Secret of the Woods
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William J. Long >> Secret of the Woods
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The weeks passed all too quickly, as wilderness weeks do, and the
sad task of breaking camp lay just before us. But one thing
troubled me--the little Tookhees, who knew no fear, but tried to
make a nest in the sleeve of my flannel shirt. His simple
confidence touched me more than the curious ways of all the other
mice. Every day he came and took his crumbs, not from the common
table, but from my, hand, evidently enjoying its warmth while he
ate, and always getting the choicest morsels. But I knew that he
would be the first one caught by the owl after I left; for it is
fear only that saves the wild things. Occasionally one finds
animals of various kinds in which the instinct of fear is
lacking--a frog, a young partridge, a moose calf--and wonders
what golden age that knew no fear, or what glorious vision of
Isaiah in which lion and lamb lie down together, is here set
forth. I have even seen a young black duck, whose natural
disposition is wild as the wilderness itself, that had profited
nothing by his mother's alarms and her constant lessons in
hiding, but came bobbing up to my canoe among the sedges of a
wilderness lake, while his brethren crouched invisible in their
coverts of bending rushes, and his mother flapped wildly off,
splashing and quacking and trailing a wing to draw me away from
the little ones.
Such an one is generally abandoned by its mother, or else is the
first to fall in the battle with the strong before she gives him
up as hopeless. Little Tookhees evidently belonged to this class,
so before leaving I undertook the task of teaching him fear,
which had evidently been too much for Nature and his own mother.
I pinched him a few times, hooting like an owl as I did so,--a
startling process, which sent the other mice diving like brown
streaks to cover. Then I waved a branch over him, like a hawk's
wing, at the same time flipping him end over end, shaking him up
terribly. Then again, when he appeared with a new light dawning
in his eyes, the light of fear, I would set a stick to wiggling
like a creeping fox among the ferns and switch him sharply with a
hemlock tip. It was a hard lesson, but he learned it after a few
days. And before I finished the teaching, not a mouse would come
to my table, no matter how persuasively I squeaked. They would
dart about in the twilight as of yore, but the first whish of my
stick sent them all back to cover on the instant.
That was their stern yet, practical preparation for the robber
horde that would soon be prowling over my camping ground. Then a
stealthy movement among the ferns or the sweep of a shadow among
the twilight shadows would mean a very different thing from
wriggling stick and waving hemlock tip. Snap and swoop, and teeth
and claws,--jump for your life and find out afterwards. That is
the rule for a wise wood mouse. So I said good-by, and left them
to take care of themselves in the wilderness.
A WILDERNESS BYWAY
One day in the wilderness, as my canoe was sweeping down a
beautiful stretch of river, I noticed a little path leading
through the water grass, at right angles to the stream's course.
Swinging my canoe up to it, I found what seemed to be a landing
place for the wood folk on their river journeyings. The sedges,
which stood thickly all about, were here bent inward, making a
shiny green channel from the river.
On the muddy shore were many tracks of mink and muskrat and
otter. Here a big moose had stood drinking; and there a beaver
had cut the grass and made a little mud pie, in the middle of
which was a bit of musk scenting the whole neighborhood. It was
done last night, for the marks of his fore paws still showed
plainly where he had patted his pie smooth ere he went away.
But the spot was more than a landing place; a path went up the
bank into the woods, as faint as the green waterway among the
sedges. Tall ferns bent over to hide it; rank grasses that had
been softly brushed aside tried their best to look natural; the
alders waved their branches thickly, saying: There is no way
here. But there it was, a path for the wood folk. And when I
followed it into the shade and silence of the woods, the first
mossy log that lay across it was worn smooth by the passage of
many little feet.
As I came back, Simmo's canoe glided into sight and I waved him
to shore. The light birch swung up beside mine, a deep
water-dimple just under the curl of its bow, and a musical ripple
like the gurgle of water by a mossy stone--that was the only
sound.
"What means this path, Simmo?"
His keen eyes took in everything,at a glance, the wavy waterway,
the tracks, the faint path to the alders. There was a look of
surprise in his face that I had blundered onto a discovery which
he had looked for many times in vain, his traps on his back.
"Das a portash," he said simply.
"A portage! But who made a portage here?"
"Well, Musquash he prob'ly make-um first. Den beaver, den
h'otter, den everybody in hurry he make-um. You see, river make
big bend here. Portash go 'cross; save time, jus' same Indian
portash."
That was the first of a dozen such paths that I have since found
cutting across the bends of wilderness rivers,--the wood folk's
way of saving time on a journey. I left Simmo to go on down the
river, while I followed the little byway curiously. There is
nothing more fascinating in the woods than to go on the track
of the wild things and see what they have been doing.
But alas! mine were not the first human feet that had taken the
journey. Halfway across, at a point where the path ran over a
little brook, I found a deadfall set squarely in the way of
unwary feet. It was different from any I had ever seen, and was
made like this: {drawing omitted}
That tiny stick (trigger, the trappers call it) with its end
resting in air three inches above the bed log, just the right
height so that a beaver or an otter would naturally put his foot
on it in crossing, looks innocent enough. But if you look sharply
you will see that if it were pressed down ever so little it would
instantly release the bent stick that holds the fall-log, and
bring the deadly thing down with crushing force across the back
of any animal beneath.
Such are the pitfalls that lie athwart the way of Keeonekh the
otter, when he goes a-courting and uses Musquash's portage to
shorten his journey.
At the other end of the portage I waited for Simmo to come round
the bend, and took him back to see the work, denouncing the
heartless carelessness of the trapper who had gone away in the
spring and left an unsprung deadfall as a menace to the wild
things. At the first glance he pronounced it an otter trap. Then
the fear and wonder swept into his face, and the questions into
mine.
"Das Noel Waby's trap. Nobody else make-um tukpeel stick like
dat," he said at last.
Then I understood. Noel Waby had gone up river trapping in the
spring, and had never come back; nor any word to tell how death
met him.
I stooped down to examine the trap with greater interest. On the
underside of the fall-log I found some long hairs still clinging
in the crevices of the rough bark. They belonged to the outer
waterproof coat with which Keeonekh keeps his fur dry. One otter
at least had been caught here, and the trap reset. But some sense
of danger, some old scent of blood or subtle warning clung to the
spot, and no other creature had crossed the bed log, though
hundreds must have passed that way since the old Indian reset his
trap, and strode away with the dead otter across his shoulders.
What was it in the air? What sense of fear brooded here and
whispered in the alder leaves and tinkled in the brook? Simmo
grew uneasy and hurried away. He was like the wood folk. But I
sat down on a great log that the spring floods had driven in
through the alders to feel the meaning of the place, if possible,
and to have the vast sweet solitude all to myself for a little
while.
A faint stir on my left, and another! Then up the path, twisting
and gliding, came Keeonekh, the first otter that I had ever seen
in the wilderness. Where the sun flickered in through the alder
leaves it glinted brightly on the shiny puter hairs of his rough
coat. As he went his nose worked constantly, going far ahead of
his bright little eyes to tell him what was in the path.
I was sitting very still, some distance to one side, and he did
not see me. Near old Noel's deadfall he paused an instant with
raised head, in the curious snake-like attitude that all the
weasels take when watching. Then he glided round the end of the
trap, and disappeared down the portage.
When he was gone I stole out to examine his tracks. Then I
noticed for the first time that the old path near the deadfall
was getting moss-grown; a faint new path began to show among the
alders. Some warning was there in the trap, and with cunning
instinct all the wood dwellers turned aside, giving a wide berth
to what they felt was dangerous but could not understand. The new
path joined the old again, beyond the brook, and followed it
straight to the river.
Again I examined the deadfall carefully, but of course I found
nothing. That is a matter of instinct, not of eyes and ears, and
it is past finding out. Then I went away for good, after driving
a ring of stout stakes all about the trap to keep heedless little
feet out of it. But I left it unsprung, just as it was, a rude
tribute of remembrance to Keeonekh and the lost Indian.
KEEONEKH THE FISHERMAN
Wherever you find Keeonekh the otter you find three other things:
wildness, beauty, and running water that no winter can freeze.
There is also good fishing, but that will profit you little; for
after Keeonekh has harried a pool it is useless to cast your fly
or minnow there. The largest fish has disappeared--you will find
his bones and a fin or two on the ice or the nearest bank--and
the little fish are still in hiding after their fright.
Conversely, wherever you find the three elements mentioned you
will also find Keeonekh, if your eyes know how to read the signs
aright. Even in places near the towns, where no otter has been
seen for generations, they are still to be found leading their
shy wild life, so familiar with every sight and sound of
danger that no eye of the many that pass by ever sees them. No
animal has been more persistently trapped and hunted for the
valuable fur that he bears; but Keeonekh is hard to catch and
quick to learn. When a family have all been caught or driven away
from a favorite stream, another otter speedily finds the spot in
some of his winter wanderings after better fishing, and, knowing
well from the signs that others of his race have paid the sad
penalty for heedlessness, he settles down there with greater
watchfulness, and enjoys his fisherman's luck.
In the spring he brings a mate to share his rich living. Soon a
family of young otters go a-fishing in the best pools and explore
the stream for miles up and down. But so shy and wild and quick
to hide are they that the trout fishermen who follow the river,
and the ice fishermen who set their tilt-ups in the pond below,
and the children who gather cowslips in the spring have no
suspicion that the original proprietors of the stream are still
on the spot, jealously watching and resenting every intrusion.
Occasionally the wood choppers cross an unknown trail in the
snow, a heavy trail, with long, sliding, down-hill plunges which
look as if a log had been dragged along. But they too go their
way, wondering a bit at the queer things that live in the woods,
but not understanding the plain records that the queer things
leave behind them. Did they but follow far enough they would find
the end of the trail in open water, and on the ice beyond the
signs of Keeonekh's fishing.
I remember one otter family whose den I found, when a boy, on a
stream between two ponds within three miles of the town house.
Yet the oldest hunter could barely remember the time when the
last otter had been caught or seen in the county.
I was sitting very still in the bushes on the bank, one day in
spring, watching for a wood duck. Wood duck lived there, but the
cover was so thick that I could never surprise them. They always
heard me coming and were off, giving me only vanishing glimpses
among the trees, or else quietly hiding until I went by. So the
only way to see them--a beautiful sight they were--was to sit
still in hiding, for hours if need be, until they came gliding
by, all unconscious of the watcher.
As I waited a large animal came swiftly up stream, just his head
visible, with a long tail trailing behind. He was swimming
powerfully, steadily, straight as a string; but, as I noted with
wonder, he made no ripple whatever, sliding through the water as
if greased from nose to tail. Just above me he dived, and I did
not see him again, though I watched up and down stream
breathlessly for him to reappear.
I had never seen such an animal before, but I knew somehow that
it was an otter, and I drew back into better hiding with the hope
of seeing the rare creature again. Presently another otter
appeared, coming up stream and disappearing in exactly the same
way as the first. But though I stayed all the afternoon I saw
nothing more.
After that I haunted the spot every time I could get away,
creeping down. to the river bank and lying in hiding hours long
at a stretch; for I knew now that the otters lived there, and
they gave me many glimpses of a life I had never seen before.
Soon I found their den. It was in a bank opposite my hiding
place, and the entrance was among the roots of a great tree,
under water, where no one could have possibly found it if the
otters had not themselves shown the way. In their approach they
always dived while yet well out in the stream, and so entered
their door unseen. When they came out they were quite as careful,
always swimming some distance under water before coming to the
surface. It was several days before my eye could trace surely the
faint undulation of the water above them, and so follow their
course to their doorway. Had not the water been shallow I should
never have found it; for they are the most wonderful of swimmers,
making no ripple on the surface, and not half the disturbance
below it that a fish of the same weight makes.
Those were among the happiest watching hours that I have ever
spent in the woods. The game was so large, so utterly unexpected;
and I had the wonderful discovery all to myself. Not one of the
half dozen boys and men who occasionally, when the fever seized
them, trapped muskrat in the big meadow, a mile below, or the
rare mink that hunted frogs in the brook, had any suspicion that
such splendid fur was to be had for the hunting.
Sometimes a whole afternoon would go slowly by, filled with the
sounds and sweet smells of the woods, and not a ripple would
break the dimples of the stream before me. But when, one late
afternoon, just as the pines across the stream began to darken
against the western light, a string of silver bubbles shot across
the stream and a big otter rose to the surface with a pickerel in
his mouth, all the watching that had not well repaid itself was
swept out of the reckoning. He came swiftly towards me, put his
fore paws against the bank, gave a wriggling jump,--and there he
was, not twenty feet away, holding the pickerel down with his
fore paws, his back arched like a frightened cat, and a
tiny stream of water trickling down from the tip of his heavy
pointed tail, as he ate his fish with immense relish.
Years afterward, hundreds of miles away on the Dungarvon, in the
heart of the wilderness, every detail of the scene came back to
me again. I was standing on snowshoes, looking out over the
frozen river, when Keeonekh appeared in an open pool with a trout
in his mouth. He broke his way, with a clattering tinkle of
winter bells, through the thin edge of ice, put his paws against
the heavy snow ice, threw himself out with the same wriggling
jump, and ate with his back arched--just as I had seen him years
before.
This curious way of eating is, I think, characteristic of all
otters; certainly of those that I have been fortunate enough to
see. Why they do it is more than I know; but it must be
uncomfortable for every mouthful--full of fish bones, too--to
slide uphill to one's stomach. Perhaps it is mere habit, which
shows in the arched backs of all the weasel family. Perhaps it is
to frighten any enemy that may approach unawares while Keeonekh
is eating, just as an owl, when feeding on the ground, bristles
up all his feathers so as to look as big as possible.
But my first otter was too keen-scented to remain long so near a
concealed enemy. Suddenly he stopped eating and turned his head
in my direction. I could see his nostrils twitching as the wind
gave him its message. Then he left his fish, glided into the
stream as noiselessly as the brook entered it below him, and
disappeared without leaving a single wavelet to show where he had
gone down.
When the young otters appeared, there was one of the most
interesting lessons to be seen in the woods. Though Keeonekh
loves the water and lives in it more than half the time, his
little ones are afraid of it as so many kittens. If left to
themselves they would undoubtedly go off for a hunting life,
following the old family instinct; for fishing is an acquired
habit of the otters, and so the fishing instinct cannot yet be
transmitted to the little ones. That will take many generations.
Meanwhile the little Keeonekhs must be taught to swim.
One day the mother-otter appeared on the bank among the roots of
the great tree under which was their secret doorway. That was
surprising, for up to this time both otters had always approached
it from the river, and were never seen on the bank near their
den. She appeared to be digging, but was immensely cautious about
it, looking, listening, sniffing continually. I had never gone
near the place for fear of frightening them away; and it was
months afterward, when the den was deserted, before I examined it
to understand just what she was doing. Then I found that she had
made another doorway from her den leading out to the bank. She
had selected the spot with wonderful cunning,--a hollow under a
great root that would never be noticed,--and she dug from inside,
carrying the earth down to the river bottom, so that there should
be nothing about the tree to indicate the haunt of an animal.
Long afterwards, when I had grown better acquainted with
Keeonekh's ways from much watching, I understood the meaning of
all this. She was simply making a safe way out and in for the
little ones, who were afraid of the water. Had she taken or
driven them out of her own entrance under the river, they might
easily have drowned ere they reached the surface.
When the entrance was all ready she disappeared, but I have no
doubt she was just inside, watching to be sure the coast was
clear. Slowly her head and neck appeared till they showed clear
of the black roots. She turned her nose up stream--nothing in the
wind. Eyes and ears searched below--nothing harmful there. Then
she came out, and after her toddled two little otters, full of
wonder at the big bright world, full of fear at the river.
There was no play at first, only wonder and investigation.
Caution was born in them; they put their little feet down as if
treading on eggs, and they sniffed every bush before going behind
it. And the old mother noted their cunning with satisfaction
while her own nose and ears watched far away.
The outing was all too short; some uneasiness was in the air down
stream. Suddenly she rose from where she was lying, and the
little ones, as if commanded, tumbled back into the den. In a
moment she had glided after them, and the bank was deserted. It
was fully ten minutes before my untrained cars caught faint
sounds, which were not of the woods, coming up stream; and longer
than that before two men with fish poles appeared, making their
slow way to the pond above. They passed almost over the den and
disappeared, all unconscious of beast or man that wished them
elsewhere, resenting their noisy passage through the solitudes.
But the otters did not come out again, though I watched till
nearly dark.
It was a week before I saw them again, and some good teaching had
evidently been done in the meantime; for all fear of the river
was gone. They toddled out as before, at the same hour in the
afternoon, and went straight to the bank. There the mother lay
down, and the little ones, as if enjoying the frolic, clambered
up to her back. Whereupon she slid into the stream and swam
slowly about with the little Keeonekhs clinging to her
desperately, as if humpty-dumpty had been played on them before,
and might be repeated any moment.
I understood their air of anxious expectation a moment later,
when Mother Otter dived like a flash from under them, leaving
them to make their own way in the water. They began to swim
naturally enough, but the fear of the new element was still upon
them. The moment old Mother Otter appeared they made for her
whimpering, but she dived again and again, or moved slowly away,
and so kept them swimming. After a little they seemed to tire and
lose courage. Her eyes saw it quicker than mine, and she glided
between them. Both little ones turned in at the same instant and
found a resting place on her back. So she brought them carefully
to land again, and in a few moments they were all rolling about
in the dry leaves like so many puppies.
I must confess here that, besides the boy's wonder in watching
the wild things, another interest brought me to the river bank
and kept me studying Keeonekh's ways. Father Otter was a big
fellow,--enormous he seemed to me, thinking of my mink
skins,--and occasionally, when his rich coat glinted in the
sunshine, I was thinking what a famous cap it would make for the
winter woods, or for coasting on moonshiny nights. More often I
was thinking what famous things a boy could buy for the fourteen
dollars, at least, which his pelt would bring in the open market.
The first Saturday after I saw him I prepared a board, ten times
bigger than a mink-stretcher, and tapered one end to a round
point, and split it, and made a wedge, and smoothed it all down,
and hid it away--to stretch the big otter's skin upon when I
should catch him.
When November came, and fur was prime, I carried down a
half-bushel basket of heads and stuff from the fish market, and
piled them up temptingly on the bank, above a little water path,
in a lonely spot by the river. At the lower end of the path,
where it came out of the water, I set a trap, my biggest one,
with a famous grip for skunks and woodchucks. But the fish rotted
away, as did also another basketful in another place. Whatever
was eaten went to the crows and mink. Keeonekh disdained it.
Then I set the trap in some water (to kill the smell of it) on a
game path among some swamp alders, at a bend of the river where
nobody ever came and where I had found Keeonekh's tracks. The
next night be walked into it. But the trap that was sure grip for
woodchucks was a plaything for Keeonekh's strength. He wrenched
his foot out of it, leaving me only a few glistening hairs--which
was all I ever caught of him.
Years afterward, when I found old Noel's trap on Keeonekh's
portage, I asked Simmo why no bait had been used.
"No good use-um bait," he said, "Keeonekh like-um fresh fish, an'
catch-um self all he want." And that is true. Except in
starvation times, when even the pools are frozen, or the fish die
from one of their mysterious epidemics, Keeonekh turns up his
nose at any bait. If a bit of castor is put in a split stick, he
will turn aside, like all the fur-bearers, to see what this
strange smell is. But if you would toll him with a bait, you must
fasten a fish in the water in such a way that it seems alive as
the current wiggles it, else Keeonekh will never think it worthy
of his catching.
The den in the river bank was never disturbed, and the following
year another litter was raised there. With characteristic
cunning--a cunning which grows keener and keener in the
neighborhood of civilization--the mother-otter filled up the land
entrance among the roots with earth and driftweed, using only the
doorway under water until it was time for the cubs to come out
into the world again.
Of all the creatures of the wilderness Keeonekh is the most
richly gifted, and his ways, could we but search them out, would
furnish a most interesting chapter. Every journey he takes,
whether by land or water, is full of unknown traits and tricks;
but unfortunately no one ever sees him doing things, and most of
his ways are yet to be found out. You see a head holding swiftly
across a wilderness lake, or coming to meet your canoe on the
streams; then, as you follow eagerly, a swirl and he is gone.
When he comes up again he will watch you so much more keenly than
you can possibly watch him that you learn little about him,
except how shy he is. Even the trappers who make a business of
catching him, and with whom I have often talked, know almost
nothing of Keeonekh, except where to set their traps for him
living and how to care for his skin when he is dead.
Once I saw him fishing in a curious way. It was winter, on a
wilderness stream flowing into the Dugarvon. There had been a
fall of dry snow that still lay deep and powdery over all the
woods, too light to settle or crust. At every step one had to
lift a shovelful of the stuff on the point of his snowshoe; and I
was tired out, following some caribou that wandered like plover
in the rain.
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