strewn gully through
which a little spring brook flowed.
Just before I reached the mouth of the gully,
where it opened out to form a little tussocky
meadow shut in by the pine woods, I noticed
an old, weatherbeaten, grayish-tawny pine stub
among the green foliage of the pines on the oppo-
site hillside. As I gazed at it intently it gradually
took on the outline of the head and shoulders of
a stag with antlers mimicking wind-bleached knots
and broken branches. I raised my gun and fired,
- aiming at the shoulder, and a splendid three-point
buck dropped in his tracks never to rise again.
19
MORE LITTLE. BEASTS
My ounce ball had gone clear through shoulder
and shoulder-blade and the bones of the neck and
out the other side. be,
At the sound of my shot another deer sprung
up and dashed away among the trees. The law
last season allowed one to kill two deer, yet though
my other barrel was still loaded, | am glad to be
able to say that I felt no temptation to fire at
him then or to follow his tracks, which led up
wind and might have given me another shot.
This year, 1911, conditions have all been in
favor of the deer, even more so than during the
three previous seasons; two weeks of beauti-
fully mild weather without rain or snow, and so
nearly windless as to render noiseless walking
over the dry floor of the woodlands out of the
question for anyone not born an Indian.
On two days only has the earth been sufficiently ©
thawed to make deer tracking possible. About
the only chance for a shot has been to lie in wait,
hoping that the deer might come within gunshot
20
WILD DEER
of their own accord, and this has not happened to
be my luck this season.
Yet, though I have not so much as fired at a
deer, I feel that these two weeks have been well
spent; days of quiet enjoyment in the wild lands,
seeing the little woodland folk busy about their
own affairs. Day after day I have risen early,
- seen to the furnace, started the kitchen fires, done
my work at the barn and got my own breakfast
in time to be in the woods before daylight.
I have watched the stars grow dim and the
light come in the east, while I listened to and en-
deavored to identify the various footfalls and
distant faint sounds of the forest, hoping that each
might prove to be a deer approaching.
Morning and evening I have heard the owls
hooting and the foxes barking on the hillside.
I have found deer tracks and well-trodden paths,
but somehow, now that the season has opened, the
_ deer themselves are very hard to find. Late in
the afternoon of one of the first days of the sea-
21
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
son, with the earth still frozen too hard for track-
ing and the outlook for getting a shot at a deer —
about as unpromising as it possibly could be, I
bethought myself that there was no meat in the
house, with the market four miles away and the
butcher not coming until the day after the morrow.
It was still early in the season, and, the law
allowing only one deer for each hunter this year,
I felt quite certain of getting mine before the
season was past, for they have been increasing
pretty steadily in numbers for the last three years.
Last summer on more than one occasion I had
seen them in parties of three or four together in
the open field near my house. I determined
therefore to take home a pair of rabbits for to-
morrow’s dinner, and removing the ball cartridges
and replacing them with No. 6 shot, I went hunt-
ing for rabbit instead of deer. In half an hour
I had my first one safely tucked away in the pocket
of my shooting coat, and paused for a moment to
consider whether it would not be wiser to reload
22
WILD DEER
with ball, at least in my left barrel, on the chance
of getting a shot at a deer in the low woodland on
my way home. As luck would have it I decided
on rabbit shot instead of ball, and also as luck
would have it, in crossing a little intervale of birch
and maple sprout-land between dark hemlock
woods, I started a fine buck that ran for a few
rods in plain sight, leaped a combination brush
and barbed-wire fence, stood motionless for al-
most a second at the edge of the hemlocks, and
then noiselessly vanished among the black shadows
before I could change my shot cartridges for
ball.
I followed for a little distance, but soon lost
the trail, and leaving the woodland shadows for
the open, went home across the flat meadow-land
in the gathering dusk, hardly feeling a regret, at
the time, that I had thrown away my first chance
of the season for a shot.
For had I succeeded in killing my deer then,
what excuse should I have left for more days of
23
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
leisurely still-hunting in the late autumn woods?
however, I must admit that as successive days went
by without offering me another chance, I came to
regret more and more that I had chosen the prob-
ability of rabbit meat for the possibility of veni-
son, on that particular occasion. ;
Our common wild deer, the white-tailed deer
as it is now generally called, is possessed of won-
derful powers of adapting itself to circumstances
and changing conditions wherever it is given the
slightest chance. In the White Mountains you
will find its trodden paths winding upward among
the rocky ledges and precipices, as high as the
woods ascend. In many places where deer tracks -
show them to be as abundant as rabbits, you may
lie in wait, day after day, or range the woods with
noiseless footfall, without getting so much as a
glimpse of one. After a very few seasons, how-
ever, of immunity from being hunted, particu-
larly where there is much cultivated land with
wide-stretching pastures and meadows, they lose
24
i i OO i
WILD DEER
much of their native wildness. ‘This is not to be
wondered at, but it is somewhat more astonishing
that, where a short open season is allowed each
fall, the deer, though as wild and difficult to find
—jin spite of the narrow limits of their wood-
land hiding places — as are those who inhabit the
limitless mountain fastnesses, should, during the
rest of the year, regain not a little of their fear-
lessness and freedom of movement, and not in-
frequently be seen, even on bright days, in the
cultivated open land and orchards.
This leads one to the belief that, wherever deer
retain all their wildness and secretive ways
throughout the year, the law is but lightly held.
In farming regions there is always more or less
complaint of the damage done by them to grow-
ing crops and young orchards. For my own part,
while I not infrequently see them in my field dur-
ing the warm months, and find their telltale hoof-
prints with much greater frequency, I cannot say
that I have ever suffered one dollar’s loss from
25
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
these visits. I have seen them, by twos and threes,
enter a field of tasseling corn, and a little later
emerge from the other side, yet, following in their
footsteps, could see no sign of even a leaf nipped
off. Undoubtedly, on occasion, new crops just
springing from the soil, in particular the tender
low-growing kinds, may be seriously damaged, or
even ruined, by repeated visits. Young orchard
trees also are often too severely pruned by deer
who in the late winter and early spring nibble
the tender bark and twigs.
My cousin, whose farm lies next to mine, had a
number of most promising young apple trees
ruined in August by an old buck, who perversely -
chose these particular trees on which to rub off
the loosening velvet from his antlers, and at the
same time rubbed off most of the bark from the
stems and lower branches. Throughout the woods
where deer are common you will find young
straight-stemmed trees a few inches in diameter,
-— ash or maple or chestnut, — with their smooth
26
XQ
BN A AAS \S SX WS
ow NN \\\ \
aN ‘i \ as
BUCK DEER
Sele sebba
po ptiate de pet
”
As he
a
onte
WILD DEER
bark hanging in shreds and tatters, where a buck
has polished his new-grown antlers. At times,
even quite late in the fall, I have heard the rat-
tling of antlers on wood, deep in some hidden
thicket or swamp, but have never yet succeeded in
catching a buck in the act. :
They are said to be possessed of a belligerent
and war-like spirit at such times, ready to charge
and fight any other male of their species that may
approach. On more than one occasion men have
been attacked and seriously injured, or even killed
by them in parks and regions where deer have
been overprotected for a number of years. For
their first year the young bucks are without antlers,
but in their second summer, slender, straight horns
arise from their foreheads, and they are then
known as “spike bucks,’ by the hunters. All
~ buck deer, both young and old, shed their antlers
late in the winter. hese become loosened where
they join’the skull and are dropped off, or rubbed
off against a tree. The following summer a new
29.
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
pair spring out, completing their growth in the
short space of a few weeks, each year showing
a new prong, until the full set of nine prongs
‘nine-point buck.”’ |
At first the antlers are soft and tender, full
makes him a
of little blood vessels, covered with a shaggy
growth of velvet, and so sensitive that their owner
is continually pestered and annoyed by the biting
flies and mosquitoes of the swamps, for the first
few weeks before they have had time to harden.
Thus, that which is to be his weapon of defense
is now his most vulnerable point.
The shed antlers, softened by melting snow and
spring rains, are nibbled at and often entirely .
devoured by woodmice, squirrels and hedgehogs,
perhaps for the lime that they contain, for of
actual nourishment they can have but very little;
still, at that season of the year, all the wildwood
folk are on short commons, and undoubtedly are
often glad to get even so unpalatable a morsel as
a deer’s horns. I have an antler showing dis-
30
WILD DEER
tinctly the marks of little teeth, which had de-
voured a considerable portion of it when it was
found. In spite of the number of antlers that are
dropped in the woods each winter, it is only very
rarely that one is found.
The little fawns are born in May, either as lone
babies or as twins. They are beautifully spotted
with white on a buff ground.
I have watched a little one only a day or two
old, following its mother as she nibbled and
browsed here and there in a little, sunlit opening
among the maples. At first they are very secre-
tive in their ways and rarely seen. When their
mother is away they lie close hidden in the grass
or bushes, and will allow themselves to be all but
trodden upon before they will stir or make the
slightest sound. Although the mother may have
wandered away a quarter of a mile or more while
feeding, her sensitive ears warn her at once of
your distant approach, no matter how carefully
you may tread. She follows you, lurking anx-
31 :
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
iously near, without showing herself, however,
unless you actually succeed in discovering her
treasure. When her alarm for its safety over-
comes her timidity, she will run circling around
you, bleating and stamping in her terror and ap-
prehension. After mid-summer, the fawns, now
nearly half grown, are frequently to be seen feed-
ing, either by themselves, or in company with
their mother, at the edge of grass fields and
meadows. :
--One rainy morning last spring, while trout fish-
ing, I witnessed a very pretty little woodland
comedy. First I heard an angry stamping, and
saw an old buck deer standing among the birches, —
his head held high, eyeing me. He was hardly
half a dozen rods away, but the falling rain pre-
vented him from getting my scent, and my wet
khaki clothes so matched the color of a deer at
that season, he evidently was doubtful of my
identity. Presently a doe and a yearling fawn
showed themselves. [he fawn must have been
32
WILD DEER
long weaned, but now the sight of a little new
brother or sister taking its nourishment had evi-
dently awakened his early appetite for milk, for
he followed his mother, hardly bigger than him-
self, teasing to be allowed a share.
33
ww
Wi
eB,
/}
TAS AD
==> =
Wh
x
Ss
ESS SW SX
—— SW
©
‘Nb.
WILDCAT OR BAY LYNX
1
om]
a
Chapter If
Wild Cats and Lynxes— Hares and
| Rabbits
EN TIFICALLY speaking, we have no true
wildcats in this country. We have, however,
beside the common wildcat, or bob cat, or bay
lynx, numerous members of the race of domestic
cat run wild, in varying stages of savagery, from
those which, obeying the call of the wild, leave
their homes on long, lonely hunts of weeks’ or
months’ duration, to the more nearly wild sort,
born in the woods of parents who themselves
were born, and have always lived, a wild life.
37.
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
Some of these approach very nearly to the type
of true wildcat, found in the Old World, that
many of the earlier naturalists believed to have
sprung from the domestic cat in precisely this
way.
Very few house cats are entirely domestic, fond
as they may be of a warm fireside and cooked
food and petting, the step back to a more or less
wild state is with them very easily taken.
The wildcat of Europe is like a heavily built,
thick furred, bushy tailed tabby, and many a fam-
ily of our own tabbies, after a generation or two
of life in the wildwood, gives evidence of revert-
ing to that type, particularly if there should chance ~
to be a trace of ‘‘ down east’ coon-cat blood in
their veins; but there is this marked difference,
that with very little encouragement most of them
are ready to return to civilization, at least tem-
porarily, while the true wildcat appears to be
impossible of domestication, even when taken in
the kitten stage.
38
WILDCATS AND LYNXES
The American wildcat or bob cat is of an en-
tirely different species. It is a genuine lynx, long
bodied, heavy limbed, short tailed and flat faced.
Its fur is reddish-tawny, spotted with black, or
dusky. Now while it is true that the bob cat
when cornered is about as savage and ugly a beast
as any that roams the woods, it 1s ridiculous to
think of the dwellers in country places being often
thrown into a condition of nervous terror at the
report of a wildcat seen in the region; and
just as ridiculous is it that, when such a rumor is
once started, there will be dozens of repetitions
by one and another who believe that they have
seen the creature prowling about in search of
victims.
As far as I can discover, wildcats are not com-
mon in any part of New England, and in most
places are exceedingly rare. I have never yet seen
one in the wild state to be certain of its identity,
‘nor even succeeded in trapping one, though I have
followed tracks in the snow which I felt certain
39
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
- were made by them. ‘They seem to be about the
most wild and retiring of all the wood dwellers.
I am inclined to think that a family of them
might inhabit a berry pasture near a country vil-
lage for years and none of the inhabitants of that
village be any the wiser concerning them. Their
russet and buff spotted fur blends so beautifully
with the elusive light and shade of the woodland
ferns and undergrowth, and their furred feet
carry them so noiselessly, the chance of one of
their number being seen and identified is very
small indeed. 7
Very possibly one or another of the fleeting
glimpses I have had of disappearing furry backs -
which I have failed to identify might on closer
approach have revealed themselves as wildcats.
Wildcats and lynxes seem to prefer thick
swamps and bushy hillsides and old forest clear-
ings where the tree tops and branches left by the
lumbermen, and the new growth and brambles,
make just such tangles as rabbits love to dwell in, ©
40
WILDCATS AND LYNXES
for rabbits are the bob cats’ favorite game. In
such places they can lurk in hiding, or sun them-
selves stretched at length along crumbling logs at
noon day, and at twilight start out to hunt rab-
bits along their trodden paths.
In many parts of New England they are said
to be increasing with the increase of wild deer.
It is not improbable that they may kill fawns from
time to time in spite of the vigilance of the old
doe; they may also get an occasional stray lamb
in distant hillside pastures. They seem to have
no regular homes, but lead a rather vagabond
sort of life, a cave among the ledges, a hollow
tree, or prostrate log being their nearest approach
to a dwelling place. At other times they sleep
in-sun or shade, either curled up in some sheltered
nook among the brambles or else stretched along
the branch of a tree, and ever with keen eyes, and
ears alert for every faintest rustle that may tell
them of approaching game, that may appease their
own hunger, or else be taken to the secret hiding
4!
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
place where the fierce-eyed little bob kittens
wait.
The Canada lynx, called by the French Cana-
dians Loup Cervier, is larger and more heavily
built than the bob cat, with shorter tail and long
black ear tufts and longer, thicker fur of soft
blended gray. It is occasionally found in the
Northern States.
Its habits do not appear to be very different
from those of the bob cat. It is a northern spe-
cies, found in most abundance along the southern
boundary of the barren grounds.
Lynxes, like one or the other of these species,
are found all round the world along the northern ~
forest line. Branches of the family have spread
southward, wherever conditions are most favor-
able, as far as the tropics, although the northern
forests seem to be the natural home of the race.
“Wherever found, certain characteristics would
seem to mark them off from the other cats, though
cats they certainly are beyond a doubt, the short
42
YSIIAYSD deo7 YO ‘XNA VOVNVO
Sy
rer
’
patel st reape
/
HARES AND RABBITS
tail and long-tufted ears and their peculiar man-
ner of traveling with leaps and bounds being most
characteristic. ‘Their flesh is said to be light col-
ored and well flavored, and is not infrequently
eaten by white and half-breed hunters as well as
~ Indians.
Hares and rabbits as a family have been the
source of much speculation and argument among
naturalists of all ages. The present tendency
would appear to be towards the opinion that
differences between them are less fixed than
was once held to be the case. Each of us has
the privilege of holding his own view in the
matter, and for my own part I am inclined to
believe that the differences which distinguish the
rabbits are all modifications brought about by
domestication: First that all the originally wild
species were hares, which are merely a sort of
degenerate offshoot of the lynxes adapted to a
vegetable diet; that domestication and confine-
45
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
ment developed the weaker, short-legged type
known as rabbits, and that all wild rabbits are
descended from tame ancestors that at one time
or another have escaped and run wild. Our com-
mon gray rabbit or cottontail possesses many
characteristics both of the rabbit and hare family.
The fact that there is no record of its having
been found in any part of this country in the
days of the pioneers would seem to indicate that
its ancestors were brought here as tame English
or Dutch rabbits, and that life in the forest has
brought about a partial reversion to the original
hare type. I believe that the modification of any
species is much more quickly brought about than
is commonly supposed, particularly in a species
that breeds and matures as rapidly as the
hares and rabbits. Four or five hundred gen-
erations have had time to live their lives and
die since the time at which we may suppose
the first tame rabbits escaped and ran wild in
this country.
46
a
aS
=
woo
—
—
SSS SES
— —
4 i fi hey 2 u
Mihi a HANAN a 2
i), y i a) ht eee
Oi TT NOUN AS
f Yi A \ oh fd f we ji 2A ZL _|
4}! ' u ali \ \i E
aan
fi
wy
VSN
N
\\
\ iY ‘\ iH \\
wen K \
GRAY RABBIT, OR COTTONTAIL, IN SUMMER
HARES AND RABBITS
~<In- making a distinction between hares and rab-
bits, naturalists in Europe have as a rule placed
particular stress on the fact that rabbits at birth
are “blind, naked and helpless,” while young
hares are born with open eyes, a coat of short
fur, and more or less ability to take care of them-
selves. Another distinction considered perhaps
of even greater importance is that while rabbits
live in holes in the earth which they dig for
themselves, hares never do, but make their nests
in forms, as they are called, in the grass or
bushes. Now, though our common cottontails
are classed as hares, we find them quite as fre-
quently dwelling in underground burrows as in
forms, and as a rule bringing forth their young
under ground. Only last May I saw a family of
them turned out by the plough, in an old pasture,
and they most certainly corresponded to the gen-
erally accepted classification of young rabbits,
being blind, naked and helpless beyond dispute.
Winter or summer you will find the feet of any
49
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
cottontail that you may have the chance to ex-
amine, stained and discolored by the subsoil from
the depths of its burrow. I have never known a
cottontail to dig its own burrow, its habit being
instead to appropriate the disused burrow of a
woodchuck, of which there are enough and to
spare. Cottontails feed principally in the morn-
ing and evening twilight. On first leaving their
holes they stop, with just enough of their heads
above ground to enable them to see and hear
without themselves being seen. A half hour may
elapse before they venture to come out into sight,
and in the meantime the big ears are taking in
every faintest rustle within the radius of half a_
mile, when the winds are still. The wrinkled nose
is continually in motion, sniffing the air for the
scent of fox, dog, man or weasel to the wind-
ward. ‘“Brer Rabbit,’’ sitting motionless as a
statue, in his doorway, exhibits no outward mani-
festation of interest in his surroundings, yet his
keen senses are forever conveying to his little
50
HARES AND RABBITS
brain news of all that is going on in the sur-
rounding woods. Whatever his grade of intel-
ligence — and I am inclined to think it rather
below that of the majority of the wood dwellers
—it is evidently high enough to keep him from
carelessly running into danger; undoubtedly he
owes his safety to instinct oftener than to reason,
as is true of all of us who lead active, out-of-
door lives. I have passed no small part of my
life in the woods, and as a matter of course have
seen thousands of wild rabbits at one time and
another, and it is astonishing, when I come to
think of it, how very few of them [| have caught
unawares, —a thing that has almost always hap-
pened in stormy weather when scent and hearing
are not to be relied upon. Brer Rabbit knows
if you or any other enemy is in the vicinity, and
knowing this holds himself motionless wherever
he may happen to be, whether in his doorway
or crouching in his form on the sunny side of a
stump, or squatting midway in his path or beneath
51
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
the bush he was browsing upon. And just there
he remains. “Time a of no value to him, no
amount of patient waiting on your part is likely
to be rewarded by the satisfaction of seeing him
resume the interrupted course of his affairs. Of
all the woodland dwellers I have had the
chance of observing, deer, foxes, mink, otter,
woodchucks or mice, a pretty large proportion
Was actively engaged at one thing or another,
— hunting, fishing or feeding, playing or work-
ing; but, as I have said before, not one Brer Rabbit
in hundreds have I thus caught unawares. Often
— though not invariably — I hear him give warn-
ing to his fellows of my approach by thumping -
the ground with a furred hind foot. It fre-
quently happens that in a morning’s walk I see
three or four rabbits crouching half hidden in the |
undergrowth and evidently believing themselves
unseen. In the matter of avoiding their enemies
in the open they certainly exhibit considerable
slyness, but in no other way, so far as my obser-
| =
HARES AND RABBITS
vation goes, do they give evidence of the least
ingenuity either as individuals or as a species.
All the other rodents are possessed of construc-
tive ability, either as builders, or diggers in the
earth. While the wild rabbits of the Old World
have learned the art of making underground
homes of their own, in this country they live
after the manner of the wildcats, lynxes and deer,
taking things as they find them. The woodchuck
holes which they appropriate are never remodeled
in any way, not even to the extent of carrying
in grass or dry leaves for the nest, which is com-
monly lined with their own fur, either shed in
the natural season or plucked out intentionally.
_. Though they go day after day in the fall to
certain old apple trees at the edge of the woods,
to nibble at the fruit half buried among the
fallen leaves beneath, it never seems to occur to
them that by simply carrying home an apple in
their teeth, after each visit, they could have un-
frozen apples to eat in the bitter weather that
53
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
is sure to follow. When such weather does come
they are forced to subsist upon a diet of maple
twigs and blackberry stalks, though under the
snow is still half the old trees’ crop of fruit,
unfrozen in those winters when the snow comes
before the extreme cold. The form where Brer
Rabbit loves to sun himself on winter afternoons
shows no arrangement of twigs and weed stalks,
such as we see in the stools and resting places
of beaver and muskrat, but is simply a chosen
spot trodden flat by use. Mr. Rabbit dislikes
rainy weather and objects to wetting his feet
quite as much as cats do, yet like the cats he
can swim well enough when necessity puts him .
to the test. In the seaboard marshes of the
Southern States and in the swamps of the lower
Mississippi are found the marsh hare and the
water hare, evidently members of the northern
hare, or Jack rabbit, tribe, that have taken to
dwelling in wet lands and adapted themselves
to the situation. [he marsh hare in particular,
54
GRAY RABBIT IN WINTER
s L mM Ss
¥, 4 5) :
' a, 4 Ted Ly
D
; « ‘a
, ve
‘ -
-
\
“
J cmd
si
4
eye
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HARES AND RABBITS
with its short legs, short, rounded ears, dull,
mud-colored fur, and feet almost destitute of hair
beneath, has become nearly as aquatic as a
muskrat. The water hare, like the Jack rabbit,
northern hare and polar hare, was undoubtedly
native to this country ages before the white men
came. The northern hare —commonly known
as white rabbit or snowshoe rabbit — is now only
found in northern New England and New York,
ranging south a little way down the Alleghanies.
North of the Canadian boundary line it is com-
mon as far as the woods extend, beyond which
its place is taken by the polar hare of the arctic
region. In earlier days the northern hare was
abundant in all the Eastern States as far south as
Virginia; the gray rabbit or cottontail was then
unheard of. My father has told me that he re-
membered the first gray rabbits reported by the
local gunners here in southern New Hampshire.
They were naturally assumed to be tame rabbits
run wild, and were known as “ conies’’ to dis-
xe
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
tinguish them from the northern hare, which was
always called rabbit. At the time that I first
began to roam the woods this division of titles
still held; a rabbit was a rabbit and a cony was
a cony, though at that time rabbits were already
becoming scarce and conies the predominant spe-
cies. Then the white rabbit practically vanished,
only to reappear again in ever diminishing num-
bers at recurring intervals of seven or eight years.
I can count three of these returns of the white
rabbit to these woods within my own memory,
the last in 1894. On the heavily timbered slopes
ot Pine Hill in North Hampton, N. H., a little
colony of them lingered on until within compara-
tively few years, but the last time that I hunted
those woods, in the fall of 1909, I found no sign
of them, nor can I learn of any spot where they
are to be found in any abundance south of Lake
Winnipiseogee. On the mountains to the north
of the Lake they appear to be the predominant
species. I found them even abundant on the
58
HARES AND RABBITS
rocky, treeless summit of Mt. Keasarge, where
were only wind-stunted whortleberry bushes and
such low growths for them to hide in.
It is to be regretted that the fascinating title
of cony as locally applied to the gray rabbit is
fast falling into disuse; now that the white rabbit
has practically disappeared, rabbit is becoming
the common name for its successor the gray
rabbit, cottontail—the almost universal cogno-
men south and west— is seldom heard in this
part of the country.
The northern hare, from what I have seen of
it in a state of nature, appears to be even less
intelligent than the gray rabbit; depending for
safety upon its tremendous powers of running
and leaping, and a coat of fur that matches its
surroundings season for season. During the late
spring, summer and early autumn it is cinnamon
or russet brown, to match the ferns and fallen
leaves and pine needles beneath the shadow of
the evergreens. In winter it is white like the
59
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
snow, and in the late spring and early fall shows
a curious blending of colors, white and russet
and gray fur in varying proportions, as the sea-
sons come and go. The northern hare is an in-
habitant of deep swamps and heavily wooded hill-
sides; where a colony is established you will find
the well-trodden paths and roadways leading
from place to place. Although they have no
holes or regular dwelling places of any sort they
are wonderfully clever at keeping out of sight.
The game of hide-and-seek is a matter of life —
and death with them, and through generation
after generation of playing it with one opponent
after another their race has succeeded in bring- -
ing it pretty nearly to a state of perfection. Its
food is much the same as that of the gray rab-
bit, browsing and nibbling here and there about
the forests and swamps with never a thought of
the morrow, but at all times instantly alert for
any distant sound or scent of a possible enemy.
In midnight storms of wind and rain they do not
60
HARES AND RABBITS
retire to the protection of underground homes or
the cavities of dying trees or even a cave among
the rocks; instead they simply .crouch with
humped backs under the dripping boughs while
the storm howls through the forest; their near-
est approach to domiciles of their own is in the
winter when heavy snows burden the sighing
evergreens. As the storm comes on, these white
rabbits, having satisfied their hunger with nib-
bling of twigs and tender bark, hop away to the
shelter of the young spruces, to crouch there
under the low thick branches while the burden
of falling snow increases and the over-weighted
boughs droop under the gathering load until
trees of a few summers’ growth show only as
white mounds on the white floor of the forest.
But beneath each of these white mounds is a
snug little room surrounding the trunk of the
tree, with a carpet of dry needles under foot and
a roof of low, snow-buried branches overhead;
in this hidden nook the hare cowers. half asleep,
61
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
protected from wind and weather and in com-
parative safety from the attacks of the hungry
prowlers without. He may pass several days in
these cramped quarters, nibbling at such herbage
as he is able to uncover by nosing into the sur-
rounding snow, until at last his increasing hunger
urges him to push his way up through the drifts
out into the open air. His broad hind feet —
which have earned him the title of snowshoe
rabbit — carry him easily over the new fallen
snow as he hops away, following the course of
his buried path until joining the tracks of others
of his kind, a new path is tracked out and in a
short time becomes a well-beaten roadway. In |
the open timber these rabbit roads are clearly
visible at a distance; then for long reaches are
hidden from sight under the snow-laden boughs
of the undergrowth, in places being veritable
snow tunnels or subways roofed with snow.
Are hares and rabbits rodents or are they
merely a degenerate branch of the carnivora
62
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-
HARES AND RABBITS
forced by circumstances during some long for-
gotten period of hardship and poor hunting to
adapt themselves to a vegetable diet? I have
studied the question from one point of view and
another until fully convinced that this is the true
solution of many a vexed point concerning them.
On more than one occasion | had been asked
by people of more than common intelligence if
I believed it possible for cats and rabbits to in-
terbreed. My questioner in each instance felt
perfectly certain that cases under observation
bore sufficient proof to settle the matter beyond
all ordinary doubt. Now while classed among
the rodents, hares and rabbits have always been
in a group by themselves. All other rodents are
characterized by their incisors; two pairs. of
strong, chisel-like teeth for gnawing. In the
hares and rabbits the under jaw is furnished in
this manner, but in the upper jaw these are re-
placed by four: small and comparatively weak
teeth that resemble the front teeth of a flesh eater
65
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
quite as much as they do the typical incisors of
a rodent. In very young specimens there is yet
another pair of even smaller teeth both in the
upper and lower jaw beside the permanent ones,
and it is a fact worth noting that in kittens and
very young-rabbits the dentition is more nearly
alike than in’ adults. Now in pointing out the
most insurmountable barrier to any possible re-
lationship between cats and rabbits one would
naturally indicate the distinguishing character of
their teeth; yet while classifying animals by den-
tition we must not lose sight of the fact that the
variation of the teeth was undoubtedly caused
by the use and disuse of different teeth incident
to the nature of the food the animal lived upon,
and that we have no way of knowing just how
long a period is required to bring about this
modification. That the rodents became separated
very far back in the history of animal life is a
self-evident fact well borne out by sufficient tes-
timony of fossil remains of the different ages,
66
HARES AND RABBITS
but let us suppose that the ancestors of our hares
and rabbits were not included among the earlier
rodents. Consider the possibility that at some
much later period when the cat family had at-
tained to something like its present stage of de-
velopment, an island cut off from the mainland,
should in the absence of native carnivora_ be-
come overrun with mice, lemmings, and other
small and defenceless animals; then that during
a period of excessively cold winters a number
of the smaller varieties of wildcats or lynxes
driven southward by the cold or scarcity of food
should find a way across the ice to this island,
where, finding the hunting so good, they would
remain until cut off from the mainland by the
melting of the ice. Here they would breed and
multiply until their numbers were increased to
such an extent that at last the small animals that
they had been living upon would be completely
exterminated. Now in cases of this kind there
are two courses which animals may follow ac-
67
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
cording to the laws of Nature, for when the
supply of food is cut off no animal will give up
its hold on life without a tremendous struggle.
The larger and stronger of these cats would
begin to prey upon the smaller and weaker ones,
while these in their turn would be under the
necessity of feeding upon whatever they could
get, and long before the last of the mice and in-
sects had vanished would be tasting and nibbling
at grass and berries and mushrooms, as cats,
weasels and foxes will ever do in times of famine.
Now the law of the survival of the fittest works
unceasingly and is ever ready at just such an
opening to step in and work surprising changes; -
use and disuse are its most potent factors; only
a very small proportion of the cats on the island
could possibly survive through many seasons of
such privations, and these few would be the ones
best able to adapt themselves to the changed
conditions, viz. certain of the larger ones that
proved strong and active enough to succeed in
68
HARES AND RABBITS
killing a sufficient number of their weaker
brethren, and those among the smaller ones that
managed to survive on a vegetable diet and at
the same time maintain that swiftness and agility
which formerly had enabled them to catch more
than their share of the rapidly diminishing supply
of mice and insects and “ other small deer,” and
must now insure their safety from being caught
and eaten in their turn. ‘The kittens of these few
survivors would unquestionably have a somewhat
better chance than their parents, one of Nature’s
foremost laws being that the coming generation
must be cherished, even at the expense of the
one that went before; nourished for a time on
milk (though the supply must necessarily be con-
siderably shortened on account of the meager
diet of their mothers), they would at a very
early age learn to follow the example of the
older ones and take to nibbling at such plants as
had proved to be most nourishing to their race,
in most cases quickly adapting themselves to
69
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
a wholly vegetable diet. [hen the law of use
and disuse would step in. As generation suc-
ceeded generation of these small, grass-eating
cats, the sharp two-edged canine teeth of their
race (always inconspicuous in kittens) would grad-
ually cease to be developed, while the incisors,
which in a full-grown cat you may see as six
small teeth set in a row between the projecting
canines, would prove the more useful and in time
would become the principal cutting or gnawing
teeth, following the same law of development
through need which ages before, we may sup-
pose, built up the characteristic gnawing teeth
of the true rodents. Other changes would of -
course be going on all the time. From con-
stantly pushing through between the stems of
bushes and thick grass (among which they would
naturally find their safest hiding places) the
round flat head of the cat tribe would give place
to a narrow shape, which would have the added
advantage of placing the eyes where they could
70
IN SUMMER
NORTHERN HARE
$
casino ned
naa
on
HARES AND RABBITS
see above and behind and on all sides at any
time to forestall the possible approach of an
enemy, whereas the eyes of a cat are set to focus
directly in front in order better to see the quarry
ahead, like those of a bird of prey. Following
out along the same line we can see how the ears
would grow longer to catch every faintest sound
that might come down the wind, the hind legs
longer for speed in running away, while the claws
would lose their sharp tearing hooks through
disuse; for the economy of Nature is such that
only those essentials constantly in use may be
long retained in perfection. Thus at the end of
a few hundred thousand years (more or less)
the inhabitants of our island would have evolved
two separate types. Darwin says, ‘‘ Whatever
the cause may be of each slight difference in the
offspring from their parents (and a cause for
each must exist), it is the steady accumulation,
through natural selection, of such differences,
when beneficial to the individual, that gives rise
73
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
to all the more important modifications of struc-
ture, by which the innumerable beings on the
face of the earth are enabled to struggle with
each other, and the best adapted to survive.”
Now let us take a hare or a rabbit of any
species and compare it at different ages with the
other rodents and then with the smaller mem-
bers of the cat tribe. Although the rodent family
is by far the largest order of mammals on the
earth, both as regards the number of species and
of individuals, and is thickly distributed in all
latitudes where animal life is found, I believe
that outside of the rabbit family there is not a
single instance of a rodent having more than two |
incisors in each jaw, nor one in which the feet
are completely covered with thick fur which hides
the claws. Practically all other rodents use the
feet like hands for grasping things, the feet of
squirrels, mice and beavers being typical of the
race. Rabbits and hares have five toes on the
fore feet and four on the hind feet, just as all
74
.
|
|
,
HARES AND RABBITS
cats do under normal conditions (the six- and
seven-toed domestic cats are merely freaks).
Among the rodents four toes on the fore feet
and five behind appears to be the general rule,
though some species have four or even less on
each foot, while a beaver has five on each foot.
I cannot recall an instance where the number cor-
responds with that of the cats and rabbits. Like
the cat, also, hares and rabbits have the eye fur-
nished with a nictitating membrane, which may
be drawn over the eye voluntarily while the eye-
lids are still open.
A marked feature of the rodent family is found
in the structure of the teeth. Outside of the
rabbit family, all rodents have the incisors coated
with hard enamel on the front only, thus allow-
ing the soft dentine to wear down fastest behind
and keeping a constantly sharpened chisel-like
cutting edge in front. Among hares and rabbits
we find the incisors furnished to a certain extent
with enamel on both sides like the teeth of the
75 7
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
flesh eaters, the result being that they do not
wear to so keen an edge as do the teeth of the
other rodents. The short tail of the rabbit may
be accounted for in either of two ways: that the
race of cats from which they were an offshoot
belonged to the tribe of short-tailed lynxes, like
the American wildcat or “‘ bob cat,’ or that in
escaping pursuit through bushes and brambles a
longer tail would prove not only useless but a
menace to safety and in time become diminished
through the process of the survival of the fittest.
Thus we find in the hares and rabbits precisely
the type of animal which might be logically ex-
pected as the outcome of natural selection in a
race of cats compelled to exist on a vegetable
diet, and at the same time avoid the pursuit of
a larger race of cats, under just such conditions
as may be found on many a little island off the
coast. Having once adapted themselves to the
changed condition of things, they would undoubt-
edly hold their own and multiply, until in the
76
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HARES AND RABBITS
course of seasonal or climatic changes some of
their number would find a way to the main land,
where, like the hares and cats of our own time,
their rapid increase and natural inclination to
migrate when overcrowded would in time disperse
them to all quarters of the globe. Those ac-
quired characteristics, which had enabled them
to survive under privations, would continue to be
of service in the struggle for existence wherever
their migrations led them. The jack rabbit of
the plains and the marsh hare of the south and
the various hares and rabbits of the Old World,
all exhibit certain highly developed characteris-
tics which alike prove useful in the struggle,
whether found in the little cottontail, or the white-
coated polar hare that holds its own through the
long arctic winter, well inside the Arctic Circle,
and might easily be imagined to have crossed
Behring straits from Siberia on the ice during
some long passed winter of glacial cold.
And wherever you find them, north or south,
79
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
you may observe certain superficial peculiarities
that to the most casual observer appear to sug-
gest a kind of relationship to the cats. The
round, full eye, with its black iris, might well be
a cat’s eye, darkened and modified along with
other changes; the furry feet silently tripping
over dry grass and twigs; the lank, “ slab-sided ”’
‘body and narrow hips, all so unlike our other
common rodents. And if you should succeed
in laying hands on the timid, big-eyed, furry
thing, you would find that instead of using its
incisors, as other rodents do, the long hind legs
with their diminished, but not altogether useless
claws, would be brought into play precisely as
an angry cat scratches the one who has seized it,
and at the same time you would be very likely
to hear a weak, pitiful scream, more like the cry
of an injured kitten than like that of any rodent.
In this connection it is to be remarked as cer-
tainly a little singular (though hardly to be ac-
cepted as scientific evidence) that the flesh of cats
80
HARES AND RABBITS
and rabbits is said to be so very similar in qual-
ity, that innkeepers in Europe are not infre-
quently convicted of substituting the one for the
other without any imposition being suspected by
their guests.
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Chapter Ill
W oodchucks
AY 21, 1911. — For the past month I have
been hard at work out of doors for some-
thing like twelve hours each day, the continued
dry weather not permitting even one rainy day for
writing. My work in the fields and pastures
during this time has given me glimpses of the
little wild beasts from time to time, but no chance
for leisurely observation. Yesterday while har-
rowing the corn land | saw four deer (all bucks)
cross the pasture, stopping to browse in the
erove at the edge of the field and then on again
85
MORE, LITTLE BEASTS — eee
across the meadows, with white tails flicking in
the wind. |
The spring work is now pretty well along and
this morning I took my fishing rod for a few
hours’ idle still-fshing in Old River, as a good
commencement to a period of observation of wild
life and a return to work at my desk. Follow-
ing the reedy margin, I skirted a bushy knoll and
came quite unexpectedly upon a group of little
beasts busy with their own spring work. First
I saw among the thick undergrowth on the steep
bank a grizzly, gray woodchuck standing erect
in his doorway. His attitude of mimicry of a
mossy stump was so perfect that I doubt if a
camera would have shown him as anything else;
I stood watching him as he watched me for sev-
eral minutes without detecting the slightest move-
ment on his part. Hearing the sound of scratch-
ing claws overhead, I looked up, to see a second
woodchuck scrambling up the trunk of a willow;
he ran up the nearly perpendicular stem with at
86
WOODCHUCKS
least the agility of a raccoon, though the tree at
that height was scarcely bigger than his body and
with bark hardly beginning to roughen as yet
with the cracking of age. Reaching an out-
growing branch he rested his shoulder in the
crotch, and turning his head looked down at me
with one gleaming black eye, the sunlight falling
through the leaves flecking his reddish tawny fur
as the wind ruffled it. On his back and flanks
were two marks which looked like scars made
by shot perhaps, or the claws of a hawk, or pos-
sibly by teeth in some encounter in which he came
off victor. A little way out in the stream a
group of trees had been uprooted by storm or
freshet, heaving up the muddy bottom to form
a bulwark higher than my head. I climbed to
the top of this and seated there overlooked a
stretch of open water bordered with bulrushes
on three sides and the sloping bank on the other;
beneath the bank I could see where a muskrat
had been at work, the clay from his digging still
87
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
roiling the water. A pickerel hung motionless
almost beneath me; a few lazy barvel swam aim-
lessly about and painted turtles poked striped
heads out of water to blink at me inquiringly;
red-wing blackbirds hovered and whistled around
me, a rail cried among the rushes and a hawk
screamed in the forest. Suddenly Mr. Mus-
quash came out from among the roots almost
under my feet and swam across the open water
to his work beneath the bank, muddying the water
as he threw up clods of reed roots and sodden
vegetation mixed with clay and sediment. ‘Then
he came to the surface and swam toward me,
stopping within a few yards to float with back ~
and tail along the surface, and stared at me with
beady eyes, snifing with questioning nostrils to
identify the thing he saw above him; then with
sudden plunge was gone down into the muddy
depths. The pickerel not six feet away remained
unmoved beyond the rocking motion given him
by the disturbed water.
88
WOODCHUCKS
A little later a snapping turtle as big as a soup
tureen poked his ugly snout out into the air, saw
me and paddled a little nearer, with his mud-
stained shell just awash and clumsy paddling feet
holding him in position against the slow moving
water. ~
The spring day had grown warm; the wood-
chuck in the willow climbed down and disap-
peared in the undergrowth and the other retired
to his underground den. A comparatively quiet
and unmolested life these two woodchucks must
have here on their sunny, south-sloping bank with
the muskrat for next-door neighbor; almost a
sub-tenant as it were, for his doorway is directly
under theirs and scarcely ten feet away, and as
his hole penetrates up into the bank to above
high water level, while theirs descends, the under-
ground chambers of the two must be very near
together. Here within this elbow of Old River
they have perhaps a quarter acre of thicket to
forage in; pine and swamp oak and elm, with
89
MORE? LITTLE *BRASEas
one gnarly apple tree to give them sour fruit in
its season. Along the waterside a tangled growth
of alders and willows, and beyond these acres
and acres of flags and rushes, then flat clay pas-
ture land overgrown with ground junipers, stretch-
ing away in all directions to the pine covered
highland, and not a house or patch of cultivated
land for miles around; the only noise of civiliza-
tion to disturb them the faint, distant sound of
cars, and in the spring the whining saw-mill far-
ther down the stream. For neighbors they have
besides the muskrat, dwelling in their river
bank, a family of red squirrels to share their
secluded thicket, and across the river, two or —
three hundred yards away, are a dozen wood-
chuck burrows inhabited by various tenants as
the seasons come and go. Probably their most
dangerous foes are the foxes living on the pine
covered slopes who make their favorite hunting
grounds the low reed-grown river banks and
meadows.
90
WOODCHUCKS
Fancy the simple, everyday life of these wood-
chucks; peering out of their doorway each morn-
ing at daybreak, motionless, listening and look-
ing until satisfied that no immediate danger
threatens before starting out to forage for their
breakfast. For an hour or more they may busy
themselves browsing on the short grass and tender
green shoots of the undergrowth or the sweet-
flags growing along the water's edge. Their
water supply is unfailing, and after having satis-
fied both hunger and thirst, they may pass the
remainder of the morning dozing in the sun.
Just how family affairs are arranged with them
is not easy to determine; often a number of
grown woodchucks dwell in the same burrow;
as a rule the mother woodchuck has a burrow of
her own in which to rear her young, but her care
for them ends long before they are half grown;
when only a few weeks old she turns them adrift
to forage for themselves, a task for which they
are perfectly capable. They are equally well able
. 91
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
to defend themselves and are ready and eager
to fight any foe that comes along. After a few
weeks of irresponsible wandering (during which
time they must evidently take shelter in any
chance nook or hollow they may find) they make
their first attempt at digging a hole for them-
selves; usually this is but a few feet in depth
and with only one opening and seldom inhabited
by them for more than a week or two. Before
cold weather comes on most of them find and
appropriate some long-established burrow with
its underground tunnel and hidden back door. It
is an odd phase of Nature’s economy that (here
in New England at least) the woodchucks should
hold the contract to construct underground homes
for so many of their neighbors. The fox, the ©
rabbit, the mink and weasel, as well as all sorts
of wild mice, depend upon them in this capacity;
even the skunk (though a most efficient digger
of burrows himself) is oftenest found living in
one originally made by a woodchuck. For a
Q2
WOODCHUCKS
rough guess I should say there are at least five
hundred woodchuck burrows scattered over every
square mile of field and forest in this region;
a pretty large proportion of these I know for a
fact to have been made twenty-five years or more
and to have been inhabited by one small beast
or another almost every season since. It is quite
possible that some of these were dug before the
days of the early settlers.
Each season sees a few new and elaborate bur-
rows dug here and there by certain enterprising
and energetic woodchucks, most of them to be
abandoned after a few weeks, or at most a sea-
son’s occupation, because of some defect of soil.
or drainage; when, however, it chances to be
satisfactorily located in every respect, any one of
these new-dug holes may prove to be a perma-
nent underground home. The forest may grow
up about it and again be cleared away, it may
be buried deep with fallen brush or exposed to
the day-long glare of the sun, but, year in and
93
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
year out, it will be suited to the needs of some
little: beast or other and through continued oc-
cupation remain in existence longer than many
a pretentious human dwelling. :
The young woodchuck starting out in life looks
first in at one hole and then another: finds one
inhabited by a skunk, another by a rabbit family
or by one of his own race; finding one without
an occupant he enters cautiously, pushing aside
the roots of grass and vines that are choking the
entrance, and makes his way along the under-
ground passage, here and there partly filled by
the caving in of the earth or the upheaval of the
frost; finding things to his taste he clears out
the nest chamber and gathers grass or leaves and
pine needles for a new nest and literally makes
himself at home. There appears to be a wide
range of taste among different individuals re-
garding the choice of a location, one makes his
| home by the water-side, another has his beneath
the roots of an old tree in the swamp.
94
WOODCHUCKS
The hillside forest, the sunlit, boulder-dotted
pasture land, the cultivated fields, the brier-grown
roadside, — everywhere you will find them. A
tumbledown stone wall bordering an old orchard
is perhaps the favorite resort, though a south-
sloping hillside with old pine stumps and mossy
boulders is also a very popular situation with
them. Take my own farm for example; in the
stone wall bordering the roadside there are half
a dozen woodchuck holes, and in the wall be-
tween my field and my neighbor’s are at least
as many more. In the field itself from season to
season and at more or less irregular intervals the
holes are ploughed over and so are of necessity
of a more transient nature, new ones being dug
each season where clover or beans or garden
vegetables are most promising, and sooner or
later abandoned according to circumstances. In
the pine grove in the corner of the field there
are four or five burrows that have been in ex-
istence since my boyhood, as is also true of not
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MORE LITTLE BEASTS
less than a dozen of those in the pasture. The
low swampy woodlot is not so well suited to the
woodchuck’s taste, yet even there I find their |
holes wherever a sloping bank offers a chance
for drainage. The only land of mine where
woodchucks do not dwell is the tide-swept salt
meadow by the sea. Now no one ever accused
me of encouraging woodchucks; on the contrary
I keep up a pretty steady warfare against them
with steel trap, rifle and shot-gun, and congratu-.
late myself upon having fewer woodchucks than
some of my neighbors. ‘There is at least this
compensation for having your land inhabited by
woodchucks, —that they yield a very interest-
ing and perfectly legitimate form of sport at a
season when other shooting is prohibited.
The woodchuck tribe holds its own by means
of boldness and audacity, combined with a cer-
tain shrewd caution backed up by a physical
toughness and vigor to compensate for lack of
fleetness. Early in the season, while the grass is
96
WOODCHUCKS
yet short and offers but scanty concealment, most
of them live in holes hidden to a certain degree
among bushes and rocks and bramble patches
along the stone walls or the borders of thickets
and woodland. In June many of them, both old
and young, have their abiding places in the hay
and grain fields, preferring clover and tall herds-
grass; here they dig temporary burrows, throw-
ing out their heaps of loose earth and trampling
down a considerable space on all sides. In this
hidden retreat they luxuriate and fatten until hay-
ing time. When the hay fields are cleared some
of them retire to the border of the fields, where
they have the advantage of both cultivated land
and thicket. Others seek the shelter of the corn,
where they dig new homes for themselves, and
by breaking down the tall growing stalks obtain
many a satisfying meal. Mr. Woodchuck makes
no attempt at concealing the main entrance to
his domicile, the heap of new earth thrown out
being often conspicuous at a distance, but nearly
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MORE LITTLE BEASTS
always there is a back entrance cleverly hidden
in thick grass or weeds and with no scattered
earth to betray its location.
Often a burrow of long standing has four or
five different openings at distances of a rod or
more from each other and connected by well-
trodden paths. Woodchucks do not depend upon
twilight or darkness for concealment in their
transgressions, seldom being abroad much before
sunrise or after sunset, and seeming to prefer
bright weather. Under the hot midsummer noon
they love to lie sprawling half asleep on the
warm earth or stretched out along a fence rail
or a sun heated rock. ‘Toward the close of the -
summer the greater part of their time is passed
in this manner, their principal object now being
to get fat. In the autumn they are less fre-
quently seen abroad, and by the first of Novem-
ber the majority of them have retired to their
winter dens in the woods. Their winter sleep is
a most complete hibernation lasting six months or
98
EES Oe ee ee ee ee
WOODCHUCKS
more, according to individual degrees of fatness.
In March a few of them come out of their dens
into a world of snow and cold where forage of
the sort that woodchucks like is very scarce. As
far as my own observation goes their first act
on coming above ground is to taste the resinous
bark of an evergreen, pine or cedar or spruce;
very likely this has a corrective effect after their
long fast. What they still have left of their
wasted supply of fat rapidly diminishes; a very
few days of meager picking among snowdrifts
and half thawed turf reduces them to a condi-
tion of leanness and activity which puts them on
a footing to face the hardships of a wintry world.
There is for them no choice of weather now.
The skunk, the raccoon and the bear have gen-
erally a sufficient supply of fat to carry them over
a few days of imprisonment while the inclement
weather lasts, but apparently the woodchuck
wakes only when his fat is about used up. He
lays up no stores for winter, and if he is so un-
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MORE LITTLE BEASTS
fortunate as to be forced aboveground before
spring has come, must face the blizzard’s cold
and the driven snow in order to pick up here and
there a green leaf among the drifts. As spring
comes on more and more woodchucks awake
from their long sleep; the last of April finds
most of them abroad, though I am inclined to
think that not a few of them continue their hiber-
nation until well into May. |
All the smaller hunting animals are of direct
benefit to man because of the great numbers of
mice and insects which they destroy. ‘There is
a question of the wisdom of reducing the num-
ber of any species beyond a certain point, but as
far as man’s material welfare is concerned I am
inclined to think that the race of woodchucks
would not be missed though entirely exterminated
from the land. It is true that they eat grass-
hoppers and crickets in a small way, also that
the flesh of young woodchucks of the season is
eatable, being not unlike lamb, though an old
100
WOODCHUCKS
one might well defy the appetite of a starving
Indian. The skin too can be tanned into fine
leather almost equal to buckskin, but the crops
ruined by one family of the greedy and wasteful
little beasts in a single season might almost be
said to offset any benefit derived from the entire
race since the beginning. However, the question
of exterminating them is hopeless even if this were
desirable; enough if we can keep their numbers
in check.
They are of the class which appears to flour-
ish under persecution. Not so very many years
ago the State of New Hampshire offered a re-
ward of ten cents per tail for all woodchucks
killed within the state, yet without any very per-
ceptible diminution of the supply of woodchucks.
Since then the farmers have adopted the method
of asphyxiating them in their dens by the use of
carbon disulphide, and while some claim to have
temporarily cleared their fields of the pests in
this way, some of their neighbors take the view
IOI
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
that the woodchucks instead of being smothered
in their beds, are merely evicted and forced to
move to other hunting grounds. One man re-
ported that in order to determine the results of
this method, he dug out a large number of holes
where the chemical had been used and found
| only one dead chuck to show for it. It is only too
evident that we shall never lack for woodchucks.
Undoubtedly in the days to come, when our hill-
side farms and uplands have become too arid for
profitable agriculture, and serve only as house lots,
forest reserves or woodland, and our lowlands
and swamps have been turned into one continuous
market garden, the neighborly little groundhogs .
will still continue their depredations, demanding
toll of the farmers’ earliest crops, in defiance of
all his elaborate schemes for their extermination.
The marmot family, of which the woodchuck
is a good representative, is found all round the
world in northern latitudes. The marmot and
the bobac of northern Europe and Asia are much
102
i
WOODCHUCKS
more social and gregarious in their habits. Like
the prairie dogs, which are also true inarmots,
they live in colonies, but unlike the prairie dogs
they prefer mountainous and hilly regions, as do
the marmots of the extreme western portions of
this country.
The common woodchuck is an inhabitant of
most of our northeastern states. In Canada and
Labrador he is much darker in color, often
nearly black. ‘There is a black variety not un-
common in some parts of New England which
seems to be quite distinct from the common
sort, the fur being much softer, dull black on
the hindquarters, more or less grizzled about
the shoulders and gray on the cheeks. I have
never known them to associate with the others,
and have found them of a wilder, more retiring
nature. The common woodchucks vary greatly
in color through different shades of gray and
rusty brown. I have seen them almost white,
and one that was pale straw color all over.
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September 1, 1911.—One of the longest
droughts ever recorded in this part of the world,
shows signs at last of giving way to more normal
weather conditions. We have not had an old-
fashioned three days’ rain in the last four years,
and only a very few heavy rainfalls of even a_
few hours’ duration. The water in wells and
springs has been getting lower season for sea-
son; of a dozen springs on my land only two
continue to flow. ‘Iwo of three brooks were com-
pletely dry at midsummer, and the third was dry
except for about one hundred yards below the
springs that feed it. One brook which my grand-
father once told me never failed but once in all
his eighty years, and then only for a few days,
has been dry now for very nearly a year. In
the hot weeks of July, when for fourteen succes-
sive days the mean temperature was 80° at sun-
rise and 94° at midday, and on half the days
rose to above 100° in the shade, even the large
streams dried up, except where the water stocd in
104
WOODCHUCKS
deep holes. To my surprise, the habits of the
woodchucks appeared to be more affected by
the extreme dryness than were those of the other
wild animals. In the spring they had been as
abundant as usual, but as the drought increased
they disappeared and for weeks I saw none of
them. The natural inference would be that they
had gone to the swamps and such places along
the beds of streams as the water still lingered
in, but I failed to find any evidence of this being
the case either in their tracks or newly opened
burrows. The only one that I saw during this
time was on high land, a big dark-colored old
fellow, searching for fallen pears at the edge of
an orchard. The very last of July we had a
sulf storm; three inches of rain with a north-
easterly gale, filling the streams and lowlands.
Immediately after this rain I began to see wood-
chucks in their old haunts, and since then they
have been much in evidence. Can it be possible
that, as has been suggested of the jumping mice,
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MORE LITTLE BEASTS
they have the power of voluntarily hibernating
during such periods of water famine? Take him
all in all, Mr. Woodchuck is pretty thoroughly
well able to look out for himself. As compared
with other wild animals he is not swift of foot,
particularly when burdened with his load of fat
in the late summer and fall, but as a rule he is
seldom obliged to go far from his den in search
of food, and can make fairly good speed in a
short run. Neither is he an expert at climbing
or swimming, though I have more than once seen
him climb trees to a considerable height, and on
other occasions have seen him both swim and
dive, or at least plunge and swim for several
yards under water. When cornered he can fight
like a bulldog, and often owes his safety to his
prowess in battle. When his hole is dug out he
digs off through the soil, filling up the hole be-
hind him as he goes in a way that makes it ex-
tremely difficult to follow him. |
106
ne ee —
Chapter LV
: Chipmunk
HIS morning I saw the first chipmunk of the
season, at least the first that I have seen,
though undoubtedly some of them have been out
of their holes for weeks. I usually see them as
early as the last week in March; sometimes even
in February: once only in January, and that was
fifteen years ago.
We had been having a cold wave with but little
snow on the ground. One still, clear, zero morn-
ing I started out for a long tramp across country
and it proved to be a day of unseasonable sur-
prises for me. My object that day was to follow
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MORE LITTLE BEASTS
and study out the tracks of a colony of northern
hares over on Pine Hill three or four miles away ;
the last stronghold of the northern hares in the
Vicinity. <a: |
Rabbits, foxes and red squirrels were the only
little beasts that I expected to find abroad in such
weather, and for birds, titmice, Jays, grosbeaks,
crossbills and snowbuntings, with partridges and
a snowy owl or goshawk perhaps. I had scarcely
gone a quarter of a mile from the house, when
right in the home pasture at the edge of a little
boggy spring hole, I found a Wilson snipe feed-
ing, probing the unfrozen black mud for water
insects of one sort or another.
Such occurrences in the very heart of a New
Hampshire winter give one a strange sensation of
overturned seasons. Later in the day I was to
have a yet more unusual reminder of summer
time. The sun was low in the western sky as I
made my way towards home along a narrow wood
road bounded by tumbledown stone walls. i can
108
MNAIWdIHO
$e
CHIPMUNK
see now just how the thin red sunlight at the close
of the winter day brightened the dry oak leaves
where the wind had gathered them together on
the slope of a rocky knoll, and right there, as if
it were midsummer instead of midwinter, was a
little striped-backed chipmunk amid the rustling
leaves, a bit of Indian summer with snow and
winter all around. With all the other chipmunks
and the woodchucks fast asleep in their dens, and
the summer birds long ago flown south, here was
this one plucky little chipmunk, and the lone
Wilson snipe by the unfrozen bog in the pasture.
Chipmunks are tender little beasts and very
much averse to cold weather, as a rule, yet the
species, in one variety or another, ranges well up
into northern latitudes the world around, having
learned that a burrow with a chamber below the
frost line is warm and cosy, whatever the climate
may be above ground. In cold, raw weather, at
‘any season of the year, they keep to their dens
for the greater part of the day, only venturing
III
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
out of doors when they feel the necessity of
gathering food. If the sun shines brightly, even
though the March or November winds are cold
and rough, you may see the pretty striped backs
along the sheltered southern slopes where the
wind fails to make itself felt. “The gray stones
of an old tumbledown pasture wall are a favorite
haunt of theirs in such weather, particularly if a
wind-break of young evergreens has sprung up,
as so often happens in old pasture land. Here,
where the ground is soft and the grass kept close-
cropped by sheep or cattle, the chipmunks dig
their holes. They have learned a way of hid-
ing the openings to their underground homes,
Nature, or evolution, assisting them by the be-
stowal, on every chipmunk, of a pair of most ser-
viceable cheek pouches or pockets extending back
as far as the shoulders. If you have ever watched
the little chap stuffing one walnut after another
into these capacious pouches, until he looks like
some weird, deformed little dwarf of German
112
CHIPMUNK
forest tale, you already know their usefulness in
the rush of the fall harvesting. Earlier in the
season they were in use for another purpose than
that of carrying nuts and acorns.
The chipmunk wants his doorway where he can
see without being seen. If he hid it among the
tall grass and weeds his outlook would be ob-
structed and weasel or snake might lie there in
ambush to waylay him, so he chooses the most
open and lawnlike spot that he can find, where the
slope of the land is right to carry off the water
in rainy weather. He makes the opening through
the turf very small and enlarges it as soon as he
gets an inch below the surface. Every particle
of earth that he digs out he stuffs into his cheek
pouches, and so burdened goes off to some chosen
hiding place to unload. Careful search in the
neighborhood of every borrow will reveal a
dumping ground, with perhaps half a peck or
- more of newly dug earth in one heap. ‘The selec-
tion of every such dumping ground bespeaks intel-
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MORE LITTLE BEASTS
ligence in the individual as well as in the species.
I find them sometimes among the stones of an
old wall, again in a hollow stump or log or between
the roots of a tree; oftener yet beneath the low
spreading boughs of a young evergreen or in the
midst of a thick clump of weeds and brambles,
and often rods away from the spot where the hole
is being dug. |
The chipmunk has little paths leading away in
different directions, but never disclosing the exact
position of his doorway, the grass around it being
almost always undisturbed and untrodden by his
feet. Watch him when he comes home with his
load of nuts, and you will see him stop at the end
of his path and sit bolt upright, looking about in all
directions; then, if he thinks himself unobserved,
he takes a sudden leap over the untrodden grass
between the termination of his path and his door-
way, and disappears from sight. On coming out
again, he at first brings only the very top of his
head into view, the position of his eyes enabling
114
4
a ee ee a
CHIPMUNK
him to see all about him while in this position.
Then in order to see a little farther away, he
raises himself a bit higher, but even now it takes
a sharp eye to detect him, for his russet fur blends
with his chosen surroundings to perfection, the
striping of his head and back simulating the sur-
rounding grass stems and their shadows so beauti-
fully, that even in the brilliant sunshine you might
look closely at him and scarcely guess his identity.
Chipmunks are very commonly known as striped
or ground squirrels, though true squirrels they
certainly are not, being much more nearly related
to the woodchucks and the so-called striped gopher
of the plains.
Their ability to climb is but little more than that
possessed by the woodchucks. In the autumn
season, it is true, they may at times be seen well
up among the boughs of nut-bearing trees, but
there is no exhibition of that reckless agility so
_ characteristic of the true squirrels. I have never
found them living in any other than an under-
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MORE LITTLE BEASTS
ground home, though this is often dug beneath
the roots of an old tree, whose ‘hollow trunk
gives easy climbing by a sort of winding stair-
way to fissures or knot holes, out of which the
chipmunk likes to poke his head as out of a
window.
The chipmunk is-one of the most efficient and
generally practical little characters to be found in
the woodland. His resources are many and
varied. Disliking cold weather as he does, he
makes double preparation to avoid the necessity
of being out in it. - |
His underground home comprises not only a
snug living-room with plenty of soft dry grass for
a bed, but a capacious granary as well. This
is a separate chamber, and pretty certain to
be well packed with seeds, nuts, acorns, beech-
nuts, corn, buckwheat, barley or oats before win-
ter has set in. Yet, evidently seeing the possi-
bility of short commons in the early spring, if he
indulges his appetite all winter long, he makes
116
CHIPMUNK
a practice of sleeping for weeks or even months
during his winter confinement, thus saving his
stock of provender for the time when it will be
more needed, for early spring is really a time
of greater privation for little beasts who feed on
seeds and grain than are the icebound months of
midwinter.
Whenever we have warm sunny days of the
southwest wind at the end of winter, the chip-
munks look out of their doorways for a breath
of fresh air. In sheltered nooks where the sun
warms the brown earth, they may be seen poking
about among the russet leaves of the last autumn,
searching for seeds or nuts overlooked in the har-
vesting, or perhaps for dormant or half-waked
grasshoppers, insects forming a considerable por-
tion of their diet at any season when they are to
be found. I have seen them spring and catch the
big banded winged locusts as they hover with
- rustling wings in the hot August air.
When a chipmunk has succeeded in capturing
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MORE LITTLE BEASTS
and killing one of these big fellows, a feat in.
which both paws and teeth are called into vigor-
ous action, he sits bolt upright grasping his victim
in both hands, as a small boy holds a banana, and
nibbling eagerly away at it until only wings and
legs are left. In comparison to his size, he has
made a meal about equal to what a whole roast
chicken would be to one of us, but after it is fin-
ished, he is generally as eager to get another as he
was before. ‘They also assay their luck on larger
game at times. I have seen them hunting full-
fledged sandpipers along the shores of a mill
pond, and sparrows in the grass, but always
without success, so far as my own observation
goes, though this is not sufficient to class them as
unsuccessful hunters generally, for even among
the most skillful wild hunters you will witness a
score or more of failures, before you may mark
one successful kill, and with chipmunks, hunting
is only a side issue at most.
Undoubtedly they do occasionally succeed in
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ee ee ee ee
CHIPMUNK
killing small birds that are learning to fly, while
nests containing eggs or unfledged young must
often furnish them a meal, though any destruction
wrought by them in this way ought hardly to
count against them more than when the farmer
robs a hen’s nest for its eggs, or kills an occasional
chicken for his dinner, nor is the harm they do the
farmers’ crops ever very serious. They get most
of their living from the forest; nuts — particu-
larly beechnuts — and acorns, and such seeds as
can be stored and kept through the cold weather,
are what they chiefly depend upon. Strawberries,
bunchberries, partridgeberries, blueberries and
blackberries keep them supplied with fruit in the
warm season. In the spring planting time they
make trips to the corn field for the purpose of
digging up the newly planted seed, and each
autumn they claim their share of the harvest,
to be carried away and stored along with their
nuts.
When the apples and pears and cherries begin
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MORE LITTLE BEASTS
to get ripe in the orchard they gorge themselves
on the juicy fruit, also wild grapes and the fruit
of the hackberry and gumtree. They prefer to
gather the ripe fruit after it has fallen, but at
times climb to a considerable height when unable
to find what they want on the ground.
From what I have observed I am inclined to
think they are but little given to wandering, pre-
ferring rather to live in the same locality and in
the same hole year after year. Dbeyeare very
social; where you find one family of them dwell-
ing, you may be pretty sure that there are others
nearby. Each is dependent upon all the rest for
timely warning when danger of any sort threatens, -
their sharp “chip,’’ constantly repeated, carries
far through the woods in still weather, and the
approach of the most stealthy enemy is heralded
while he is yet far away. A sudden attack, like
the swoop of a hawk, calls forth a shrill gurgling
cry of alarm, as the little chap makes his terrified
dash for the safety of stone wall or burrow.
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CHIPMUNK
I have never known more than one family to
live in the same hole, and whether, in time of des-
perate danger, a chipmunk would dare resort to
any hole except his own, I am unable to say.
I remember one that I caught in a box trap
and kept in a cage for a few days, then carried
back and released within a few yards of the place
where I caught him, and quite close to the hole
which I supposed he had occupied. Whether this
really was his hole or not, I cannot say, for
though he popped into it at once on being re-
leased, his stay was very short indeed, hardly
a second had elapsed before two chipmunks
emerged from the opening, fighting like two little
bulldogs; over and over they rolled almost at my
feet, then separated with equal suddenness, one
darting back into the hole, and the other away for
the woods, but which was the rightful owner was
still a puzzle. Was the one that I had kept in
captivity justly punishing an interloper who had
taken possession of his home during his absence,
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MORE LITTLE BEASTS
or was he himself receiving due chastisement for
daring to enter the hole belonging to another?
Chipmunks are easily tamed, but it is cruelty to
keep them long in captivity. I have never had the
heart to do so for more than a few days, they
always seem so miserably unhappy, and so glad
of their freedom when released. I recall, when
a boy, setting a box trap beside a stone wall at
the edge of the woods. ‘The season for cutting
and stacking the hay on the salt marshes came
on; starting away early each morning and get-
ting home tired each night caused me to forget —
the box trap for a day or two. When I did
think of it I immediately went there and found
a chipmunk imprisoned inside. He had eaten
the apple which was the bait and had probably
been without food or drink for twenty-four hours
or more.
I transferred him to a cage and offered him
bread and apples and water, which he took from
my hand without the least sign of fear, and I have
122
CHIPMUNK |
often wondered if his experience at that time in
any way lessened his natural fear of men and boys
in general.
Chipmunks are such impulsive little beasts that
it is a wonder that they do not oftener find them-
selves introuble. I have seen one, scurrying along
the ground towards its hole at the foot of an oak
tree around which a flock of sheep were sleeping,
run along a sheep’s back in order to reach its
doorway quicker, and suspect that if it had been
dog, fox or wildcat sleeping there, the chipmunk
would have taken the same course.
The chipmunk’s strikingly marked fur with the
alternating bands of black, russet and creamy
¢
white often arouses the very natural query, ‘‘ why
should this little animal, whose safety must often
depend upon concealment, wear such a conspicu-
ous coat?’’ As a matter of fact however the
stripes are not at all easily seen at a little distance,
‘and then only in certain lights, and when their
wearer is motionless. By just what slow-working
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MORE LITTLE BEASTS
law of evolution they were brought into being we —
may only guess; perhaps a careful computation
of the comparative number of chipmunks that fall
victims to enemies that look down for them from
overhead, those that hunt them on their own
level, and those which lie in ambush or follow on
their trail, might give us the clew we are look-
ing for. 3
When in rapid motion, and the chipmunk is
nearly always in rapid motion, the longitudinal
bands of light and dark unquestionably have the
effect of breaking up the continuity of colors.
A mouse, a rabbit or a woodchuck, or any
other small beast with fur of the same general
tone throughout, is comparatively easy to see when
running, though invisible to the casual observer
as it crouches in hiding. The chipmunk, on the
contrary, is really much more difficult to locate
when in motion than when it is still.
It is his habit never to go very far from some
place of hiding, either his hole in the earth or an
124
CHIPMUNK
old stone wall or the underbrush of the thicket,
and when danger threatens, it is his quickness that
he depends upon first of all.
Whatever the reason for the chipmunk’s stripes
may be, they certainly bestow upon him both dis-
tinction of appearance and real beauty, and at the
same time evidently have not rendered him too
conspicuous for his own good. ‘The species was
abundant, according to all accounts, at the time of
the first settlers, having held its own against the
attacks of wildcats, weasels and hawks for un-
told generations, and undoubtedly dodged the
flint-tipped arrow of the red-skinned boys, just |
as it dodges the stone of the schoolboy of to-day.
In some parts of the Eastern States it is said
to be less abundant of late years. For my own
part I fail to notice any diminution in numbers,
wherever my rambles or my day’s work or my
hunting or fishing may take me; and while I should
regret any lessening of their numbers, I can
scarcely wish them to become very much more
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MORE LITTLE BEASTS
abundant lest the damage worked by them might
get to be serious enough to overbalance the pleas-
ure of their company in the woods and along the
roadsides. |
July 30th, 1911.— This summer a family of
chipmunks are living on our lawn. One might
easily walk right over their doorway without see-
ing it, so cleverly is it hidden in the short grass,
just a little round hole hardly an inch in diameter
at the surface of the ground.
I first saw this pair of little striped-backs last
autumn in corn harvesting time. They began
digging their hole among the rocks of the bank
wall of the barnyard, where the crevices between |
the stones gave them good hiding places, as well
as a chance to hide the loose earth which they re-
moved in their digging. Tunneling along under-
ground, they evidently made their chamber and
granary beneath the lawn; and from there dug a
passage directly up to the surface, carrying all
the earth in their cheek pouches back to the origi-
126 |
LLZZZEESTF
=
CHIPMUNKS HARVESTING
«rien
CHIPMUNK
nal opening, and having the new opening through
the short turf of the lawn only just large enough
for them to squeeze through. In the warm Indian-
summer days of last autumn, while I was husking
the corn, I saw them making frequent trips back
and forth from the corn bin to their hole in the
wall, their cheek pouches well filled. They also
gathered hickory nuts and butter-nuts and buck-
wheat, and undoubtedly put in an ample supply
for the winter. From November to April they
were hidden away underground and I| saw noth-
ing of them, but after the first of April I saw
them day after day, running along the stone wall
or skipping across the lawn or paying an occa-
sional visit to the corn bin.
On an unlucky day in haying time, Mr. Chip-
munk met an untimely fate through inadvertently
stepping into a rat trap in the barn. It was at
about this time that I first began to see the little
chipmunks, by then nearly half-grown, sunning
themselves on the warm gray stones of the barn-
129
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
yard wall, or running about to pick up the grain
scattered for the hens. [hey would even enter
the slatted coop where the mother hen hovered
her flock of late chickens. Throughout the re-
mainder of the summer and in the early autumn
I saw them nearly every day, either busy with
their harvesting, or sitting on the top rail of the
fence enjoying the slowly failing sunlight of the
season.
October 20th, 1911.— This morning while
walking through some thick young growth, | saw
a chipmunk run up a little oak tree only a few
inches in diameter. On going close to the tree
I could see him clinging fast to the stem almost
at its summit and where it was, if anything, smaller
than his body, though but little higher than my
head.
He looked as fat as a pig, and his cheek pouches
were well stuffed with nuts or acorns. When I
shook the tree gently he only clung the tighter,
but on giving it a jar with my gunstock, I was
130
oe
CHIPMUNK
surprised to see Mr. Chipmunk most precipitately
turn a handspring into the air and come down
with a thump among the dry leaves at my feet,
disappearing almost as he touched the ground.
Right there where he had vanished, I found the
doorway to his hole dug into the side of a little
mossy hummock overgrown and hidden by winter-
green and ivy. Evidently he had precipitated
himself purposely, to fall as close as possible to
his hole, and must have been all prepared for
the jump when my gunstock jarred him from his
perch.
January 3, 1912. — It is now midwinter and the
frost-bound earth is covered with snow. I have
not seen a chipmunk for nearly two months, but
I know that down in their snug dens they are wait-
ing the coming of spring.
131
Y
NZ Va
Chapter
brown Rat— House Mouse— Meadow
Mouse—W hite-footed Wood Mouse
—Fumping Mouse
HE brown rat, like the brown mouse, is to be
numbered among our undesirable immigrants
from foreign lands. Tradition says that the
brown rat came first from Norway, traveling
either overland or in ships’ holds, by way of The
Netherlands to Great Britain and southern Eu-
rope,. and so in time across the Western Ocean
to the New World, and everywhere in its wan-
derings driving away the smaller and less ag-
132
‘ 7 a ee ee a
BROWN RAT
‘
’
BROWN RAT
gressive black rat. Except from their own point
of view, there would seem to be no very apparent
reason for the existence of rats. As scavengers,
they have proved to be the carriers of disease
and pestilence; cats, foxes, skunks, etc., appear
to eat them only under protest, evidently prefer-
ing any other sort of meat. Men have fought
them with traps, cats, poison, ferrets, terriers and
fire, yet they still increase both in city and coun-
try. On the farm they destroy grain and vege-
tables and kill young chickens, besides undermin-
ing the foundations of buildings and gnawing
away the woodwork.
The common steel trap I have found to be the
most useful in combating them. A half dozen
small steel traps set in their holes and runways
and covered with chaff will in time work a con-
siderable reduction in their numbers. It is im-
possible to conceal a trap so carefully that an old
rat will not be aware of its position; but rats
are like humans, and in time are pretty sure to
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MORE LITTLE BEASTS
get careless and take risks; the chances are that
sooner or later the slyest old rat will through
sheer inadvertence run into some trap that he had
been avoiding for weeks. Young rats are more
easily outwitted and are often caught the first
night. The large wire cage trap with a tunnel
opening which admits a rat, yet at the same time
effectually prevents his escape, is very apt to
prove disappointing at first, but if kept well
baited with some tempting viand, will in all prob-
ability surprise you some fine morning with a
whole family of prisoners behind its bars. The
secret of success with this trap lies in a certain
weakness common to both rats and men, and
which often gets both into trouble; the trait of
blindly following a leader. All the rats will usu-
ally shun a cage trap for weeks, until one, a little
bolder or more foolish than the rest, or hungrier,
squeezes through the narrow passage, and once
inside, regales himself on the bait; then other
rats follow without fear or forethought, often
136
BROWN RAT
until the trap is crowded. Only the other morn-
ing my neighbor found sixteen rats in a trap of
this sort, after it had been set for many days
without result. At my uncle’s a trap of this kind
was set in an unused pigsty, and one morning
was discovered at the farther side of the pen
and stuffed with straw, and in this straw was
hidden a whole family of rats. The only ex-
planation that offered was that other rats had
dragged the trap over to the straw pile and then
stuffed the straw between the wires in order that
the prisoners might conceal themselves. ‘This
spring I have been trapping rats about the barn,
setting traps in their holes and runways beneath
boards. The commonest trick by which the rats
have defied me is to bury the trap with earth or
chips; at times they have used weatherbeaten
corn cobs or rotten wood for the purpose, shov-
ing them onto the pan of the trap and springing
Mit. Now, if the cobs had been fresh ones, it
might very naturally be supposed that the rats
137
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
Were carrying them to their holes for the corn
that was left on them, but these old weather-
beaten cobs could be of no possible use to them,
‘and I firmly believe that the rats knew that if
put on the pan of the trap it would spring and
become harmless. I find that the best plan in ©
setting traps for rats is to have them in places
where you can look at them two or three times
a day without having to go out of your way in
order to do so. In this manner it is possible to
capture a surprising number of the pests in the
course of a year. The white, or black and white
rats, which make such amusing pets, are prob-
ably albinos of the “‘ Old English black rat,” and ~
will soon be, if they are not already, the only
survivors of their race. In the opinion of natu-
ralists generally the black rat was a native of —
India. From there, like the house mouse, it has
been transported to all parts of the world, mul-
tiplying exceedingly, and always more or less a
dependent upon man’s labors; living in ware-
138
BROWN RAT
houses and graineries and pigsties and feeding
upon the product of man’s work. The brown rat
is believed to be a native of China, and at a
somewhat later period in history (probably in
the eighteenth century) spread about the world
as the black rat had done. Wherever it went it
overcame and drove out the black rat, taking its
place as a far more destructive and undesirable .
pest. The last stronghold of the black rat is
said to be in certain South American countries,
yet even ‘there there is every reason to believe
that the brown rat will soon follow it and rout
it out as it has done elsewhere. In those tropical
countries, however, the black rat has a slightly
better chance of holding its own, being a native
of warm climates, while the brown rat is a more
typical northerner, thriving best in a cool climate.
In western China there is found a rat that ap-
pears to be identical with the common brown
rat, though living in the wild lands and avoiding
the habitations of men. This is believed to be
139
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
the race from which our common brown rat had
its origin; of this there is a possible doubt, how-
ever, for here in the west we frequently find the
brown rat living on the banks of rivers and in
meadows far away from buildings and grain
- fields’ Two years ago I had several stacks of.
hay left on the meadows all winter. The fol-
lowing summer [| noticed small holes and tunnels
in the hay, and narrow paths leading thence
to the creek nearby, and concluded that a mink
and her family must be living there. The next
winter I went with a horse sled to haul off the
hay and found the stack still inhabited. As I
pitched the last of the hay upon the load, a brown |
rat jumped down and scurried away across the
ice and snow to hide behind a tilted ice cake at
the edge of the creek; finding this rather too
exposed a situation, he came back, evidently with
the intention of taking refuge in the load of hay,
but having more rats in my barn than I really
needed I struck at him with my pitch fork and
140
ee Es ee
BROWN RAT
he retreated once more to the shelter of the ice
cake.
The tide from the sea was pushing up along
the narrow creek and heaving up and breaking
the ice as it came. A few minutes later, very
much to my surprise, I saw the rat dive into the
icy water and swim over to the other bank; for
a time he remained motionless at the edge of
the shelving ice with just his head above water,
then disappeared beneath the overhanging bank.
What finally became of him I do not know, but
his chances at the time seemed deplorably small:
the last of the hay stacks gone from the ice bound
meadows which stretched away for miles in all
directions; the salt tide sweeping in from the
ocean and hungry sea gulls wheeling about over-
head. All the brown rats which I have found
living in meadows and along river banks were
alike in being smaller and more agile than those
of the barns and stables, and with lighter colored,
“more yellowish gray fur; and I have found them
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MORE LITTLE BEASTS
- dwelling in these places at all seasons of the year,
not merely as summer campers.
When we were boys my cousin and I had two
tame rats, one white with pink eyes, the other
black and white with black eyes. They were very
interesting, but got to be something of a nuisance,
so that we determined to transport them to the
woods and give them the chance of enjoying a
free wild life. In a dry pine grove at the edge
of the field we dug them a snug underground
chamber roofed over with pine bark and dry earth
and with a nest of soft grass.
Here, with a good store of corn and other pro-
visions and a spring nearby for water, we con-.
sidered them well provided for. It was then early
summer and we felt certain that before cold
weather they would have adapted themselves to
life in the woods and be able to take care of them-
selves. We believed that their danger from
foxes and hawks and other wild hunters in the
woods to be less than that fromthe cats if we
142
BROWN. RAT
had given them their liberty about the house
and barn, and we were too merciful, I am glad
to remember, to keep any creature in confine-
ment for more than a day or two. Our rats |
enjoyed their new domicile in the woods for
just as long as the food we had left with them
lasted, then they returned to the house. The
white rat became an intimate member of the
family, having its home thereafter in the library,
behind the books of a certain old bookcase. From
there it made temporary excursions to all parts
of the house either on its own feet or in the
pocket or on the shoulder of some larger member
of the family.
~ When my father or brother was writing in the
library, the white rat liked to crawl up inside his
coat, and with its head poked out of collar or coat
sleeve would watch the movement of the pen for
hours in a sort of fascination. ‘The black and
white rat took up its abode in a crevice of the
_ boards in the passage way between the wood-shed
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MORE LITTLE BEASTS
and the work-shop, and exhibited an equal inter-
est in every sort of work that was done there.
At intervals the white rat would visit it, and in
return it would come to the library, sometimes
spending the entire day there. I recall on one
occasion going into the library and seeing my
brother writing at the desk with the white rat
perched on his shoulder and the other peering out
of a pigeon hole, each following the motion of
the pen with interested eyes. The cats were given
to understand that they must not molest these two
rats of the household, and for nearly a year they
dwelt there undisturbed; but finally, first one and
then the other fell victim either to our own cats, or
more likely to some stray cat of the neighborhood, |
and their loss was deeply felt by every member of
the family, to which they had become attached.
The common house mouse has made itself the
humble companion of man all round the world
in temperate latitudes, and wherever it goes its
thd
HOUSE MICE
3g
eR eR ceenbenep ee
»
Si
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aegis
'
jeG Re wre 4
A ag i, Rap eA oo
Fad
ae
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HOUSE MOUSE
mouse-gray coat has proved so inconspicuous and
in every way serviceable that local variations ap-
pear to be exceedingly rare.
Mice make their homes wherever man does,
and depend upon him not only for their food
supply, but also for their dwellings and the ma-
terial of which they make their nests, these
being nearly always constructed of something
men have gathered first—rags of old cloth,
scraps of paper, straws, hair or wool from his
domestic beasts, or feathers from his poultry.
These nests are tucked away in some hidden
nook between boards and timbers or in the crev-
ices of stone or brick work where the mortar
has fallen away. Old boots or bottles and boxes,
tin cans, an unused drawer of a cabinet, - hay-
mows in the barn, bales of wool or cotton or
hemp, anything anywhere that the mice believe
to be out of the reach of cats and the weather
is made to serve as a home, and a nursery for
the baby mice, of which there are half a dozen
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MORE LITTLE BEASTS
more or less, born at frequent intervals and at
every season of the year, and quick to mature
and have families of their own; small wonder
that their numbers increase, despite the constant
war waged upon them by means of cats and
traps. When I am pitching down hay for the
cows and sheep in the winter, I see the mice dart
away into the labyrinths of grass stems and
clover. [he meal in the grain bins is marked
each night with their tiny footprints, like rabbit
tracks in the snow, and always I can hear them
rustling deep in the straw and corn fodder, in
their search for scattered grain and seeds. Who
can analyze the delight the trapper feels in the
capture of wild animals for their fur? I first |
experienced it in the capture of a mouse: as a
very small boy I sat in the little old shoeshop
of a winter evening watching my grandfather at —
work. In the shop, opposite the work bench,
was a desk at which my grandfather and my
father wrote down their ideas on spiritual and
148
HOUSE MOUSE .
philosophical matters; beneath the desk was a
litter of papers and discarded manuscript, and
a faint rustling among these thrilled me all at
cnce with the desire of the hunter. There was
an old mousetrap on a corner of the bench, and
this I baited with some of the flour paste used
in making shoes, and set it among the papers
under the desk. Then for long minutes I sat
on the bench at my grandfather’s elbow, the tal-
low candle on the bench waved big shadows about
the little room, which was full of the musty smell
of leather and old books and papers. Then to-
gether we heard the click of the trap, muffled by
fur, and a new experience entered into my life,
— an experience never to be quite repeated, but
which awakened “the intuition and the expecta-
tion of something which when come is not the
same, but only like its forecast in men’s dreams.”’
And in later years the successful trapping of —
_woodchuck, weasel, muskrat, mink, raccoon, fox,
otter each in its turn brought only a renewal of
149
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
the same thrill that I felt at the capture of my
first mouse.
The meadow mice live in the shade of reeds and
grasses as the wild deer live in the forest shadows.
They have their regular paths and runways, trod-
den smooth by the constant passing and repass-
ing of little pattering feet. Their food supply
is everywhere about them at all seasons of the
year and although it is their habit to lay by small
stores of seeds and grain in the time of the
autumn harvest, they are not dependent upon
these when winter covers the fields and meadows
with snow. All winter long they are continually
pushing out new snow tunnels in every direction,
picking up grass seeds and weed seeds here and
there, nibbling at roots and stems and now and
again by chance uncovering a dormant cricket or
beetle. When the snow is deep they work destruc-
tion, unseen at the time, stripping the bark from
young fruit trees and shrubs, often working ir-
150
5 NS
A
»’
ab
MEADOW MICE
t
;
wn
Fed
=
<
.
»
MEADOW MOUSE
reparable damage before the ground is bare
again.
They have their burrows in the earth and round
nests of dry grass on the surface so cleverly con-
structed as to be almost water proof. I have
seen these in the time of spring freshets half
under water, yet still dry within, with the little
meadow mice, hardly bigger than bumble bees,
huddled together there for warmth while the old
ones are away foraging for food. ‘The snow is
really their safeguard, protecting them from their
enemies as well as from the wind and weather.
Along these dim-lighted runways they may go
and come in safety, relaxing for a little that con-
stant alertness which at other times and seasons
is their only safeguard; but winter weather is
treacherous and most uncertain; the south wind
brings a thaw and all the lowlands are awash
with ice water and melting snow, driving the
meadow mice to higher grounds for safety.
Great numbers of them must be drowned at such
153
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
times, for though they are good swimmers, the
combination of melting snow and water-logged
meadow grass submerged by the freshet must
often prove too much for them. Those that
reach the drier land are exposed to the danger ©
of foxes, owls and weasels, winter hawks and
cats, tame and wild.
Every winter thaw is followed sooner or later
by a cold wave, and the water flooding the homes
of the meadow mice freezes hard; it is: wonder-
ful that any of the little fellows manage to sur-
vive those winters when thaw and cold wave fol-
low each other month by month; as a rule only
a very small fraction of their numbers do survive
such a winter as the one just ended (1910-1911).
Last summer they were very abundant; I saw
them in haying time by the dozen fleeing before
the devastation of the mowing, and scurrying
away from under foot when the bunches of hay
beneath which they had taken refuge were
154
MEADOW MOUSE
pitched onto the cart. They are much more
diurnal than other mice, and under the full glare
of a midsummer sun are perfectly well able to
look out for themselves. After the fields were
cleared the marsh hawks came day after day
flapping and sailing low over the stubble land,
their long legs hanging loosely down ready to
seize the scampering mice as they bolted away
for shelter; night after night I heard the owls
of one sort or another proclaiming their success
at mouse hunting with hoot or screech or quaver-
ing note of exultation. The varying abundance
of owls from season to season corresponds al-
most exactly with the varying abundance of
meadow mice, and not for years have they been
so numerous here as during the season just
passed, yet in spite of all these hungry foes the
mice increased continually in the fields and
- meadows while the warm weather lasted, and at
harvest time worked untold harm in the corn-
fields and gardens. Beneath almost every ‘corn
55
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
shock I found their tunnels in the soft earth
which was scattered over with chankings of ripe
corn and shredded corn husks, where the mis-
chievous mice had been feasting; often as many
as half a dozen of them were to be seen scurry-
ing away when the corn was loaded on the cart,
and undoubtedly many more disappeared unseen
into their tunnels beneath.
The potato fields suffered also, and more than
once I dug out families of frightened meadow
mice, together with half-eaten potatoes, all roll-
ing about together in the soft earth. Before the
snow came I took the precaution of protecting
my young fruit trees with wire netting wrapped -
close about the lower part of the stem.
Last winter proved to be one of successive
thaws and freezing north winds, with much bare
frozen ground and ice-covered meadows. In
spite of all their destructiveness, the unfortunate
plight of these wild mice of the meadows at such
times calls for our sympathy, yet when the spring
| 156
MEADOW MOUSE
came I could only regret that conditions had not
been worse with them, for I saw only too much
evidence of the work of the few hardy survivors
wherever | walked in the fields. The winter before
last was one of deep, dry snow from December
to March, which undoubtedly accounts in large
part for the great increase of these little brown
marauders, for all winter long they might follow
their lowly paths in comparative safety, while the
early warm spring weather which came with the
first of March was more than usually favorable to
the rearing of their large and numerous families.
Meadow mice are the pluckiest of fighters,
whether the foe be cat, owl, snake, dog or man.
I have seen one give battle to an enraged mother
hen backed up by her brood of clamorous chickens,
though whether the hen desired the mouse for
food for her family, or looked upon it as an
enemy to be driven away from her flock, I was
unable to determine. When fighting, the meadow
mice stand erect to the limit of their diminutive
157
MORE .LITTLE BEASTS
stature, and turning about face the foe from —
every side with little teeth laid bare, like diminu-
tive woodchucks, ever ready for the onslaught.
‘Their short legs and round bodies render them
incapable of taking long jumps like other mice,
yet they can make good speed over the stubble
and are quick to disappear from sight when pur-
sued. They are probably the best swimmers of
all our wild mice; I have seen them dive and
swim beneath the surface and take refuge under
the ice where there seemed to be no air space
whatever for their breathing. Their fur is of
a quality similar to that of the muskrat. In
dozens of instances I have observed them swim-
ming many rods from the dry land, often where
the surface of the water was roughened by the
wind.
- The white-footed wood mice are as beautiful
as squirrels, such soft, warm, golden buff fur set
off by fur as white as ermine underneath. ‘hey
158
—
4
4
N
\
S
hg
iS
WHITE-FOOTED MICE
> Et = See ee
st pet>
*)
i oe
Ata oe
WHITE-FOOTED WOOD MOUSE
copy the squirrels also in their ways and so are
much less at the mercy of the elements than are
the wild mice of the meadowlands and marshes.
They are rarely to be seen at any great distance
from trees except when they take up their abode
in farmhouses and barns. Their homes are often-
est in the knot holes of old trees, either in those
standing among others in the forest or by them-
selves on wind-swept hillsides and river banks;
fallen timber, half buried and crumbling, is tun-
neled and hollowed out to make warm, dry gal-
_leries within. Among the gnarled roots of an-
cient oaks and beeches you will find their tiny
doorways opening into dark passages that lead
back to the hidden chamber where the little wood
mouse family nestles in safety with stores of nuts
and seeds and grain packed close in crannies here
and there about them. The homes of those that
live in stumps and fallen logs are deep buried
by the snow in winter, but unlike meadow mice
and moles, these wood mice are not content to
161
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
be confined to narrow buried paths and tunnels,
but push their shafts directly up from their door-
ways to the open air. On the first morning after
the heaviest snowstorm of the winter you will
see the delicate tracery of their footprints lead-
ing you away across the white floor of the forest;
there is no suggestion of aimless wandering here
and there, such as one gets while following the
purposeless footprints of a rabbit; each little trail
goes direct to some chosen point, indicating that
the mouse that made it knew exactly where he
was going, — first, perhaps, to a winter bleached
garget stalk to climb for the seeds contained in
the dried and shriveled berries, then down again -
and away on another tack to where some secret
store of nuts is located in the hollow of a buried
stump. These dainty-looking little white-footed
mice are great eaters of meat whenever the op-
portunity offers, and in spring and summer rob
birds’ nests high and low, sucking the eggs and
killing and eating the young birds. In cold:
162
————— Se ee
~ WHITE-FOOTED WOOD MOUSE
weather, however (owing to the fact that with
perhaps only one exception they are the smallest
beasts abroad), they can get their meat only by
foraging after the larger hunters of the wood-
land and stealing the trapper’s bait. Notwith-
standing their abundance everywhere, they are
very seldom seen by the casual observer, for they
are active only at night. ‘Their big prominent
black eyes are best suited for gathering the faint
rays of the moonlight and dusk; only occasion-
ally have I seen them out in daylight of their own
accord, and then almost always in dull or rainy
weather. Yet one of the very first bits of my ob-
servation of wild life was, I think, of a little
fellow of this species. I must have been about
three years old when my grandfather called me
across the field to peer into the crannies of an
old stone wall where cowered the prettiest of
little buff coated beings imaginable. Gnome or
fairy could not have been more wonderful to
me than that tiny morsel of living fur looking
163
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
out at me from the shadows of the mossy old
stones where it dwelt. |
The wood mouse is in almost every way the
opposite of the meadow mouse, its safety lies in
swiftness and in the possession of senses of ex-
treme delicacy; the ears and eyes are much larger
than in other mice and its sensitive whiskers,
almost half the length of its body, undoubtedly
serve as a fourth sense that may be giving notice
through vibrations fainter than sound of distant
scratching claws on bark or padded footfall far
away. Who knows but that the muffled, sound-
less beat of an owl’s wings may set in motion
vibrations which, putting the outstanding whiskers
of the wood mouse all a-tremble, convey a mean-
ing through delicate root nerves to the shrewd
little brain within, though quite unnoticed by the
keenest ear. I have never seen the white-footed
wood mouse offer battle even in defence of its
young or bite the hand which takes it up. It is
easily tamed and becomes a gentle, whimsical
164
eee a ee eee
WHITE-FOOTED WOOD MOUSE
little pet, greedy for food and fairly content in
confinement. In the fall and early winter they
are quite fat for mice, but toward spring they
lose flesh, while their shedding fur becomes thin
and faded almost to mouse color, so that they are
much less easily distinguished from other mice
at that season. The mother mouse makes her
nest of soft grass and feathers, often beneath a
woodpile or crumbling stump in the pasture. I
have often seen her when disturbed in some such
place scurrying away, with all her family clinging
to her and dragging alongside as she ran. Just
before winter sets in these wood mice often move
their abode from the woods to the shelter of
barns and farm buildings, where they make their
nests of straw and feathers in any hidden nook
_ they can find, and join the common brown mice
in a general feast of corn. “There seems to be
more or less bickering and quarreling between the
two species, and from what little I have seen
I am inclined to think that the brown mouse is
165
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
usually the aggressor and the victor. I wonder
if the singing mice of which we occasionally hear
may not be white-footed mice; for they are the
only ones which I have ever heard whose voices
could be called in any way musical. All their
cries have a more or less bird-like quality, —
faint and twittering generally, but with an occa-
sional shrill chirp, not unlike the call of a young
bird.
I suspect the mice that, before an oncoming
storm in winter are often so noisy, running and —
squeaking in the wainscoting of old buildings in
the country, are these very white-footed mice,
for at the times when they are at the noisiest I .
have set traps for them, and nearly always a
large proportion of the victims were of this spe-
cies. I wish I had made a record of the num-
ber of wood mice I caught in the course of a few
weeks last winter in one trap set beneath the
eaves; I think it was nineteen, but cannot vouch
for the exact number.
166
i 7 i .
ee ee eS ee ee ae a a ae
JUMPING MOUSE
September 17, 1911. — This morning while out
duck hunting I had an encounter with that rarely
seen inhabitant of the wildlands—a woodland
jumping mouse. I had just shot a brace of black
ducks, one of which being only winged swam
ashore and hid among the junipers on a little
island in the stream. While tramping about
among the low thick growth in search of the
wounded duck, I saw right at my feet a little
9
‘orange tawny’ mouse crouching there for con-
cealment. Looking closely I saw at once that it
was a jumping mouse, — such a strange kangaroo-
like little chap, with tail and hind legs suited in
dimensions to a much larger animal. Its orange-
tinted fur was enough to identify it as of the wood-
land species —to my own satisfaction at least.
The need of making the identification positive
hardly warranted the killing of the little fellow in
cold blood.
After watching him a little while, during which
time his only movement was the motion of his
167
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
breathing and a continual trembling as of fear,
I decided to put his jumping powers to the test,
but when my hand approached him he simply
skipped a few inches to one side and then to the
other and then endeavored to skulk away beneath
the branches of the ground junipers, his longest
jump at that time being hardly more than half a
yard. Leaving him, I once more turned my efforts.
towards finding the wounded duck, but without
success; then wading across through reeds and
shoal water to the shore, I continued my hunt
_ down stream, and by good luck met a fellow
sportsman who suggested taking his dog to the
island in the hope of finding the duck by the aid .
of the dog’s keener senses. |
Borrowing my friend’s boat I secured the duck,
which I had killed, and together we turned our
course upstream. On reaching the island the dog
entered into the chase with the enthusiasm of
sportsman and naturalist combined, his interest
in following the jumping mice, of which there
168
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JUMPING MOUSE
appeared to be more than one, preventing him at
_ first from following the trail of the duck. At his
approach the jumping mice proved themselves
worthy of their name, making sudden grasshopper-
like bounds from under his very nose. His joy
in this game of hide-and-seek knew no bounds
and he put the mice to the full test of their jacta-
torial powers, and finally covered himself with
glory by discovering the wounded duck for which
his master and [ had been vainly seeking.
Scientifically speaking, these jumping mice —
or kangaroo mice, as they are often called —are
not true mice, their coarse fur and strangely de-
veloped hind legs classing them more nearly with
the jerboas of Africa, or with the kangaroo rats
of our own Southwest.
Though found in most of the northern states
they are nowhere abundant. The duller colored
meadow jumping mouse seems to be the least rare
of the two varieties, and in late summer is not
infrequently seen in hayfields and meadows after
171
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
the hay has been cut. The larger and handsomer
woodland variety is also found in the meadows
at this season, usually along the banks of little
streams and ponds. ‘They seem completely to
lack the white-footed mouse’s squirrel-like gift of
climbing. [he most that I have ever seen them
exhibit in this direction was when one little fellow
inadvertently leaping before he looked landed him-
self in the swift current of a woodland brook,
and after swimming a few yards against the cur-
rent, climbed upon and ran nimbly along the
slender wet stems of floating brushwood, and then
once more entering the water, swam to the shelter
of the overhanging bank, thus proving himself ~
capable of both swimming and climbing when the
need demanded it, yet they frequently drown
themselves in milk pans or pails of water into
which their aimless leaping has precipitated
them. .
On the whole they appear to be much less quick-
witted than are the true mice, depending for safety
172
JUMPING MOUSE
upon their faculty of taking sudden and erratic
bounds at unexpected moments. Their food seems
to be largely grass seeds and grain. At the end
of summer they burrow in the earth, and curled
up in their underground nests the whole family
enters into a state of the most complete hiber-
nation, which continues apparently unbroken for
more than half the year. From my own observa-
tion I am inclined to think that their period of
hibernation is longer than that of any other of
our little beasts. I have never seen them active
earlier than May nor later than September, and
have seen them turned out of winter quarters by
the plough in May, at which time they were still
completely dormant and insensible.
173
a
Chapter VI
Raccoon —Opossum — Skunk —
Porcupine
ES teen speaking the coon chooses to
dwell in thick woods, making his home high
up in a hollow tree; yet at times a hollow log,
cavern among the rocks, or even a burrow dug out
beneath the overhanging bank of a stream or
gully is his domicile. In his nightly excursions
he wanders indifferently over high land and low;
through swamps and thickets and across open
174
—— ee
RACCOON
fields and pastures. He is a great wanderer and
goes everywhere, towns and villages excepted.
He robs the farmer’s hen roost without fear or
misgiving; goes into the corn field and pulls down
the juicy ears when they are in milk. He climbs
the tallest trees in search of the nests of birds and
squirrels; gathers fruit of all kinds, wild grapes
and berries and probably mushrooms, as well as
nuts and acorns. He is fond of wading and pad-
dling along the beds of shallow streams looking
for shellfish and frogs. The salt meadows and
the sea beach are favorite hunting grounds of his,
as are the inland swamps and the shores of wood-
land lakes and rivers. He goes abroad only at
night and prefers to spend the daylight hours in
sleep. In sunny weather he curls himself up in
the thick top of a hemlock, supported and rocked
to sleep by the elastic branches, but when the
storm winds blow he retires to the shelter of a
hollow tree, the higher up the better.
- For so large an animal his ability to conceal
175
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
himself in exposed situations is wonderful. When
he flattens himself along the branch of an oak
tree it takes a keen eye to distinguish his gray.
coat from the rough gray bark. One winter when
working in the woodlot, I set a fox trap in a
spring where I could look at it in going to and
from my work. ‘The spring was surrounded by
flat clay land, with only scattered hummocks and
thin, short winter-killed grass, affording about
the most meager chance for hiding to be im-
agined. One morning I approached the spring
to within a very few steps before noticing a big
raccoon that had been caught in the trap.
By merely flattening himself to the ground he
managed to present exactly the appearance of a
low hummock overgrown with gray moss and
short dry grass. Anyone not knowing that the
trap was there might very easily have passed close
by without mistrusting that a coon was in plain
sight and almost under his feet. 3
On another occasion when I was trapping for
176
ee ee ae
RACCOON
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muskrat and mink, I was annoyed by having bait
stolen from my traps and supposed that some sly
old fox was outwitting me. One morning when
going my rounds | caught a glimpse of reddish
gray fur moving in the alder swamp where one
of my traps was set. Thinking that I had sur-
prised Mr. Fox in the act, I opened fire with my
rifle. My second shot reached its mark, and
hurrying to the spot, I discovered my victim to be
a raccoon with one paw held fast in the trap.
Raccoons appear to be less regular in their
habits of hibernation than are the woodchucks
and chipmunks. Many of them are abroad in
November and December. After a January thaw
you may find their tracks in wet meadowlands, ~
where they evidently go mousing at such times
when the melting snow drives the meadow-mice
from their retreats. In February and March
they come out from time to time, but probably
not earlier than April do many of them make a
practice of being abroad each night. I know of
| 179
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
no other little beast so eminently well fitted to
look out for himself as Mr. Coon, for he ap-
pears to command the resources of all the others
combined. |
He eats every sort of food that Nature ofters,
animal or vegetable, and is almost equally at home
in the forest or open country.
The raccoon possesses all the vices of both fox
and woodchuck, and yet he is the most likeable
of all the wood-dwellers. |
¢
The appellation ‘ coon” requires no modifica-
tion to be shared in common by the genuine
southern darky, and the little beast of the ring-
tail and the inquisitive nose;- the characters of ©
the two are —from all that I discover — prac-
tically identical. The raccoon is just such an.
easy-going, good-natured, jolly, amusing rascal,
that I can never kill one without feeling almost
as if I had committed a murder. When he robs
your hen roost he does it in the night, and kills
everything within his reach. Then you set a trap
180
Oe a ee ee —
RACCOON
for him, and in the morning when you find him
held fast by the paw, he shows no particular
anger or fear or desire to escape, and, if you see
fit to keep him in captivity for a term, quickly
reconciles himself to his imprisonment and does
not suffer from loss of appetite.
He seldom ventures abroad except by night,
and for this reason is rarely detected in his mis-
demeanors. When the corn has just reached the
proper stage for boiling, he comes with his entire
family for an evening visit, and all night long
they amuse themselves by pulling down and
crunching the succulent ears and trampling them
in the dust. Being classed as game, he enjoys
the protection of the law until the 15th of Sep-
tember, but after that you have a chance to get
even and learn the joy of coon-hunting on moon-
lit nights. Very few dogs are good “ coon dogs,” ©
and-a good coon dog may belong to any one of
half a dozen different breeds. A dog that will
persistently follow a coon track is exceedingly
181
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
valuable in that capacity, but is worth little for
anything else.
The opossums are members of that curious
form of mammalian life—the marsupials or
pouched animals—so called because of the
pouch or natural pocket in which the mother
carries her new-born young.
This is one of Nature’s many experiments
which, though exceedingly ingenious and appar-
ently possessed of many advantages, has not
proved on the whole worth while, judged, that
is, by general results.
The marsupials as a class are decidedly behind —
in the contest for superiority, which began with
the first appearance of active life on the earth
and will undoubtedly continue until its term.
They are one and all creatures of small brains
and sluggish circulation; yet, curiously enough,
the manner of taking care of their young more
nearly resembles that practiced by humans the
182
WNSSOdO
hess Gast A (ten, ;
aX
OPOSSUM
world over than is the case among most wild
animals of greater intelligence. As it is with
humans, so it is with the marsupials, the young
of the highest, and this almost the lowest form
of mammalian life, are the most immature and
helpless when first born.
When the baby opossums are born their mother
takes them with her lips and one by one places
them in her natural pocket under her belly. Once
they have the teats in their mouths they do not
let go; as a matter of fact in many cases the
sides of the mouth of the baby opossum actually
grow together, inclosing the teat, while a curious
little channel in the tongue carries the milk which
the mother forces into it from time to time.
There are many things which seem to indicate
that the marsupials were Nature’s very first ex-
periment in mammalian life. Almost every form
of creature lower than the mammals brings forth
its numerous young in a still more immature state;
as eggs which are either cast adrift on the waters,
185
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
attached to some twig or leaf, and forgotten, or
secreted in a nest or pouch, where they are guarded
and kept warm for a period sufficient to give them
a start in life.
The common opossum is the only marsupial
which has succeeded in surviving the cold winters
and other hardships of a temperate climate, ali
the others being inhabitants of a tropical or semi-
tropical region. The opossum is a most skillful
climber, but in nothing else does he exhibit any
skill comparable to that possessed by the other
little beasts, the burrowers and builders, the
swimmers and divers and hunters. He is almost
four-handed and prehensile, like the monkey, his
hind paws as well as his front ones being fur-
nished with reversible outer toes like thumbs, for
grasping, while his supple and scaly tail is almost
another hand, with which he can hang suspended
in order to reach any birds’ nest or hanging fruit
that might otherwise be beyond his reach. It is
said that the little opossums, when big enough to
186
OPOSSUM
leave their mother’s pouch, frequently climb upon
her back and, nestling in her fur with their tails
wrapped about hers, ride about with her on her
nightly excursions for food.
The food of the opossum is both animal and —
vegetable in character, — fruit, berries, birds’ eggs
and young birds, — including chickens, — reptiles
and insects. His sleeping place is a hollow tree
or log, or a burrow dug in a hillside. In the
autumn he fattens himself on nuts, acorns, per-
simmons and corn, and during the winter spends
much of his time in sleep, but does not actually
hibernate as do the raccoon and woodchuck.
It seems probable that the queer trick of “ play-
ing possum ” practiced by this species is not really
an intelligent feigning of death, in order to put
an enemy off guard, and so give an opportunity
for escape. Dr. C. C. Abbott, after careful ob-
servation, became convinced that it was instead
an actual condition of insensibility, caused by ter-
ror effecting the action of the heart. This would
187
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
certainly seem to be an explanation more con-
sistent with the well-known stupidity of the in-
dividual opossum, yet at the same time we must
not lose sight of the fact that, among the lower
animals at least, the intelligence of the species is
often far superior to that of the individual, and.
that a fixed habit of a species does not necessarily
indicate that separate individuals are capable of
reasoning out the why and the wherefore of the
things which they may do instinctively.
The crab-eating opossum is a more southern
species inhabiting swamps and wet low-lands.
Although its food consists largely of crabs and
reptiles that it captures at the edge of the water, |
the crab-eating opossum is as expert at climbing
and birds’-nesting as is the common opossum.
The yapock, or water opossum, on the contrary,
has carried this predelection for an aquatic life
so far as completely to have lost the power of
climbing, the species having developed webbed
feet like those of an otter. Like the otter, the
‘188
SKUNK
yapock is an expert swimmer and diver and dwells
in a burrow dug in the overhanging bank of a
stream or pond. It is of even more southern dis-
tribution than the crab-eating species, being found
only in South America. |
Both of these water loving opossums have
darker colored and thicker fur than their northern
cousin of the dry land; the yapock being curiously
mottled and blended with gray and black.
The skunk is about the only member of the
weasel family that can afford to get fat. He
belongs in the leisure class and has allowed his
muscles to get soft through disuse.
The typical weasels, marten, mink, ermine,
sable, depend for their safety and livelihood upon
the possession of lean and active bodies forever
in hunting trim, to leap, swim, dodge and fight
as the instant’s need demands. Like the other |
inhabitants of the wild they are protectively col-
ored, each according to its own environment.
189
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
The mink and otter have taken the color of
water-soaked logs, the marten’s fur blends with
the fallen leaves and the bark of pine and spruce,
while the ermine and weasel follow the changing
color of the seasons in the northland, from brown
to white as the snow comes with the coming of the
winter, and white to brown again as it wastes
away in the spring. A striking characteristic of
the whole tribe is the possession of two small hid-
den glands, that in times of anger and excitement
give forth a musky, suffocating discharge, which
undoubtedly serves greatly to disconcert an enemy
in a hand-to-hand combat. The pine marten and
sable have almost entirely dispensed with this
most unpleasant feature, while the skunk, on the
contrary, has developed it to a most striking
degree. The two sacks appear to be merged into
one which almost surrounds the base of the tail
and is often of the bigness of a hen’s egg. Its
muscular coats are capable of exerting a pres-
sure sufficient to eject the dreadful contents to
190
a eS eee
SKUNK
a distance of several yards with considerable
accuracy.
Thus defended, Mr. Skunk is no longer obliged
to keep in fighting trim. He can stand his ground,
while most of his enemies are ready enough to
give him the path. Instead of fur of neutral tint
to render him inconspicuous, he wears a partl-
colored coat of the loudest black-and-white pat-
tern, and a bushy tail, white tipped, to flourish as
a warning, lest some over-eager hunter mistake
him for more innocent game to the detriment of
all concerned.
Throughout the warm weather he gets along
well enough owing to the abundance of insects and
reptiles and nesting birds. Though lacking the
activity of the other hunters, he is still a good
traveler and covers many miles of field and forest
in a night’s hunt.
With the coming of the cold weather, conditions
become more unfavorable for him. Insects and
reptiles are dormant in the hard frozen earth.
191
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
_ The birds and beasts that yet remain to be hunted
are well grown and active; only the fittest have
survived and these have learned caution and alert-
ness. Mr. Skunk, however, with forehanded pru-
dence, has spent the plentiful season of late sum-
mer and early autumn in the agreeable occupation
of cultivating fat, prudently gathering every sort
of food within his reach without undue exertion,
until by far the greater part of his bulk is fat,
which he stores under his skin, as the chipmunk
stores nuts underground. |
When the hunting is not sufficiently remunera-
tive to repay him for the effort required, he goes
down into his underground nest and goes to
sleep, tucked in with half a dozen or more of his
fellows to economize warmth. Thus he. dozes
off week after week while the cold winds howl
through the tree tops and the dry snow gathers
with the increasing cold.
With most hibernating animals there -is, vary-
ing according to the species, considerable regular-
192
law
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NP,
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SKUNK
SKUNK
ity as to the time of “ denning in,” and in the
duration and soundness of the winter sleep. With
the skunks, however, such does not appear to be
the case. While many of them go into winter
quarters in the fall, others are abroad through-
out the winter.
Sometimes a den of them, dug out in the coldest
weather, will reveal the inmates awake and active,
while at other times they will be found completely
dormant. I have seen a skunk come out of his
hole on a brilliant, windy, snow-dazzling January
noonday, and after a look around retire again
into his burrow. I am inclined to think that after
mid-winter the majority of them simply take pro-
tracted naps of varying duration, interrupted by
intervals of wakefulness.
The skunk, like most of the smaller carnivora,
is at the same time a most destructive and a most
useful neighbor; on the one hand being a very
persistent hunter of mice, grasshoppers, crickets
and beetles, and on the other an equally persistent
195
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
hunter of birds’ nests, and a chicken thief into
the bargain. On the whole I am inclined to the
opinion that his destructiveness overbalances the
good that he does, and that his place might be
better filled by the mouse-eating hawks and the
smaller owls, especially the latter, if these could
only be protected and encouraged to become more
abundant.
It would be a pity to have the skunks entirely
exterminated, but of this there is little likelihood.
The fact is that almost any species of the smaller
wild animals if unmolested in the breeding season
can pretty well take care of itself during the rest
of the year if it is only capable of adapting itself.
to changing conditions. All the fur animals have
this advantage, their fur being of value only to
themselves, except in the cold months.
Skunk fur is one of the most beautiful and val-
uable of them all, the black portion, when prime,
having that rich blue-black shade recognized by fur-
riers as so superior to the dead-black of dyed fur.
196
SKUNK
For the past twenty years the price has been
rising pretty steadily, until of late hundreds of
thousands of skunk skins have been marketed
each winter, yet in spite of the persistent trap-
ping they appeared rather to increase than de-
crease, until about three or four years ago when
they became, locally at least, positive nuisances.
Since then, however, there has been a noticeable
diminution, which may, or may not be due to the
increased number that have been killed for their
fur.
Most of the fur animals prey to a certain extent
upon other fur animals smaller or weaker than
themselves, so that while the high price of fur is
unquestionably a menace to their safety at one
season, it is also in a measure a blessing in dis-
guise to many of them at just the season when
it is of the greatest benefit, for it is during the
warm weather that the young animals of this class '
are in the most danger of being eaten by the larger
and stronger ones. Muskrats, for example, while
197
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
perhaps the most constantly persecuted of all the
fur animals in the more settled parts of the coun-
try, are still abundant even in the vicinity of cities
and towns, their worst enemies, the foxes and
minks, having been thinned out by the trappers.
The skunk, while the most conspicuously col-
ored of all the little beasts, is yet able to make
himself quite inconspicuous at times even in ex-
posed situations. By moonlight and in the dusk
you may often see them at quite a distance as they
move leisurely about in search of mice and
crickets. If approached, however, they generally
become motionless, and, flattened out in the grass,
are very hard to detect in the uncertain light. It
is only rarely that they come out in the daytime;
I cannot recall ever having seen more than six or
eight all told. On November 12th, while writing
at my desk, I looked out of the window and
noticed a small black object moving about in the
dry grass at the foot of the hill nearly an eighth
of a mile away. After watching it for a few
198 3
SKUNK
moments I was convinced that it was neither a
black cat nor a crow, and taking my field glass
saw at once that it was a skunk. By keeping to
the hollows, and with the wind in my favor, I
was able to approach to within two or three rods
without being perceived and had a most excellent
chance for observing his ways.
He was busily engaged in the pursuit of grass-
hoppers and crickets, walking cautiously along
with a rolling, top-heavy motion, snifing here and
there like a dog and from time to time rising
playfully upon his hind feet to pounce forward
with nose and paws together on some unfortunate
grasshopper, which he would crunch between his
teeth with evident satisfaction. The grasshoppers
and crickets were so numbed by the frost as sel-
dom to hop more than a foot or two each time,
but the skunk did not follow those that hopped
away out of his reach, evidently depending upon
‘surprising those that had failed to take alarm.
Sometimes he dug rapidly into the turf with his
199
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
strong fore claws, but I think got nothing in that
way larger than a cricket.
He would stop at intervals to scratch himself,
or roll over on his side in the dead grass; then he
- would stand up and shake himself and lick down
the long fur on his flanks.
After watching him for some time, I stood up
and took several steps in his direction; whereupon
he jumped back quickly, and erecting his brush,
flourished it threateningly, all the time crowding
himself down into a little depression in the turf,
where, almost hidden, he let his tail fall over life-
lessly to one side, and to my surprise the long
black-and-white fur so mingled with the light and.
shadow on the grass stems that one might have
walked by within a very few steps without mis-
trusting his presence. To all appearances he was
really feigning death, “ playing possum.” As he
lay motionless, the autumn wind ruffling his long
fur this way and that, he looked for all the
world as if he might have been lying there dead
200
SKUNK
for a month. From observation at the time I
came to the conclusion that skunks, like. rabbits,
squirrels, and undoubtedly most of the woodland
folk, have more or less control over the arrange-
ment of their fur, shading the black and white
together, or separating them, making themselves
inconspicuous or bringing out the characteristic
markings of their species at will. We see this
power much more clearly exampled among birds,
particularly in the case of the owls, grouse, wood-
cock, whippoorwill and the various waterfowl.
As Mr. Skunk refused to show any sign of re-
turning animation while I was nearby, I retired
to the shadow of the pine grove a dozen rods
away, and presently saw him emerge from his
hiding place and resume his hunting, but as he
kept going over and over the same old act of catch-
ing grasshoppers, I left him undisturbed in that —
pursuit. For an hour I could still see him at work,
though in a different part of the field, just at the
edge of the pine grove where the afternoon.sun
201
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
shone warm and red on the pine needles and
fallen leaves. The following afternoon I saw
him out again in the same place; after hunting
grasshoppers for about an hour, he retired to his
hole in the edge of the pine grove, perhaps to den
in for the winter; at all events I saw him no more
after that.
When the skunks leave their dens late in the
winter they are quite fat, but being now compelled
to compete with the other hunters in the chase of
rabbits, partridges, mice and other active game,
they lose flesh rapidly and become lean and active,
the greater part of their hunting being now down
in the woods and thickets. Later when the snow
has nearly gone from the fields, though still deep
in the woods, they come out into the open, to
catch snakes and insects that are resuming an
active life once more.
The little skunks are born in April or May, in
families of six or eight, and of all the young ani-
mals to be seen at that season they are perhaps
202
a et ee iE i re ee
PORCUPINE
the prettiest, their short, fine fur bringing out the
varied black-and-white markings of the species
with beautiful distinctness. On summer evenings
you may see them following their mother Indian
file while she teaches them the art of hunting and
birds’ nesting.
The porcupine, hedgehog, or quill pig, exhibits
_ both in physique and character the degenerating
_ effects of too easy living.
He is not under the necessity of exerting him-
self, either in the matter of getting a living, avoid-
ing his enemies, laying up store of food against
the coming of the winter, or constructing a home
for himself. His food is everywhere about him,
the bark of the forest trees constituting his staple
diet the year round. This is neither very nutri-
tious nor delicate, but appears to satisfy his taste,
quantity, rather than quality, evidently being his
‘motto. |
In the matter of avoiding his enemies, the por-
203
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
cupine assumes an attitude similar to that of the
skunk. The majority of the hungry freebooters
of the woodland preferring to go hungry rather
than sit down to a dinner of quill pig at the cost
of having lips and paws pierced and stabbed by
the quills of his spiny armor, for these quills are
easily detached from their owners’ skin, and al-
though at first contact they may cause but an ©
insignificant puncture, they are so covered with
tiny backward-pointing barbs that the involuntary _
twitching of the skin of the unfortunate sufferer
who has come. in contact with them continually
works them deeper and deeper into the flesh, so
that even so insignificant a weapon as a porcu- -
pine’s quill may inflict the death wound of such
mighty hunters as the grizzly, the wolf or the
panther. For a home, the porcupine takes posses-
sion of any chance cavern among the ledges or
some prostrate hollow log, apparently never mak-
ing the slightest effort towards improving the con-
dition of things as he finds them. ‘The natural
204
SANIdNOYOd
PORCUPINE
consequence of this sort of easy-going life might
well be imagined and predicted.
He has a fat, clumsy body, possessed of just
sufficient suppleness to enable its owner to climb to
the tops of the trees the bark of which he feeds
upon, instinct or dull reason enough to guide
him in his search for food, to give the impulse
which leads him to roll himself into a prickly ball
when danger threatens, to lead him to look up a
hidden retreat at the coming of the cold weather,
to stir him to some slight degree of animation
in the mating season, and, in the case of the
female quill pig, to call forth a certain degree of
care and protection for her young. ‘The senses
of sight, hearing and smell possessed by the por-
cupine are undoubtedly much less keen than in
those other wild creatures whose lives depend
upon them. In spite of his protective armor, the
porcupine is not entirely safe from attack.
Hunger now and then drives one and another of
the wild hunters to pounce upon and kill him in
207
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
defiance of the torture that must follow the a q
ing of their appetite. | i
The fisher, the largest of the martens, has a
way of killing the porcupine without danger to
himself. Old trappers say that at the approach
of the fisher the porcupine rolls himself into a ball,
just as he does when confronted by any other
enemy, but the wily fisher crouches near, waiting
his chance with tireless patience, until the porcu- —
pine unrolls, exposing his unprotected throat to
the fisher’s lightening-like spring.
208
Chapter VIL
Moles, Shrews and Bats
HERE is a class of little beasts which, al-
though abundant enough in almost all parts
of the world, are but slightly known to people
generally. [hese are the moles and shrews.
The true moles are round-bodied, gimlet-nosed,
velvety-furred little chaps whose most striking
characteristics are their big shovel-like front feet
with which they are continually digging and tun-
neling about underground. The shrews are of
more mouse-like build, with longer tails, and with
feet that are better fitted for running than for
digging. An intermediate group, known as shrew-
209
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
moles or moleshrews, have the piglike bodies and
short tails of the true moles and feet suitable both
for digging and running. We have in the Eastern
and Northeastern States the common shrew, which
lives among the roots of old trees; the larger water
shrew that has taken to an aquatic life and de-
veloped a tail flattened and fringed, like that of
a muskrat, for swimming; the short-tailed mole-
shrew who divides his time about equally between
digging in the earth and rooting about pig fashion
beneath fallen leaves and crumbling stumps and
logs; the common mole, and the hairy-tailed
mole, both possessed of true mole habits, and the
star-nosed mole, that like the water shrew haunts -
moist and watery places, where mole-like it tun-
nels continually in soft black mud, often under
water.
As a class the moles and shrews are perhaps
the most bloodthirsty and carnivorous beasts in
existence, even more so than the weasels. The
common shrew is the most diminutive of al! our
210
MOLES, SHREWS AND BATS
little beasts; something less than half the size
of an ordinary mouse. It has silky, slate-colored
fur, varying to olive brown or silvery gray in some
specimens. In common with the others of its
family it is possessed of a pointed nose lengthened
almost to a proboscis, and with this it is continu-
ally prying into crevices and seams of the rotten
logs and stumps, nosing about under fallen leaves
and exploring the tunnels of every sort of grub
or beetle in quest of prey. It is active throughout
the winter, often running about on the surface of
the snow in the coldest weather, though it must
find insects scarce at such times, probably depend-
ing upon such as it may find dormant beneath rot-
ten bark, and it may be gathering nourishment
from the multitudes of minute snow fleas that at
times late in the winter blacken the melting snow.
It also seizes upon any scrap of meat or drop of
frozen blood scattered by some larger hunter —
bird, or beast or man.
In summer it undoubtedly robs the nests of the
211
MORE LITTLE BEASTS —
smaller birds and very likely kills young mice when
it has the chance. | |
Its nest is made in a crevice of a stump or
beneath a fallen log or wood pile. These shrews
do not seem to be altogether nocturnal for I have
sometimes seen them out in the daylight, though
it is but rarely that one has the opportunity to
catch a glimpse of them under any circumstances.
Most of those that I have seen were found hiding
under wood piles or old fence boards in the
pasture.
To-day, August 10, 1911, when I was sitting in
the shadow of the pines in the pasture a short-
tailed shrew came hurrying along over the dry red
pine needles to within a few inches of my hand.
I watched him for perhaps a minute as he ran
about here and there in the broad daylight, directly
under my eyes, a rare opportunity indeed for ob-
serving any member of his family, for all the
shrews are lovers of the night, secret in all their
ways and seldom seen abroad by day. Yet here
212
MOLES, SHREWS AND BATS
was this little fellow going about under the bright
light of a mid-summer noon, generally in the
_ shade of the pines it is true, but at times crossing
a belt of sunshine that had found its way between
the tree tops overhead. Often his long pointed
snout was turned up until his face was all creases
and wrinkles, reminding one of a little beady-
eyed dwarf, then he would lower it to probe
among the pine needles. Suddenly he took alarm
and skipped across the narrow wood-path to the
entrance of his burrow, when he disappeared,
though for a little while I could hear him moving
about among the fallen branches and dry twigs
a few yards away. Fifteen minutes later I again
noticed the peculiar musky odor common to all
shrews, and soon saw him emerge from the open-
ing of his tunnel. As it happened I was looking
away just at that instant, and without thinking,
and contrary to all the laws of Nature-study,
turned my head slightly in order to see him more
distinctly; as was to be expected, he instantly
213
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
dodged back out of sight and I saw him’no more,
though I waited for some time hoping that he
might reappear. Undoubtedly if I had not turned
my head he would have given me another oppor-
tunity of observing him, and perhaps of finding
out his reason for being abroad at mid-day.
Possibly he was after a drink of water, the dry
season having put many of the woodland folk on
short rations in that direction. Seven or eight
rods away from where I saw him there is a little
brook, not yet quite dry, and it was towards this
that he was going. Very likely he had been to
the brookside and was on his way back to his nest
when I saw him look out from his tunnel and -
dodge back at sight of me sitting in his path.
I found his hidden runways here and there be-
neath the fallen pine needles, and in the little
woodland path where I first saw him, they had
been trodden over and uncovered by the cows and
sheep, which might account for his being out in the
air at that particular spot.
214
MOLES, SHREWS AND BATS
This short-tailed shrew is much the most abun-
dant species and is often pounced upon and killed
by the house cat, but never eaten. It is generally
looked upon as a mole, but may be easily distin-
guished from the true moles by its fore feet, which
are only slightly larger than the hind ones, and
quite unlike the clumsy scoop-shovel aftairs of the
genuine ground mole. The short-tailed shrew is
considerably larger than a mouse, with slate-col-
ored fur close and soft as velvet. In its habits it
is a shrew in summer and a mole in winter, though
even in cold weather it often ventures above
ground to root about among dead leaves beneath
the snow. At times it comes out on the surface
of the snow and runs about, lured by the smell of
raw meat, of which it is ravenously fond and
capable of engulfing enormous amounts.
A man possessed of such an appetite in propor-
tion to his weight could devour several sheep or a
good-sized heifer in the course of a day. The
shrews that I have had in captivity could consume
215
MORE LITTLE BEASTS~ ~
several times their own weight in raw meat in a
surprisingly short time, besides drinking milk
greedily like little hogs. When eating or drink-
ing or fighting they turn up their taperlike pro-
boscis, exposing two sets of crimson teeth, which
give them a most terrifying aspect, in spite of.
their small size. To other creatures of their own
dimensions they must be terrific foes, for they
set about everything they do in a sort of blind
fury, uttering all the time harsh, squeaky and
grating cries, and emitting a rank, musky or cheesy
smell that must be almost overpowering at close
quarters. | |
The bite of all shrews is said to be poisonous, -
but I have never seen it put to the test.
The water shrew is much less generally abun-
dant than the others. ‘There is but one place.
where | have ever seen it (and there only on three
or four occasions,) a reach of perhaps a quarter
of a mile of a slow-flowing meadow brook, fringed
with willows and alders and trailing smilax vines,
216
(aae4 AtaA) MAHHS YALVM
MOLES, SHREWS AND BATS
backed by pine and hemlock woods on the one
hand and open pasture on the other. Here I have
seen the water shrews swimming, at times on the
surface, again under water with trails of silvery
bubbles in their wake. On one occasion I saw
two of them together swimming beneath the sur-
face. They swim with astonishing swiftness and
are seldom in sight for more than a few seconds.
The water shrew is about the size of the short-
tailed species, and is slate colored above and sil-
very beneath. They probably catch and eat small
fish and tadpoles as well as water insects, perhaps
with an occasional diet of frogs’ eggs for a
change. |
I have never found their homes, but believe that
they live in holes beneath the bank and among
the roots of waterside trees.
Of the moles, I have found the hairy tailed
much the most abundant. A blackish, slate-col-
ored, piglike little beast with a tail about as
thickly covered with hair as is that of the wood-
219
MORE LITTLE BEASTS -
_ chuck, and of much the same general proportion.
The common mole is a little larger and has the
tail almost destitute of hair. Both are genuine
little gnomes, mining and tunneling forever under-
ground and rarely coming to the surface even for
a short scamper above ground.
‘Blind moles’ they are frequently called, and
not incorrectly, for their eyes are so rudimentary
as to be little more than pigment spots beneath
the skin, and only just sufficiently sensitive to the
light as to serve the simple purpose of distinguish-
ing between daylight and dark. Their other senses
however appear to be developed in a degree to
compensate them for the lack of seeing.
They live in complicated underground galleries,
in warm weather quite near the surface, and in
winter deep down below the frost level, gauging
the depth of their work to follow the movement
of the earthworms upon which they principally
feed. Forever traversing their tunnels back and
forth, they snap up every earthworm and grub or
220
SJIOW G3ATIVL AYIVH
ta fe
sy =
AWW
AK
semen
MOLES, SHREWS AND BATS
beetle whose subterranean progress in search of
bulbs or roots to feed upon has caused him to
blunder into the trap which the mole has dug for
him. Mr. Mole, however, does not get all his
living in this way; whenever scent or hearing
informs him of the working of grub or worm
nearby, he proceeds to burrow away in that direc-
tion, stopping at intervals to listen for the faintest
sound or tremor that may guide him. Coming
to the passage of an earthworm, he follows it as
the hound follows the trail of the fox, digging
along with remarkable quickness, boring into the
soil with his gimletlike snout, pushing a part of
the dirt aside as he works along, and crowding
the remainder back into the tunnel behind him.
Having overtaken and engulfed his humble
quarry, he still pushes ahead with undiminished
appetite, disinterring a chrysalis perhaps, or the
underground nest of a spider with its dozens of
tiny yellow eggs done up in a silken bag.
Moles are savagely fond of raw flesh, and a
223
MORE LITTLE- BEASTS>
fight between two of them is pretty certain to ter-
minate in a cannibal banquet for the victor. I
suspect that when the mole in his subterranean
travels happens upon the nest of a field mouse
with young ones, the entire litter is devoured at a
meal, and in the winter he must often discover
snakes, lizards and toads, or even jumping mice,
in a condition of defenseless hibernation, and at
such times would scarcely hesitate to make a meal
of whatever he could devour. Dozens of the
common striped garter snakes are often to be
found coiled up in an intertangled mass, and com-
pletely inanimate, and would supply the lucky
mole who chanced upon them in their winter
quarters, with sufhcient meat in cold storage to
last for almost the entire winter. I have found
snakes partly eaten under just such circumstances
as led me to believe that moles had been dining
upon them in their sleep. Judging from the
length of time that is required for an entire snake
to die after it has been dissected while wide
224
MOLES, SHREWS AND BATS
awake and active, one would imagine that when
dormant the loss of one half of its length would
hardly be likely to destroy the vitality of the
other half. Fancy the dismay ot waking from
a long restful sleep, to discover that miscreant
moles had been devouring a considerable por-
tion of one’s anatomy while one peacefully
slumbered!
As these borings which the mole makes while
foraging for food are more or less filled up behind
him as he moves along, he probably does not re-
turn the same way, finding it easier instead to con-
tinue burrowing along searching for more victims
as he goes, until gradually working round he
makes connection at some point with his perma-
nent runways.
In an enlarged chamber, formed at the junc-
tion of a number of intersecting galleries, he has
his nest. In all likelihood the female has a sepa-
rate nest chamber of her own in which she guards
her young. Descending shafts are sunk here and
225
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
there as wells for the purpose of furnishing a
water supply.
All these small insectiverous animals are very
dependent upon the supply of drinking water,
unlike some of the vegetarian species, who appear
capable of subsisting for considerable periods
upon the sap of the plants they feed on. In the
droughts of late summer and early autumn, large
numbers of both moles and shrews die, evidently
because of their inability to reach water.
Whenever the water level sinks below a certain
depth, so that the moles in digging their wells
come in contact with ledge or hard-packed gravel
that resists their efforts to go lower, they are-
forced to come to the surface and start off on long
pilgrimages in search of lower lands. Being quite
unsuited for this sort of travel, they make but
slow progress, and as a consequence many perish.
I have frequently seen them at such times,
usually in the evening, though occasionally at mid-
day, hurrying along at the best speed they are
226
JIOW GASON HVLS
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a be all cs ‘ . a a >] 4 :
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as oe be 2 é ' * 5
ae ee ‘ , Lage s t ty ¢
MOLES, SHREWS AND BATS
capable of making. Even the semi-aquatic, star-
nosed mole, whose accustomed haunts are in
swampy meadowland and along brooksides, is at
times forced to migrate, when long weeks of rain-
less weather have dried the black peat of his
homelands and turned the channel of his favorite
meadow brook into a sun-baked furrow.
Meadow and brook alike underlaid with hard-
packed clay, and no water to be had for the dig-
ging, I have seen them crossing areas of high
dry land where in times of sufficient rainfall you
would hardly ever have seen them. An overabun-
dance of rain affects the moles of the uplands more
disastrously than it does the star-nosed moles of
the wet lowlands, for the latter are such capable
swimmers and divers that when their homes are
flooded they assume the habits of the otter and
mink. I have never seen them in the act of catch-
ing insects while swimming, but should not be in
the least surprised at witnessing such an act on
their part, having so often observed their powers
229
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
of swimming both in still water and where the
wind-ruffled surface put them to a severer test, or
in the narrow channel of a quick-running brook.
The common mole of the uplands, despite his —
scientific title, aquaticus, exhibits but little resource
when his galleries are filled by heavy rains, at
least so far as my observation goes. I have often
found these moles after heavy thunderstorms in
midsummer, having to all appearances been driven
out by the flooding of their tunnels, and drowned
on the surface before the storm had ceased.
Wherever in wet lowlands you see numerous
little heaps of black soil thrown up, you may know
that the star-nosed moles have been at work. |
They seem to dwell in colonies as a rule and in-
habit the same limited area for years. The heaps
of earth thrown up by them are much larger
than those of the upland moles.
While undeniable nuisances in lawns and grass
lands, moles as a class are of great service to the
farmer, not only on account of the great number
230
SJIOW GNNOYD
MOLES,: SHREWS AND BATS
of insects and grubs which they destroy, but in
the capacity of subsoilers, continually stirring and
loosening the ground below the reach of the deep-
est plow.
Their tunnels also serve as drains to carry off
an excess of surface moisture. Although at times
they unintentionally uproot bulbs and newly set
cuttings in their work, it is doubtful if they ever
do any harm by actually biting into them; if they
ever do this it is only for the sap in times of water
famine. Most of the damage for which moles are
blamed is really the work of the meadow-mice.
Huxley has shown us the immense value of the
earthworm in agriculture, in loosening up the soil,
and as moles feed largely upon earthworms, this
fact might be set down as an item in their dis-
favor; yet as there never seems to be any notice-
able diminution of the supply of earthworms, even
in seasons when moles are most abundant, we can
have little to worry about on that score. The
only wise course for us to follow is to endeavor
| 233
MORE LITTLE~BEASTS
as best we may to help in keeping the balance of
Nature on an even keel. I doubt if even from a
selfish standpoint we should be benefited by the
extermination of any of the forms of life about
us, not even rats, mice, wolves, mosquitoes or
flies, and certainly there is no form of life, either
insect, beast or human, which could desirably be
permitted to increase unlimitedly without check or
hindrance. However, Nature can be trusted to
look after this matter better than we, while man
with all his ingenuity has never yet succeeded in
exterminating a single form of insect life, and
probably never will. A large proportion of the
beasts and birds that have joined the extinct class
within historical times were not those most per-
sistently hunted. Just as surely as man succeeds
by an unwise policy of overprotection in increas-
ing the numbers of any species beyond a certain
point, Nature steps in with disease or degenera-
tion in one form or another and quickly restores
the balance.
234
MOLES, SHREWS AND BATS
Flitter-mouse is an old English name for the
bat, like the German, Fleder Mauser, but the bat
is much less like the mice than it is like the moles
and shrews. In some ways it would seem to be
more nearly related to the monkeys. But after
all is said the bats are still in a class by themselves,
weird, strange, uncanny little folk, soft, gentle
and friendly, half goblin and half fay.
I have just been sketching a baby bat as he
scrambled about over my desk among books and
papers. I found him in the barn this morning,
June 23, 1911. I was getting down some lum-
ber from overhead and noticed what looked like
a bit of old leather nailed to the side of the barn,
then saw that it was a young bat clinging flat to
the rough boards. I had evidently dislodged him
from some dark nook where his mother had hid-
den him away for his afternoon nap. The mother
bat is unique in her manner of caring for her
young. At times she carries them about with her,
nursing them as she flies; then when wearied by
235
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
the burden of their diminutive weight, she hangs
them up unceremoniously here and there on a
bush or the branch of a tree, or tucks them into
the crevice of some old building to sleep away
the time contentedly while she is away. |
The little bats (usually two in number) appear
to be perfectly adapted to this sort of usage,
hanging there for hours, for all the world like
some dilapidated old scrap of a bundle, supported
by the tiny hooks which each of them wears at
the bend of its wing. Old and young spend the
hours of daylight together, often in colonies of
thirty or forty, or even more. A favorite sleep-
ing place of theirs is the cramped space between~
the ridgepole and the roof boards of an old barn..
Looking up from below you can see where the
rough old boards are worn smooth by their pass-
ing in and out. At twilight you may hear them
squeaking together in queer little dry, rasping
tones as they scuttle down to peer out at the
weather, only to withdraw again into their nar-
236 7 |
, LE . oh. 4 Se AL Sac sald: Lair ah
.
-
\"
‘
MOLES, SHREWS AND BATS
row quarters if there is still too much light in the
sky. When the darkness finally settles down, they
come out one by one, taking wing in quick suc-
cession out into the night.
Artists of all ages have taken the bat for a
model when depicting goblins, demons, imps or
devils of every sort; imagination can go no
farther in the direction of the weird and the in-
congruous. Ihe big misshapen ears above the
impish little face with its wide gaping mouth, and
beady little eyes twinkling beneath shaggy, woolly
eyebrows are sufficient in themselves to inspire
awe.
Just how keen a bat’s eyes actually are it is
dificult to say, for he has another sense which
enables him to detect the nearness of any object
which he may happen to approach in his flight,
even when blinded, as has been amply proved by
a number of experiments.
The simplest explanation which appears to
offer itself, and the one I think most generally
239
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
accepted is this. The vibrations of air, set in
motion by the flapping of a bat’s wing, are driven
against each nearby object and recoil like waves
from a rock, just as we see the ripples made by
a boat on still water return from the bank to sur-
round the boat again. ‘The sensitive membrane
of the bat’s wing detects these faint vibrations,
and veers away instinctively. When a bat hangs
motionless, you may approach a pencil or stick
quite close to him without any evidence on his
part that he is conscious of its nearness.
Our northern bats are all exceedingly useful,
for they feed entirely upon insects, particularly
mosquitoes and night-flying beetles. Most of
this insect game is caught on the wing; as the
bat flits by you in the dusk you can hear the
gritting of his teeth as he passes through a swarm
of midges or gnats. Occasionally he flutters down
to the ground and hitches awkwardly along, pick-
ing up beetles of one sort or another. Many of
the tropical species are said to be decidedly harm-
240
BATS IN THE WINDOW.
ie ott OX ORES et ss ee ae Ge RS tees
5 n eS be ~~
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MOLES, SHREWS AND BATS
ful. The fruit-eating bats, which are as large as
foxes and have wings that spread four or five
feet, are perhaps the most destructive, though less
fearful to the imagination, than are the carnivo-
rous vampires, which, though smaller, are so hide-
ous both in their general aspect and their habits,
feeding as they do on flesh and blood, living and
warm. The smaller bats and fowls, and at times
larger animals and even men, are attacked while
asleep and the living blood sucked from their veins.
While the hot, wet, heavily forested regions
of the tropics would appear to be the true home
of the race of bats, representatives of the family
are to be found in almost every part of the world,
with the exception of the polar regions. Their -
powers of flight have enabled them to wander
abroad over the surface of the earth and its
oceans. On many a lonely island in the Pacific,
where other forms of mammalian life are un-
known, bats are exceedingly abundant. ‘They
are also found in deserts far away from the water.
243
MORE LITTLE BEASTS
Here in the north, bats sleep all winter long,
large numbers of them crowded together in close
contact, each contributing its diminutive quota of
heat for the benefit of the general assembly.
From October to May they maintain just suffi-
cient vitality to keep from freezing, without any
unnecessary waste of tissue. Even in warm
weather they are sometimes found in a sleep so
profound as to be almost hibernation. One spe-
cies, the large hoary bat, which is found, though
rarely, in the mountains of northern New England |
and New York in the summer, migrates south-
ward and towards the sea-coast in the autumn,
and back again to the highlands in the spring.
This species is to be known by its large size, :
narrow, pointed wings and swift zigzag flight.
Its fur is richly mottled and blended with light
and dark brown. I have seen a few specimens —
flying which answered to the description of this
species, but have never had the chance to identify
them. |
244
Chapter VILL
Lif
SERING'S breath is in the air, the dreaming
Harth,
Long wrapped in deep repose,
| Beneath the snows,
Waiting the season’s birth,
Stirs in her sleep;
Still her warm heart doth keep
Sweet memories of love’s departed days;
Yet does her bosom thrill
| Beneath its mantle chill,
Owning the magic of her lover’s gaze;
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For now her lord the Sun,
Afar his course hath run,
And comes to wake her with his kindling rays.
Ah! ’tis no idle word,
In song and saga heard,
That tells the tale of love’s awakening power.
The Northmen’s myth sublime,
The poet’s tender rhyme, 7
Breathe kindred truths, that fit the passing hour.
Poet or Viking, heart of flesh or flame!
That heart’s own history
Revealed life’s Mystery;
To Nature’s child the nature secret came.
And who shall say
That in the heart of clay,
Throbbing beneath our feet, no spirit dwells?
Or that yon star,
Pulsating from afar,
Naught save a blind mechanic force impels?
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LIFE
O ye who deeply con great Nature’s lore,
(Yet backward read),
Do ye not miss indeed,
The mightiest truth in all that mighty store?
Ye deftly read that hieroglyphic page,
And downward trace
The footsteps of the race,
Until ye find the glory of our age,
Its thought sublime,
Lost in primeval slime.
Ye hold the substance, but the vital flame
‘Eludes your grasp;
Spirit ye cannot clasp;
O brave truth-seekers, can ye therefore claim
That love and trust
Are accidents of dust?
Though ye may scan
The unfolding powers of man,
And mark the height to which his thought may
soar,
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How can ye tell
What inner life may dwell
Even in the slime that paves the ocean floor?
“‘God’s spirit moved above the lifeless waves,
And life was born.”
T is thus creation’s morn
Has shone on us across the centuries’ graves.
To-day the lamp of ancient faith burns dim;
New lights arise,
And flood the eastern skies,
And echoes far great Nature’s primal hymn.
Life is, and was and shall be, ever still,
The regnant soul; |
While suns and planets roll,
Shall bend obedient matter to its will;
Day after day
Shall veil itself in clay,
And ever thus its spiral track ascend:
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LIFE
Each shell downcast
More perfect than the last,
Each step more potent for the crowning end.
’T is thus I fain would read the ancient writ
Of ages gone,
Graven on crumbling stone;
_ At the great mother’s feet, I thus would sit,
And list the story of her morning time,
And as I heard,
Fach retrospective word
Should inly glow with prophecies sublime;
Life is and was and shall .be, evermore.
Oh, deep and vast
The records of the past,
But measureless the promises in store.
SARAH ELIZABETH CRAM.
Instinct and reason are words which have been
used in a distinctive sense as separating that which
directs the movements of animals from the more
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thoughtful intelligence of the human mind, but
in Nature we very rarely find lines of sharply
marked distinction, the link may be missing to
our defective eyesight, but it is there nevertheless
in every instance. Instinct we may safely assume
had its birth coincident with the first awakening
of active life, and down through ail the ages has
been one of the strongest factors in the general
struggle. Where then did intelligence have its
beginning? Is it the final outcome and blossom-
ing of highly developed instinct; instinct become
at last observant and quick to profit by what it
sees and take advantage of every new condition
with which it comes in contact, or is instinct but ~
the stored up experience of a dim, but ever-grow-
ing intelligence that is older than even instinct
itself? Among the lower animals there are
numerous instances where instinct is unquestion-
ably supreme and no evidence of even an incipi-
ent reasoning power is to be detected, but to as-
sume that with the appearance and growth of
250 3
LIFE
reason the force of instinct must necessarily
diminish is, it appears to me, scarcely logical.
Instinct is still one of the most valuable forces
in Nature, and, for the greatest good of any
species, is not to be crowded out, but only con-
trolled by reason.
Reason or intelligence we may call one end of
the chain, instinct the other, but the distance be-
tween the two extremes need not imply a missing
link between or any break in the chain as a whole.
Instinct is an absolute necessity to any living
creature in the general struggle for life, while
reason is more a luxury than a necessity, and
where instinct is sufficiently keen and life is simple
may be dispensed with. Lacking instinct reason
could never enable man or beast to get a living
unaided. A man without instinct, were his reason-
ing powers never so highly developed, would be
classed among his fellows as little better than a
fool should circumstances compel hini to leave his
desk and join the ranks of outdoor workers. Just
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what instinct really is we may never know; what
we do know is, that it is quicker than thought or
reason and often a truer guide. In times of sud-
den danger it acts at once, while the brain yet
hesitates. It is not an unfailing guide either in
man or beast, yet in the great majority of in-
stances it may be trusted to direct us aright, even
if now and again it does urge us to leap or strike
or dodge at the wrong instant or in the wrong
direction, to our own undoing. Particularly is in-
stinct a necessity when our lives are nearest the
lives of the wild things of the woods and waters,
— in hunting and fishing and trapping. The game
starts up before us and instinct brings the gun to.
the shoulder and swings the sights along its flying
course, but awaits before pulling the trigger, often
an appreciable part of a second, while the slower
working brain makes sure that what it sees is the
quarry it has been searching for, calculates the
distance and the speed of flight, then signals the
order to pull.
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LIFE
The old gunner, as a rule, is quite unconscious
of pressing the trigger; his brain, at the exact
instant when it perceives that the sights are in line
with the game, merely formulates the wish that
the gun shall be fired, and the flash and report
follow instantly. Often the brain seems to be al-
lowed no part whatever in the decision; the hun-
ter feels without stopping to reason about it that
the time has come to shoot, just as he feels with-
out knowing why that here is the very spot to
place a trap, or the angler is urged by his guiding
instinct to cast his line on some particular spot,
rather than on another that would appear to the
eye to be a more promising reach of the stream;
and he seldom has cause to regret it.
Can anyone doubt this is identical with that
which we name instinct among animals? Is it not
the acting of long-trained members on their own
account, the eye and the ear and the hand and the
foot working together in unison without stopping
to consult the brain? Let the most skillful sports-
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man, if he is unused to snow-shoeing, start out
through thick woods with a pair of web shoes
bound to his feet; he will find himself from the
very start-off under the necessity of teaching his
legs and feet how to manage their clumsy gear,
with no time to spare for the observation of tracks
and signs of beast and bird, and should his eyes
stray off through the snow-flecked undergrowth
in search of his quarry he will in all probability
quickly find himself capsized, with his gun stick-
ing muzzle down in the snow. If his ancestors
before him have tramped the woods on snow-
shoes he will profit by their experience and learn
the quicker for it, but at the best, many a day of
tiresome discipline will be required before his
feet shall have learned to lift the broad frames
aright to sift off the loose snow, to avoid the
trailing heel of its fellow snow-shoe, and to relieve
itself without a sound from encumbering twigs
and fallen branches and half-buried stumps and
logs, leaving the eye free to search ahead and on
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LIFE
all sides for the faintest sign of the trail winding
away dimly between the trees. Here reason and
instinct work together on something like equal
terms to accomplish the same end.
Instinct may however be trusted at times to work
’
‘“absent-mindedly ”’ con-
alone, while the brain is
cerned with other matters, or worrying over dis-
tant aftairs that have no connection whatever, it
may be, with the woods and the wild things there.
The feet take charge of the snow-shoes, and the
hand and the eye of the gun, and the latter may
even take aim and fire with all the necessary pre-
cision before the brain has had time to get back
to nearby things.
Who can doubt that this instinct in man is the
same as the instinct which guides the wild animals
in the woods? ‘The fox may not know how he
follows the trail of the hare, but he knows why
he follows it; it is not altogether instinct and
hunger that lead him on. I believe that his foxy
brain holds clearly enough the image of the game
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he is after; his ears are alert for the faintest
pit-a-pat or rustle of furry foot among the leaves
and moss; faint vibrations of the air no human
ear could perceive tickle his delicate hearing with
a meaning clear as a spoken word to him, and
his simple woodsy mind distinguishes at once the
light tread of a rabbit or a mouse from the sound
of a wind-rustled leaf, by powers long handed
down through generations of hunting fore-bears,
and sharpened and developed and held true
through his own experience day by day. How
can we divide instinct from reason here?
I for one can never believe that blind, unseeing
instinct teaches the fox all that he knows. The
fox cub of the season, first beginning to hunt for
himself, and the young crow that has just learned
to fly, are unsuspecting fellows, easily outwitted,
though quick to learn and undoubtedly profiting
by the example of their parents which they follow
imitatively; but there are numberless things which
each must learn for himself and times when
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LIFE
neither instinct nor reflex action can possibly meet
all the requirements of the case. It is a perfectly
well-established and undisputed fact, that in wild,
thinly settled country, foxes are much more easily
outwitted than where men are more abundant.
Much more to the point as evidence that their in-
stinct is in part at least assisted by natural intelli-
gence, is the equally well-established fact (which
I have myself repeatedly observed and heard
commented upon by trappers and local observers),
that while a new method of setting traps or wire
snares, a new combination of scents, some old
combination of scents, or a secret of trapping that
has not been practiced in a certain region for half
a generation perhaps, and is revealed as a dying
bequest of some old trapper to his grandson, am-
bitious to follow in his footsteps, may prove sur-
_prisingly successful for a season or two, it can
never be profitably followed for any length of
time in that particular vicinity. And when it has
once become useless any method of trapping or
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- snaring or poisoning foxes is sure to continue un-
successful for a considerable number of years.
From what I have observed I should not hesitate
to say that at least the full length of a fox’s life,
— twelve or fourteen years, — must elapse before
more than an occasional fox can be outwitted in
that particular manner. Now how could instinct
possibly bring this about? It is too absurd to sup-
pose that after one or at most two winters during
which possibly one fourth of the foxes in a cer-
tain district have met their fate in a particular —
kind of trap, and one out of twenty has been
pinched and has got away again, all the fox cubs
of that region born in the next ten years should
be from the first inspired by an inborn fear which
holds them back from that particular danger.
Here is an instance in point which I can relate
from personal observation. There is a shallow
muddy spring some two rods long by six or eight
feet wide in the flat clay land of my home pas-
ture. In Country Life in America for April,
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Y3AAVS3d
‘y
my
LIFE
1902, I read how foxes might be sometimes
trapped in just such places. I set a trap at that
spring about one foot from the bank, sinking trap
and chain in the soft black mud, which immedi-
ately closed smoothly over everything, with a half
inch of water over the mud. Just over the pan
of the trap I gently placed a little island of green
moss such as may be seen’ here and there dotting
the black, boggy places; beyond the trap I stuck
up a weather-beaten, water-soaked stick with the
bait on that, as if the trap were set beneath it for
mink. Now foxes are very fond of stealing the
bait from mink traps set in narrow spring brooks;
time after time you will find their tracks leading
directly to that point of the brook’s bank nearest
the trap, the footprints showing clearly where the
sly thief stood with feet close together, stretching
himself out above the water to reach the bait.
Sometimes if a little tussock or stone protrudes
from the water in a convenient place the snow
lodged there will show the print of his fore foot.
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He knows well enough that if a steel trap were
hidden in the snow and moss above-water the smell
of iron would betray its position to him rods
away; and so long as he keeps his feet dry he
feels safe. For a few days the foxes passed by
my trap at the spring without going very near.
They wanted the bait and turned aside from their
course to investigate, but were cautious about ap-
proaching too close at first. Then one morning
I found a she-fox fast in the trap. Not long after
an old dog-fox put his foot in it, but managed to
break away; since then, though I have set traps
there every winter, not one fox of the scores that
have passed that way has been fooled by that
harmless looking little island of green moss. The
knowledge that the trap is there does not frighten
them away. At times in very cold weather they
will come night after night, until the thin ice
pushing out from the bank on the side farthest
from the trap is strong enough to hold them and
enable them to get the bait from that direction.
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LIFE
I have caught at that spring in the meantime,
a coon, one or two skunks and several crows, but
never another fox; nor have traps set in a similar
manner in nearby springs ever proved successful.
Now I am quite positive that no one else has ever
attempted to catch foxes in this way hereabouts.
No other little green islands of moss in muddy
springs have ever proved dangerous to them in
this immediate vicinity. How then did all the
foxes of this region learn their danger so quickly,
without some common method of communicating
facts one to another? As I have stated before,
it is not the spring itself or the grass-grown banks
of mud which they have learned to avoid. [I still
see their tracks there just as before and they still
manage to carry off the bait from time to time.
Call it language, telepathy, what you will; in
some way, through some form of animal com-
munication, the intelligence has spread among
them all that a perfectly harmless-looking little
island of green moss is not to be trusted. The
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MORE .LITYTLE*-BEASTS
rapidity with which knowledge of this sort spreads
among wild animals varies greatly with the spe-
cies. Among skunks, woodchucks and minks it
appears to be only the individual who suffers that
profits by it.
Skunks, for example, are commonly most un-
suspecting, and easily taken in any kind of trap, —
box trap or dead-fall, or a steel trap set on a stump
without the slightest attempt at concealment.
One of the most conspicuous characteristics of the
skunk is his lack of fear, and after having been
pinched pretty severely he seldom shows much
fear of the trap that hurt him; yet in most in-
stances it is extremely dificult to catch him again —
in that particular kind of trap. ‘Try to catch a
three-legged skunk in a steel trap; he will spring
it night after night and get the bait without en-
dangering his remaining legs. Sometimes he will
turn it bottom up and you will repeatedly find it
sprung in that position, the steel jaws gripping the
dry grass and pine needles beneath it; then again
264
LIFE
he will push his nose or a paw under the flat
spread jaws, often burrowing down into the soft
earth or snow in which the trap is concealed.
Among foxes in settled regions these tricks are
so common that they might very reasonably be
attributed to instinct or the inherited experience
of the species; but where one skunk out of a
dozen will repeatedly manage to spring a trap
and get the bait, in one way or another on suc-
cessive nights, the others dwelling in the same
burrow seldom appear to learn from him. Skunks
‘winter in burrows in the' woods, often six or eight
together, and during the latter part of the winter
are in the way of coming out in search of food
every night when the weather is not too severe.
After your steel trap has been sprung until you
are tired of resetting it, fix a dead-fall or a com-
mon box trap near the burrow and the chances are
that one of the first victims will be minus a leg,
and it is quite as likely to be a young one of the
previous summer as one of the old ones. After
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MORE LITTLE BEASTS
he is out of the way the others may be taken one
after another in steel traps set without any at-
tempt at concealment. A skunk that has once
been hurt in a dead-fall will often learn to get the
bait by digging into the pen from behind, or if
the ground is frozen too hard for that he will
crawl up the top log and enter the enclosure from
above. In either case he may generally be caught
without much difficulty in a steel trap set inside
the dead-fall, but he is pretty certain never a
second time to attempt to crawl in beneath the
log that has once fallen on him, though if the dead-
fall is allowed to remain sprung with the top
log resting on the bottom one he is very likely to .
enter the trap by crawling over both logs in search
of the bait.
Now if Lloyd Morgan’s verdict, that animals
do “not perceive the why and think the there-
b)
fore’’ is conclusive, how could it be possible that
a skunk should do these things? Efow could he
be led by instinct or reflex action to overturn the
266
LIFE
steel trap or laboriously force an entrance into the
enclosure of the dead-fall from behind, or above,
rather than go into the opening beneath the top
log? If it were merely a matter of reflex action,
the fear arising from his suffering when caught
in the trap being overridden by his compelling
hunger, we should naturally expect that in his sec-
‘ond attempt to get the bait he would simply ap-
proach the steel trap from the other side, just as
the skunk that was hurt in the dead-fall will en-
deavor to dig in from behind. I fail to see how
the most vivid imagination can logically explain
these actions as due wholly to instinct. It was
instinct which led the skunks in the first place to
follow up the scent of the bait until the trap
gripped them, instinct that drove them to bite
the cruel iron jaws, and failing to free themselves
in that manner, it was undoubtedly instinct rather
than reason that made them bite and gnaw the
numbed foot held fast in the trap until they got
away. Instinct might even lead the skunk or
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MORE LITTLE~ BEASTS
woodchuck to dig down the loose earth from the
side of his burrow in order to bury the trap that
has been placed in his doorway (a thing which —
both of these animals will often do), but instinct
could never teach the fox or skunk to overturn
the steel trap or dig into the rear of the dead-fall
or to recognize the fact that a trap is harmless
when sprung; nothing short of reasoning the mat-
ter out according to their own “‘ dim-eyed under-
standing’ could teach them these things. Now
all this I can vouch for as common, every-day
facts in the experience of the trapper. I have
always been especially interested in the smaller
wild animals of the hunting tribe, the “ fur ani-
mals.” J have hunted and trapped them and fol-
lowed and studied their trails in the snow. I have
associated with local trappers and gathered what
information I could from them. I know and can
state positively from my own experience, proved
over and over by an hundred tests, that a steel
trap set beneath the dead leaves and then snowed
268
LIFE
under will be avoided by ninety-nine out of every
one hundred foxes that pass that way, unless the
smell of the iron is disguised by some more power-
ful scent. Yet the same trap when sprung, with
a squirrel or a‘rabbit or a muskrat held fast in
its jaws, will be fearlessly approached and the
game pulled from its grip by at least one fox out
of every ten. Most foxes (it is impossible of
course to say Just what proportion of them, per-
haps one-half, possibly nine-tenths) are too cau-
tious to risk meddling with a steel trap even when
it is sprung, but this very fact, it seems to me,
only goes to prove the more conclusively, that
their actions are guided by instinct and intelli-
gence working together, impulsive animal instinct
guided and controlled, in part at least, by a slowly
awakening intelligence which day by day is learn-
ing to observe and dimly understand.
Now all these things I have not myself seen
in the act, but I have read most of them in Na-
ture’s own handwriting in the snow, which is really
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MORE LITTLE BEASTS
much more convincing than being an eye witness
under the ordinary conditions of woodland obser-
vation, when, peering through tangled underwood
in the uncertain light and dappling shadows, you
see, but are very seldom quite certain of what you
see, the time being usually so short and the cam-
era of service only under the most favorable
circumstances. But the tracks in the snow are
there before your eyes, clear as print and as easily
read, and there they will remain, to be revisited
if you like and deciphered at your leisure, until
the next snowfall or a thaw blots them out. There
are times, however, when to see the thing in the
doing has a convincing power greater, to the ob- .
server at least, than any conclusion arrived at by
the logical balancing of evidence against evidence;
when the turn of a neck, the gleam of a woodland
eye looking for an instant’s glance straight into
your own, leaves you with a sense of “ know
ing without knowing how you know ”’ that behind
the glance that met yours was a thought, and that
270
LIFE
your image reflected in the eye of the wild thing
that looked at you would remain as a memory to
be puzzled over.
You may, if you like, class a conclusion thus
arrived at as in itself a product of instinct rather
than reason, but instinct in man as well as in
beast is often a good guide in the search for the
truth, and may at times point out to the thinker
which line of an abstruse problem will lead him
to the final truth of the matter, just as the instinct
of the fox tells him which line of the confused
trail will lead him true to his quarry.
My neighbor, the accuracy of whose observa-
tions I can vouch for, was eye witness recently of
a little incident in fox life which convinced him,
and which would I think go far towards convinc-
ing anyone, that foxes are capable of both obser-
vation and forethought. He tells me that early
one morning a few weeks since he heard his
pullets in the orchard clucking nervously together,
but without any general outcry of alarm. On
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MORE LITTLE BEASTS
going to investigate he found the flock staring
with outstretched necks at a fox that had. sepa-
rated one of their number from the rest and was
driving it cautiously away from the house without
making any attempt at seizing it.
Mr. Burroughs, in the Outlook for December
14, 1907, says, ‘‘ When the animals are confronted
by conditions made by man, then man could give
them. valuable hints.”” Undoubtedly this old fox
was in a manner profiting by the hint dropped him
on. some previous occasion by an irate farmer,
who at the clamorous outcry of his terrified flock
rushed out, gun in hand, and let fly the stinging
shot in his reckless anger. His object we may
be certain was not to teach the fox caution, but —
the result was the same in the end. It taught the
fox what neither instinct nor reflex action could
have taught him, and much more quickly than the
process of evolution or the slow working of nat-
ural selection.. Both instinct and reflex action were
undoubtedly active at the time in urging the
ras)
eT
~~. eS a
Lire SPIRE arg i
farmer on and in speeding the terror-stricken fox
in his break-neck dash across: the pasture, but
only on the theory of intelligent reasoning and
the putting of two and two together, can we satis-
factorily explain the manner in which the fox was
ultimately led to control his natural instinct, which
would lead him to pounce on the nearest pullet
and make off with it at once. An intelligence not
so very different from that of the human animal
must have been working in his foxy mind, en-
abling him to “ Perceive the why and think the
therefore,’ underlying the actions of man, beast
and bird alike.
\ fend:
~~. — 2 ca” - vet a
.) Si “a ~
oe * Y 4
7
Ht qi y f i iP mh :
engi fe
Chapter 1X
The Home Pasture
An Old Orchard
By many tempests bent and torn,
The aged apple trees still stand. |
Their twisted branches stained and worn
Beside the crumbling stones and sand.
A little pile with vines o’ergrown
And fringed about with ‘“‘ Bouncing Bets ”
Which tell this once as ‘‘ home’? was known —
The humble blossom ne’er forgets!
274
THE HOME PASTURE
*T is holy ground, long since made blest
By birth and death and love and loss,
A place to muse awhile and rest,
And cast aside life’s gathered dross.
: Oa a Gr
Y first observations of wild animal life were
made in “the home pasture.’ ‘There, as a
boy, I spent much of my time watching the ways
of squirrels, woodchucks and birds. A list of the
little wild beasts that I have seen there would
include about all that are to be found in this part
of New England, though the pasture itself con-
tains but about thirty acres of highland and low.
For the past two or three centuries it has provided
summer feed for sheep and cattle, and incidentally
both summer and winter provender for roving
undomestic beasts. |
Two little spring brooks just wide enough for
a muskrat to swim in comfortably, enter the pas-
ture from the south, and each flowing under its
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MORE LITTLE BEASTS
stone bridge, they come together and find a devious
way across the flat clay land to join ‘‘ Old River.”
There are no less than ten springs that feed these
two little brooks, yet the combined waters of them
all are easily accommodated, except in time of
freshet, in the narrow channel of the main brook,
hardly a foot wide or deep. |
The inhabitants of these brooks are little blunt-
nosed brook-pickerel, newts and green-backed,
goggle-eyed frogs with their families of uncared
for wriggling tadpoles, and yellow spotted tur-
tles, with now and then a painted turtle or a
rough-backed old snapper that has found the way
up the narrow channel from Old River.
There are also many small eels in these brooks,
and it is odd to think that every one of these little
eels was born in the ocean, and has found -its way
unguided, except by instinct, through ten miles or
more of winding tide-water creeks, rippling shal-
lows and quiet mill ponds to the head waters of
the little pasture brook. |
276
SNAPPING TURTLE
ve Sat, eee
fom
PD Crepe We ey Le
THE HOME PASTURE
Beyond the brooks the land rises in a pine-
covered slope where dry red pine needles carpet
the ground beneath the old rough-barked bull
pines, and beyond that the bare, sheep-trimmed
hill top, hemmed in by clustering growths of young
white pines. Practically all the young trees in
the pasture are white pines, for the ever-nibbling
sheep nip off every shoot of oak or maple or elm
within their reach; only here or there a lucky
sapling protected in its infancy by fallen brush-
wood, has managed to lift its topmost shoot be-
yond their reach, and then is safe to stand alone
and grow up into the sunlight as Heaven wills it
should. There are half a dozen of these little
saplings that have sprung up within the last few
years, — birch, maple and elm, already higher
than a man’s head and bidding fair to make fine
trees in their own good time, and join the ranks of
the old-growth hardwood trees, of which nearly
a score now stand in groups or singly with massive
columns and wide-spreading tops unlimited for
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MORE LITTLE BEASTS
sky room. White oak and red oak, red maple and
rock maple, elm, ash, hickory, linden and beech
are here. The cavities in these old trees furnish
homes for many of the native inhabitants of the
pasture. Every one of them shelters a family of
squirrels, red or gray, or else a colony of wood-
mice. In the hollow branch of a rock maple rac-
coons find lodging. At night they bestir them-
selves, awake, come down to earth; and follow the
well-trodden sheep path down to the stone bridge
and then along the wet margin of the brook, frog
hunting. The biggest maple of all is a splendid
symmetrical tower still, though long past its prime.
At the base of the great trunk is a cavity in which ~
I have spent many a rainy hour, and here I fre-
quently leave axes and wedges or hang up the
long cross-cut saw in the dry interior as one would
in a tool house and almost as safe from the
weather... [There are perhaps a dozen woodchuck
holes here and there about the pasture, some be-
neath the gnarled and twisted roots of these old
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THE HOME PASTURE
hardwood trees, others on sunny knolls among
the pines. All of these holes are domiciles of
long standing; I think that there has not been
a new woodchuck hole dug in this pasture for a
dozen years at least. A few of these holes have
continued to be the homes of woodchucks exclu-
sively for an indefinite number of years, but most
of them change owners from season to season,
the best holes being seldom unoccupied for many
weeks at a time. When one woodchuck is killed
or sees fit to change his abode, a skunk, or a whole
family of them is pretty certain to move in within
a few weeks; then when the supply of nearby
mice and insects begins to run short and the skunks
wander away in company in search of more favor-
able hunting grounds, a gray rabbit may move in
for a while, until evicted by some wandering
weasel or mink, who very likely makes it his abid-
ing place temporarily. Nearly every summer a
pair of foxes make their summer home in their
den on the sandy hillside and raise a family of
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MORE LITTLE BEASTS
lusty cubs; on sunny afternoons I often see them
racing and playing together until, tired out, they
stretch themselves at length on the dry moss to
sleep in the sun. |
In the low ground, meadow-mice, moles and
shrews have their homes and runways, and at
times a lone muskrat has his dwelling in the brook
beneath the bridge or in the little swampy growth
of alders where the two brooks come together. —
Something less than a century ago, before my
grandfather cleared it and let in the sunlight, all
this low ground was a wet and tangled alder
swamp; then from the black swamp-mud over-
lying the stiff clay pan, there sprung up wild -
meadow grasses, blue flowering flags, thistles and
white clover. Here cows and sheep now browse
and nibble through long summer days, while swal-
lows skim low over the sunlit grasses where once
only woodcock and other shade-loving birds lurked
in the sunless tangles of the alder swamp. Each
summer I clear out the channels of the little brooks
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THE HOME PASTURE
to give their waters a free course to find their
proper level, but still the old spirit of the swamp
fights hard year after year to regain possession
of its lost domain. Along the brook’s margin
the alders spring up in clumps and extend their
root fibers across the stream to catch and hold
fast every floating leaf or twig or bull-rush stem,
quickly forming an obstruction that holds back
the water, causing it to overflow the low banks.
Already the swamp has gained possession of an
area of several rods where the alders now grow
thick and tall and the dry land is but a collection
of little hillocks, around which the waters divide
and subdivide and join again with no perceptible
channel or current anywhere. |
Each of these little brooks has its own particu-
lar character and personality. The main brook |
drains a little swamp on my neighbor’s land, and
its waters are tinged by the decaying leaves and
vegetation. Having traveled farther from its
| underground source than have the others, it is
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more quickly affected by the changing seasons.
In summer it is comparatively warm, and in winter
is early frozen over and buried from sight beneath
drifting snows, but I can still hear it murmuring
contentedly to itself on its hidden way to join Old
River. Draining as it does a wider area, it is
more subject to overflow in times of rain and
thaw than are the others. ~ |
Next in size is the brook that flows from a deep
spring just beyond the southern boundary line of
the pasture. A clear, cold, rippling brook running
over a bed of clay and gravel, it still flows on un-
frozen throughout the winter, for at its source
the water comes bubbling up from deep under- |
ground far below the reach of frost, and in its
quick course to join the larger stream, the coldest
winds of winter do not have a chance to chill it
to the freezing point. bpm
At times the deep snows bury it from sight for
a few hours, but after the storm has cleared away
the little brook quickly melts the snow above it
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fhe” HOME PASTURE
and goes sparkling along between high white
banks in the thin winter sunshine. The north
wind sifting the dry snow across the pasture
fashions drifts and snow wreaths along the banks,
but every particle of snow that comes in contact
with the running water is quickly dissolved and
becomes a part of the brook itself.
All winter long the caddis worms and water
beetles crawl along the bottom and busy them-
selves about their own affairs as if there were no
such thing as winter in their lives.
In the black peaty soil out in the middle of the
pasture there are a number of little springs that
come welling up through circular openings in the
deep clay beneath; for them there is no chance
for a downward flow, as all about them the black
soil lies flat and level as a floor. Left to them-
selves they would of necessity form stagnant
ponds and bog holes fringed about and over-
grown with water grass and rushes. With a view
to preventing this, I dig for them narrow channels -
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MORE LITTLE BEASTS
and water ways to the nearest of the free-flowing
brooks, but even with a way thus laid open for
them, the sluggish water, heavy with the black
sediment of the old swamp, lacks sufficient head-
way to keep clear a channel for itself; either the
crumbling banks fall in, or wire grass and reeds
spring and take root to catch and hold back the
sediment and drift as the lazy water tries to crawl
between the stems. So from season to season
I find it easier to dig for them new channels, than
to endeavor to keep the original ones clear, for
the roots of the wire grass form a matted bed
which only the sharpest spade can cut through,
-and quickly renew themselves and grow again
wherever they have once become established, but
by turning the water into another channel, the old
bed dries out and the wire grass gives place to the
common wild grasses of the low pasture land.
All across the low land and up the slope of the |
hill the hard-hack springs up anew each season,
and though the sheep browse and nibble at it con-
286
THE HOME PASTURE
tinually they fail to keep it in check. Undoubtedly
a sufficiently large flock would succeed in keeping
it under control, but in that case I am inclined to
think there would be little feed of any sort left
for the cattle. When it first springs up, the ten-
der leaves and buds of the hard-hack furnish good
feed for the sheep and it is hardly to be regarded
as a nuisance for the first season or two of its
growth, but the slender stems when they die
become dry and seasoned into a wood as hard
and solid as oak or hickory and about as durable.
The next season’s growth starting up from the |
roots, becomes dry and seasoned in its turn, help-
ing to form a clump of wiry stems between which
the sheep are unable to thrust their noses, eager
to nip off the tender new growth, which thus pro-
tected for the season is able to push up into the
sunlight, nodding its conical tufts of purple blos-
soms in the wind, and later scattering its ripened
seeds over the snow. The seeds that are not gath-
ered and eaten by the snow birds and winter
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MORE LITTLE BEASTS ~
finches during the cold weather, sink into the snow
and are buried from sight until a thaw comes
and the freed water carries them here and there,
until at last they find lodgment among the grass
roots, where with the coming of the spring they
will sprout and make the beginning of new
clumps of hard-hack, which in time spread and
thicken and scatter seeds in their turn, until the
whole pasture is overgrown and ten acres shall
not furnish grass enough for one cow for. the
summer. In August before the seeds have rip-
ened, I take my bush scythe and spend long days
in the pasture mowing down the stubborn clusters
of wiry hard-hack stems. When they have become ~
fairly established and make a thick growth occu-
pying the land, it is necessary to rake them to-
gether and burn them, after they are cut; for if
left'on the ground they form a protection for the
new growth which starts up from the roots. But
once the ground has been well cleared it is easy
to mow off the new shoots of the following season
288
THE HOME PASTURE
with an ordinary grass scythe, and if this is
followed up for a season or two you will have
your cleared area under control so that only
here and there a lucky shoot escapes the nibbling
sheep.
There is a tradition that a small flock of sheep
feeding with the cows will clear a pasture. of
bushes of all kinds, but hard-hack is not the only
exception; ground laurel, bay, sweet fern and
- ground juniper alike defy them. ‘The only crea-
tures, as far as I know, that will kill the ground
juniper, are the stub-nosed, short-tailed meadow-
mice, and then only when their numbers have so
increased that along with the few junipers which
they kill by girdling under the snow in hard win-
ters, a still larger proportion of young fruit trees
and hardwood saplings are destroyed in a similar
manner.
The bay sends up at first scattered clusters of
harmless-looking gray and twisted stems through
the thin turf, each stem surmounted by its cluster
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MORE LITTLE- BEASTS
of fragrant leaves. It is persistent and aggressive
like the hard-hack, but instead of scattering its
seeds on the snow, to be spread abroad and in-
crease its range in that manner, it contents itself
with dropping each seed down among the roots
of the stalk which bore it, where it will have the
protection of the parent cluster. In this way the
clump of bay-berry bushes thickens and spreads
out in a circular form year after year, keeping all
the space between the stems so thickly carpeted
with the stiff shining brown leaves of the season
before that seeds of taller-growing plants falling -
by chance among them have slight prospect of
taking root and growing up to overshadow them.
Grass or other provender for the cattle has no
more chance of growing in a clump of bay than it
has beneath the pines. For scattering a certain
proportion of its seeds abroad, the bay appears
to depend upon the agency of the birds, the myrtle
warbler in the late autumn months stuffing itself
with the wax-coated seeds. The thin covering of
290
THE HOME PASTURE
wax on these bay-berries probably contains sufh-
cient fattening properties to tempt the birds to
swallow the seeds entire, as one may often see
whole flocks of them doing at the season when all
animate Nature is engaged in one way or another
in storing up carbon for warmth against the com-
ing winter, whether it is to be passed north or
south. The germ of the seed itself is encased
within an inner coating, so hard and indigestible
that it is undoubtedly often carried safely in the
bird’s gizzard over miles of forest and open in
the course of the migration. Often associated
with the bay, the sweet fern grows thick in little
openings among the pines, and when the hot sun
pours down at noon day, the combined fragrance
of sweet fern, bay and pine renders the air delli-
cious almost to the point of intoxication. The
sweet fern (which is not a fern at all, but a shrub
in the same class as the bay) bears its seeds in the
form of small nuts like diminutive chestnuts em-
bedded in a soft burr; just what scheme Nature
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MORE LITTLE BEASTS
has worked out for the distribution of these seeds
I do not know, for to tell the truth I have never
detected bird or beast in the act of eating them
or carrying them off. I have eaten them myself
and found them not unpalatable, and beyond ques-
tion there is some little wanderer of the wood-
lands who knows them well and values them
enough to gather them for his winter store, and
in so doing scatters here and there a seed, where
chance favoring, it will sprout and take root;
for in some way or another the sweet fern is
spread thinly at intervals in widely separated
patches, though its seeds have neither wings
wherewith to fly, like the seeds of maple and pine
and birch, nor hooks to catch in the fur of ani-
mals, though it is possible that the burr itself
when dry may sometimes steal a ride in this man-
ner. Unlike the hard-hack and bay-berry, the
sweet fern is a friend rather than an enemy to the
pasture. Years ago, a drover looking over our
flock, called my attention to the fact that where the
292
THE HOME PASTURE
sweet fern grows you will find the most luxuriant
pasturage. )
The ground laurel, sheep laurel or sheep kill
grows like the bay in clustering patches and along
the fringe of the pine groves. Like a little brother
of the mountain laurel, scarcely higher than one’s
knees, its clustering blossoms are more beautifully
and richly tinted than are those of either the moun-
tain or the swamp laurel, but despite its beauty, it
is a most unwelcome tenant of the pasture, for
in early spring before other forage is fairly
started, the shining evergreen leaves of the sheep
laurel often tempt the hungry flock turned out to
early pasture, and those lambs whose instinct has
failed to warn them against the danger are often
poisoned by eating the leaves. Old sheep rarely
- touch it, and it would be interesting to know if
young lambs from a flock that has always fed in
pastures where the laurel does not grow are in
greater danger when exposed to the temptation,
than are the lambs of sheep that through bitter
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MORE LITTLE BEASTS
experience have learned to avoid it. Only a small
proportion of those that are poisoned by it actu-
ally die from its effects. I suspect that the seeds
of this laurel (like those of certain other poison-
ous plants) sometimes manage to protect them-
selves from being digested after being carried to
a distance, by poisoning the birds that have been
tempted to eat them. Yet in winter the ruffed
grouse stuffs its crop to the bigness of an orange
with the leaves of the laurel and does not appear
to suffer any ill eftects.
The round blue berries of the ground juniper
and red cedar are coated with a sweetish gum to
tempt the birds. Wherever they may chance to
fall, in the low lands or on the hill top, there
springs up a little prickly evergreen perfectly
capable of defending itself in the most unpro-
tected situation. The tough crooked stem of the
ground juniper sends out thick, low-spreading
branches in all directions, the dense bronze-green
foliage overshadowing and killing out all the
294
THE HOME PASTURE
grass beneath. In time a single juniper will over-
spread several rods of ground in its slow, relent-
less growth. Yet the juniper in its turn is often.
doomed to be overshadowed and smothered by
the pines. When the pine cones tossing in the
wind at the summits of the great trees open their
scales to release their ripened seeds, many a juni-
per is doomed. Each pine seed is furnished with
a tiny sail, and when the soft winds of Indian
summer set the pine boughs sighing together,
you may see myriads of them twinkling against
the blue like snowflakes in the sun; very slowly
they settle earthward, finding lodgment at last by
chance in every conceivable situation. When one
of them happens to fall among the crowding
branches of a ground juniper its case might well
seem hopeless, but the tiny seed sinks through the
thick foliage to the earth beneath and rests there
for the winter. In the spring it takes root and
sends up its pale-green shoots towards the light,
content with only a few inches growth the first
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MORE LITTLE BEASTS -
season. A number of seasons may elapse before
it manages to reach up into the sunlight. Then
the straight pine stem pushes up ten or twenty
inches in a summer and with each year’s new
growth spreads out a whorl of slender branches
thick with clustering pine needles. The pine now
has the sun and the juniper must take the shadow,
and soon begins to show thin and sickly foliage,
lacking sunlight and air. In a comparatively
short time there will be only its bleached skeleton
beneath the shadow of the pines, — gnarled and
twisted branches bereft of foliage and bark and
half buried in the red pine carpet, but persis-
tent still, for the wood of the ground juniper,
like that of the cedar, is almost proof against
decay. i
Where the white pines spring up thickly, crowd-
ing each other for room, there is a general struggle
among them, each striving to overtop all the
others and get more than its share of sunlight,
where there cannot possibly be enough for all.
296
ak HOME PASTURE
Only the strongest may survive, and each season
a large proportion of them must die. Those that
live grow up straight and tall, their living foliage
confined to their topmost branches. [Each spring
slender new shoots start up from the summit of
last year’s growth, while the lower branches die
from lack of sunlight. The space between the
stems of the growing pines becomes filled with a
network of slender dead branches and upright
poles, the brittle skeletons of those that have died
in the struggle for existence. In the course of
years these crumble away and fall from expo-
sure to the weather, until only the beautiful col-
umns of the timber pines rise clean and tall with
their green tops sighing far above the earth, and
each season’s shedding of pine needles spreading
a thicker carpet over all the unsightly litter of
fallen branches beneath. Along the borders of
the woods and in open spaces, each tree has free-
dom to grow more as it will; the lower branches
spread and thicken and grow outward in all direc-
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MORE LITTLE BEASTS
tions with full, green foliage close down to the
ground.
There is a difference of opinion regarding the
¢
nature of the “ old-growth, bull pines or old pas-
ture pines,’ botanists recognizing no distinction
between them and other white pines, to all in-
tents and purposes siding with those who claim
that any white pine, given room enough to grow
in unrestricted and insured immunity from the axe
or lightening or other accident of nature, will in
its own good time grow to be a “ bull pine.”’ Cer-
tainly there is no fixed and recognizable difference
in the foliage, yet many a pine growing alone
by itself with conditions apparently all in its favor, —
lives to attain a goodly age without acquiring the
peculiar character of the bull pine, with its rough,
deep-furrowed bark and yellow coarse-grained
wood (as unlike common pine wood as oak from
hickory) and general air of vigor and never-
ending growth. I find that the majority of lum-
bermen and farmers believe that the bull pine is
298
THE HOME PASTURE
a different tree from the start; that it is the same
_as the “ old-growth”’ pines, that in the days of
the early settlers, predominated in all the pine
forests hereabouts, and my own observation leads
me more and more to agree with them. Spring-
ing up here and there among the other pines,
you will find certain individual trees which by
the time they have reached the height of a man’s
head begin to show the characteristics of yel-
low wood, and dark colored rough bark extend-
ing out along the branches. I have watched with
interest the growth of a number of these in my
own home pasture and studied them at various
ages. Even when crowded in upon all sides by
other trees, their trunks never exhibit that appear-
ance of smooth green-barked poles so character-
istic of the common young-growth white pines.
At first these rough-barked little pines appear to
make a slower growth than the others, but have
a way of making room for themselves later, their
flattened branches elbowing the other trees aside.
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MORE LITTLE BEASTS
-Undoubtedly these trees would have had a much
better chance of surviving in those earlier days
when practically all this region was forest land.
It is my belief that they are indeed the lingering
survivals of the original ‘‘ old-growth” pines of
which the primeval forest was largely composed,
and that the ‘“‘second growth” pine, which
makes up by far the greater part of our present
pine woods is merely a variety which has proved
capable of adapting itself to the changed condi-
tion of things, as we see them to-day everywhere
starting up in clearings and taking possession of
old pastures and abandoned fields. With increas-
‘ing years the trunks of the bull pines have a ten-
dency to straighten themselves in their upward
growth, but only rarely do we now see the mag-
nificent “‘mast pines’’ towering straight as an
arrow, two hundred feet and more above the
earth. |
I know of but two such, one to the north and
one to the south of Lake Winnipesaukee. Some-
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THE HOME PASTURE
times two, or even four or five great branches rise’
towering together to form the head of the tree,
like the old bull pine in my home pasture, which
is six feet through the solid wood where the five
great branches spring out from the main trunk.
Yet it is still a young-looking tree of rapid
growth, not having as yet attained the flattened
summit of maturity, so characteristic of old-
growth pines, when at last the thickening foliage,
as if unable to reach higher, masses itself at the
very top, dark and heavy against the sky. ‘The
second growth white pine, on reaching a height
of eighty, or at most one hundred feet, begins to
show thin and tapering at the top with dying
foliage. |
Twenty years ago I could see standing up
against the sky two miles to the southwest of my
home, the bleached dead trunk of ‘‘ The Old Look-
out Pine.’”’ For many a generation of mariners
it had stood a landmark for fishermen coming
home from the sea, though it was nearly ten
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MORE LITTLE BEASTS
miles from the salt water.. Until within the last
‘fifty years it towered dark and rugged almost
two hundred and fifty feet above the hills; then
twice in the same summer it was struck by lighten-
ing, as if Jove himself had uttered its doom. The
great top came crashing down into the surround-
ing forest and only the bare trunk remained stand-
ing, yet still over-topping the other trees by the
length of many a goodly log. Now the old trunk
itself is down and has lain for many seasons
crumbling beneath the shade of the uprising
second growth.
The Old Pine
O, stormbeat sentinel of olden time!
How is thy glory fled!
Yet in thine awful ruin still sublime
Thou standest lone and dead.
Thy massive trunk all scarred and seamed with —
age.
Thy giant arms on high,
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THE HOME PASTURE
Tho’ rent ard splintered by the tempests’ rage,
Still pointing to the sky.
Below, the wreck of all thy former state,
Lies scattered past recall.
Time wrought through centuries to make thee great
And time must work thy fall.
> ag aan Oe
393
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