Secret of the Woods
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William J. Long >> Secret of the Woods
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Just below me was a deep open pool surrounded by double fringes
of ice. Early in the winter, while the stream was higher, the
white ice had formed thickly on the river wherever the current
was not too swift for freezing. Then the stream fell, and a shelf
of new black ice formed at the water's level, eighteen inches or
more below the first ice, some of which still clung to the banks,
reaching out in places two or three feet and forming dark caverns
with the ice below. Both shelves dipped towards the water,
forming a gentle incline all about the edges of the open places.
A string of silver bubbles shooting across the black pool at my
feet roused me out of a drowsy weariness. There it was again, a
rippling wave across the pool, which rose to the surface a moment
later in a hundred bubbles, tinkling like tiny bells as they
broke in the keen air. Two or three times I saw it with growing
wonder. Then something stirred under the shelf of ice across the
pool. An otter slid into the water; the rippling wave shot across
again; the bubbles broke at the surface; and I knew that he was
sitting under the white ice below me, not twenty feet away.
A whole family of otters, three or four of them, were fishing
there at my feet in utter unconsciousness. The discovery took my
breath away. Every little while the bubbles would shoot across
from my side, and watching sharply I would see Keeonekh slide out
upon the lower shelf of ice on the other side and crouch there in
the gloom, with back humped against the ice above him, eating his
catch. The fish they caught were all small evidently, for after a
few minutes he would throw himself flat on the ice, slide down
the incline into the water, making no splash or disturbance as he
entered, and the string of bubbles would shoot across to my side
again.
For a full hour I watched them breathlessly, marveling at their
skill. A small fish is nimble game to follow and catch in his own
element. But at every slide Keeonekh did it. Sometimes the
rippling wave would shoot all over the pool, and the bubbles
break in a wild tangle as the fish darted and doubled below, with
the otter after him. But it always ended the same way. Keeonekh
would slide out upon the ice shelf, and hump his back, and begin
to eat almost before the last bubble had tinkled behind him.
Curiously enough, the rule of the salmon fishermen prevailed here
in the wilderness: no two rods shall whip the same pool at the
same time. I would see an otter lying ready on the ice, evidently
waiting for the chase to end. Then, as another otter slid out
beside him with his fish, in he would go like a flash and take
his turn. For a while the pool was a lively place; the bubbles
had no rest. Then the plunges grew fewer and fewer, and the
otters all disappeared into the ice caverns.
What became of them I could not make out; and I was too chilled
to watch longer. Above and below the pool the stream was frozen
for a distance; then there was more open water and more fishing.
Whether they followed along the bank under cover of the ice to
other pools, or simply slept where they were till hungry again, I
never found out. Certainly they had taken up their abode in an
ideal spot, and would not leave it willingly. The open pools gave
excellent fishing, and the upper ice shelf protected them
perfectly from all enemies.
Once, a week later, I left the caribou and came back to the spot
to watch awhile; but the place was deserted. The black water
gurgled and dimpled across the pool, and slipped away silently
under the lower edge of ice undisturbed by strings of silver
bubbles. The ice caverns were all dark and silent. The mink had
stolen the fish heads, and there was no trace anywhere to show
that it was Keeonekh's banquet hall.
The swimming power of an otter, which was so evident there in the
winter pool, is one of the most remarkable things in nature. All
other animals and birds, and even the best modeled of modern
boats, leave more or less wake behind them when moving through
the water. But Keeonekh leaves no more trail than a fish. This is
partly because he keeps his body well submerged when swimming,
partly because of the strong, deep, even stroke that drives him
forward. Sometimes I have wondered if the outer hairs of his
coat--the waterproof covering that keeps his fur dry, no matter
how long he swims--are not better oiled than in other animals,
which might account for the lack of ripple. I have seen him go
down suddenly and leave absolutely no break in the surface to
show where he was. When sliding also, plunging down a twenty-foot
clay bank, he enters the water with an astonishing lack of noise
or disturbance of any kind.
In swimming at the surface he seems to use all four feet, like
other animals. But below the surface, when chasing fish, he uses
only the fore-paws. The hind legs then stretch straight out
behind and are used, with the heavy tail, for a great rudder. By
this means he turns and doubles like a flash, following surely
the swift dartings of frightened trout, and beating them by sheer
speed and nimbleness.
When fishing a pool he always hunts outward from the center,
driving the fish towards the bank, keeping himself within their
circlings, and so having the immense advantage of the shorter
line in heading off his game. The fish are seized as they crouch
against the bank for protection, or try to dart out past him.
Large fish are frequently caught from behind as they lie resting
in their spring-holes. So swift and noiseless is his approach
that they are seized before they become aware of danger.
This swimming power of Keeonekh is all the more astonishing when
one remembers that he is distinctively a land animal, with none
of the special endowments of the seal, who is his only rival as a
fisherman. Nature undoubtedly intended him to get his living, as
the other members of his large family do, by hunting in the
woods, and endowed him accordingly. He is a strong runner, a good
climber, a patient tireless hunter, and his nose is keen as a
brier. With a little practice he could again get his living by
hunting, as his ancestors did. If squirrels and rats and rabbits
were too nimble at first, there are plenty of musquash to be
caught, and he need not stop at a fawn or a sheep, for he is
enormously strong, and the grip of his jaws is not to be
loosened.
In severe winters, when fish are scarce or his pools frozen over,
he takes to the woods boldly and shows himself a master at
hunting craft. But he likes fish, and likes the water, and for
many generations now has been simply a fisherman, with many of
the quiet lovable traits that belong to fishermen in general.
That is one thing to give you instant sympathy for Keeonekh--he
is so different, so far above all other members of his tribe. He
is very gentle by nature, with no trace of the fisher's ferocity
or the weasel's bloodthirstiness. He tames easily, and makes the
most docile and affectionate pet of all the wood folk. He never
kills for the sake of killing, but lives peaceably, so far as he
can, with all creatures. And he stops fishing when he has caught
his dinner. He is also most cleanly in his habits, with no
suggestion whatever of the evil odors that cling to the mink and
defile the whole neighborhood of a skunk. One cannot help
wondering whether just going fishing has not wrought all this
wonder in Keeonekh's disposition. If so, 't is a pity that all
his tribe do not turn fishermen.
His one enemy among the wood folk, so far as I have observed, is
the beaver. As the latter is also a peaceable animal, it is
difficult to account for the hostility. I have heard or read
somewhere that Keeonekh is fond of young beaver and hunts them
occasionally to vary his diet of fish; but I have never found any
evidence in the wilderness to show this. Instead, I think it is
simply a matter of the beaver's dam and pond that causes the
trouble.
When the dam is built the beavers often dig a channel around
either end to carry off the surplus water, and so prevent their
handiwork being washed away in a freshet. Then the beavers guard
their preserve jealously, driving away the wood folk that dare to
cross their dam or enter their ponds, especially the musquash,
who is apt to burrow and cause them no end of trouble. But
Keeonekh, secure in his strength, holds straight through the
pond, minding his own business and even taking a fish or two in
the deep places near the dam. He delights also in running water,
especially in winter when lakes and streams are mostly frozen,
and in his journeyings he makes use of the open channels that
guard the beavers' work. But the moment the beavers hear a
splashing there, or note a disturbance in the pond where Keeonekh
is chasing fish, down they come full of wrath. And there is
generally a desperate fight before the affair is settled.
Once, on a little pond, I saw a fierce battle going on out in the
middle, and paddled hastily to find out about it. Two beavers and
a big otter were locked in a death struggle, diving, plunging,
throwing themselves out of water, and snapping at each other's
throats.
As my canoe halted the otter gripped one of his antagonists and
went under with him. There was a terrible commotion below the
surface for a few moments. When it ended the beaver rolled up
dead, and Keeonekh shot up under the second beaver to repeat the
attack. They gripped on the instant, but the second beaver, an
enormous fellow, refused to go under where he would be at a
disadvantage. In my eagerness I let the canoe drift almost upon
them, driving them wildly apart before the common danger. The
otter held on his way up the lake; the beaver turned towards the
shore, where I noticed for the first time a couple of beaver
houses.
In this case there was no chance for intrusion on Keeonekh's
part. He had probably been attacked when going peaceably about
his business through the lake.
It is barely possible, however, that there was an old grievance
on the beavers' part, which they sought to square when they
caught Keeonekh on the lake. When beavers build their houses on
the lake shore, without the necessity for making a dam, they
generally build a tunnel slanting up from the lake's bed to their
den or house on the bank. Now Keeonekh fishes under the ice in
winter more than is generally supposed. As he must breathe after
every chase he must needs know all the air-holes and dens in the
whole lake. No matter how much he turns and doubles in the chase
after a trout, he never loses his sense of direction, never
forgets where the breathing places are. When his fish is seized
he makes a bee line under the ice for the nearest place where he
can breathe and eat. Sometimes this lands him, out of breath, in
the beaver's tunnel; and the beaver must sit upstairs in his own
house, nursing his wrath, while Keeonekh eats fish in his
hallway; for there is not room for both at once in the tunnel,
and a fight there or under the ice is out of the question. As the
beaver eats only bark--the white inner layer of "popple" bark is
his chief dainty--he cannot understand and cannot tolerate this
barbarian, who eats raw fish and leaves the bones and fins and
the smell of slime in his doorway. The beaver is exemplary in his
neatness, detesting all smells and filth; and this may possibly
account for some of his enmity and his savage attacks upon
Keeonekh when he catches him in a good place.
Not the least interesting of Keeonekh's queer ways is his habit
of sliding down hill, which makes a bond of sympathy and brings
him close to the boyhood memories of those who know him.
I remember one pair of otters that I watched for the better part
of a sunny afternoon sliding down a clay bank with endless
delight. The slide had been made, with much care evidently, on
the steep side of a little promontory that jutted into the river.
It was very steep, about twenty feet high, and had been made
perfectly smooth by much sliding and wetting-down. An otter would
appear at the top of the bank, throw himself forward on his belly
and shoot downward like a flash, diving deep under water and
reappearing some distance out from the foot of the slide. And all
this with marvelous stillness, as if the very woods had ears and
were listening to betray the shy creatures at their fun. For it
was fun, pure and simple, and fun with no end of tingle and
excitement in it, especially when one tried to catch the other
and shot into the water at his very heels.
This slide was in perfect condition, and the otters were careful
not to roughen it. They never scrambled up over it, but went
round the point and climbed from the other side, or else went up
parallel to the slide, some distance away, where the ascent was
easier and where there was no danger of rolling stones or sticks
upon the coasting ground to spoil its smoothness.
In winter the snow makes better coasting than the clay. Moreover
it soon grows hard and icy from the freezing of the water left by
the otter's body, and after a few days the slide is as smooth as
glass. Then coasting is perfect, and every otter, old and young,
has his favorite slide and spends part of every pleasant day
enjoying the fun.
When traveling through the woods in deep snow, Keeonekh makes use
of his sliding habit to help him along, especially on down
grades. He runs a little way and throws himself forward on his
belly, sliding through the snow for several feet before he runs
again. So his progress is a series of slides, much as one hurries
along in slippery weather.
I have spoken of the silver bubbles that first drew my attention
to the fishing otters one day in the wilderness. From the few
rare opportunities that I have had to watch them, I think that
the bubbles are seen only after Keeonekh slides swiftly into the
stream. The air clings to the hairs of his rough outer coat and
is brushed from them as he passes through the water. One who
watches him thus, shooting down the long slide belly-bump into
the black winter pool, with a string of silver bubbles breaking
and tinkling above him, is apt to know the hunter's change of
heart from the touch of Nature which makes us all kin. Thereafter
he eschews trapping--at least you will not find his number-three
trap at the foot of Keeonekh's slide any more, to turn the shy
creature's happiness into tragedy--and he sends a hearty
good-luck after his fellow-fisherman, whether he meet him on the
wilderness lakes or in the quiet places on the home streams where
nobody ever comes.
KOSKOMENOS THE OUTCAST
Koskomenos the kingfisher is a kind of outcast among the birds. I
think they regard him as a half reptile, who has not yet climbed
high enough in the bird scale to deserve recognition; so they let
him severely alone. Even the goshawk hesitates before taking a
swoop at him, not knowing quite whether the gaudy creature is
dangerous or only uncanny. I saw a great hawk once drop like a
bolt upon a kingfisher that hung on quivering wings, rattling
softly, before his hole in the bank. But the robber lost his
nerve at the instant when he should have dropped his claws to
strike. He swerved aside and shot upward in a great slant to a
dead spruce top, where he stood watching intently till the dark
beak of a brooding kingfisher reached out of the hole to receive
the fish that her mate had brought her. Whereupon Koskomenos
swept away to his watchtower above the minnow pool, and the hawk
set his wings toward the outlet, where a brood of young
sheldrakes were taking their first lessons in the open water.
No wonder the birds look askance at Kingfisher. His head is
ridiculously large; his feet ridiculously small. He is a poem of
grace in the air; but he creeps like a lizard, or waddles so that
a duck would be ashamed of him, in the rare moments when he is
afoot. His mouth is big enough to take in a minnow whole; his
tongue so small that he has no voice, but only a harsh
klr-rr-r-ik-ik-ik, like a watchman's rattle. He builds no nest,
but rather a den in the bank, in which he lives most filthily
half the day; yet the other half he is a clean, beautiful
creature, with never a suggestion of earth, but only of the blue
heavens above and the color-steeped water below, in his bright
garments. Water will not wet him, though he plunge a dozen times
out of sight beneath the surface. His clatter is harsh, noisy,
diabolical; yet his plunge into the stream, with its flash of
color, its silver spray, and its tinkle of smitten water, is the
most musical thing in the wilderness.
As a fisherman he has no equal. His fishy, expressionless eye is
yet the keenest that sweeps the water, and his swoop puts even
the fish-hawk to shame for its certainty and its lightning
quickness.
Besides all these contradictions, he is solitary, unknown,
inapproachable. He has no youth, no play, no joy except to eat;
he associates with nobody, not even with his own kind; and when
he catches a fish, and beats its head against a limb till it is
dead, and sits with head back-tilted, swallowing his prey, with a
clattering chuckle deep down in his throat, he affects you as a
parrot does that swears diabolically under his breath as he
scratches his head, and that you would gladly shy a stone at, if
the owner's back were turned for a sufficient moment.
It is this unknown, this uncanny mixture of bird and reptile that
has made the kingfisher an object of superstition among all
savage peoples. The legends about him are legion; his crested
head is prized by savages above all others as a charm or fetish;
and even among civilized peoples his dried body may still
sometimes be seen hanging to a pole, in the hope that his bill
will point out the quarter from which the next wind will blow.
But Koskomenos has another side, though the world as yet has
found out little about it. One day in the wilderness I cheered
him quite involuntarily. It was late afternoon; the fishing was
over, and I sat in my canoe watching by a grassy point to see
what would happen next. Across the stream was a clay bank, near
the top of which a hole as wide as a tea-cup showed where a pair
of kingfishers had dug their long tunnel. "There is nothing for
them to stand on there; how did they begin that hole?" I wondered
lazily; "and how can they ever raise a brood, with an open door
like that for mink and weasel to enter?" Here were two new
problems to add to the many unsolved ones which meet you at every
turn on the woodland byways.
A movement under the shore stopped my wondering, and the long
lithe form of a hunting mink shot swiftly up stream. Under the
hole he stopped, raised himself with his fore paws against the
bank, twisting his head from side to side and sniffing nervously.
"Something good up there," he thought, and began to climb. But
the bank was sheer and soft; he slipped back half a dozen times
without rising two feet. Then he went down stream to a point
where some roots gave him a foothold, and ran lightly up till
under the dark eaves that threw their shadowy roots over the clay
bank. There he crept cautiously along till his nose found the
nest, and slipped down till his fore paws rested on the
threshold. A long hungry sniff of the rank fishy odor that pours
out of a kingfisher's den, a keen look all around to be sure the
old birds were not returning, and he vanished like a shadow.
"There is one brood of kingfishers the less," I thought, with my
glasses focused on the hole. But scarcely was the thought formed,
when a fierce rumbling clatter sounded in the bank. The mink shot
out, a streak of red showing plainly across his brown face. After
him came a kingfisher clattering out a storm of invective and
aiding his progress by vicious jabs at his rear. He had made a
miscalculation that time; the old mother bird was at home waiting
for him, and drove her powerful beak at his evil eye the moment
it appeared at the inner end of the tunnel. That took the longing
for young kingfisher all out of Cheokhes. He plunged headlong
down the bank, the bird swooping after him with a rattling alarm
that brought another kingfisher in a twinkling. The mink dived,
but it was useless to attempt escape in that way; the keen eyes
above followed his flight perfectly. When he came to the surface,
twenty feet away, both birds were over him and dropped like
plummets on his head. So they drove him down stream and out of
sight.
Years afterward I solved the second problem suggested by the
kingfisher's den, when I had the good fortune, one day, to watch
a pair beginning their tunneling. All who have ever watched the
bird have, no doubt, noticed his wonderful ability to stop short
in swift flight and hold himself poised in midair for an
indefinite time, while watching the movements of a minnow
beneath. They make use of this ability in beginning their nest
on a bank so steep as to afford no foothold.
As I watched the pair referred to, first one then the other would
hover before the point selected, as a hummingbird balances for a
moment at the door of a trumpet flower to be sure that no one is
watching ere he goes in, then drive his beak with rapid plunges
into the bank, sending down a continuous shower of clay to the
river below. When tired he rested on a watch-stub, while his mate
made a battering-ram of herself and kept up the work. In a
remarkably short time they had a foothold and proceeded to dig
themselves in out of sight.
Kingfisher's tunnel is so narrow that he cannot turn around in
it. His straight, strong bill loosens the earth; his tiny feet
throw it out behind. I would see a shower of dirt, and perchance
the tail of Koskomenos for a brief instant, then a period of
waiting, and another shower. This kept up till the tunnel was
bored perhaps two feet, when they undoubtedly made a sharp turn,
as is their custom. After that they brought most of the earth out
in their beaks. While one worked, the other watched or fished at
the minnow pool, so that there was steady progress as long as I
observed them.
For years I had regarded Koskomenos, as the birds and the rest of
the world regard bim, as a noisy, half-diabolical creature,
between bird and lizard, whom one must pass by with suspicion.
But that affair with the mink changed my feelings a bit.
Koskomenos' mate might lay her eggs like a reptile, but she could
defend them like any bird hero. So I took to watching more
carefully; which is the only way to get acquainted.
The first thing I noticed about the birds--an observation
confirmed later on many waters--was that each pair of kingfishers
have their own particular pools, over which they exercise
unquestioned lordship. There may be a dozen pairs of birds on a
single stream; but, so far as I have been able to observe, each
family has a certain stretch of water on which no other
kingfishers are allowed to fish. They may pass up and down
freely, but they never stop at the minnow pools; they are caught
watching near them, they are promptly driven out by the rightful
owners.
The same thing is true on the lake shores. Whether there is some
secret understanding and partition among them, or whether (which
is more likely) their right consists in discovery or first
arrival, there is no means of knowing.
A curious thing, in this connection, is that while a kingfisher
will allow none of his kind to poach on his preserves, he lives
at peace with the brood of sheldrakes that occupy the same
stretch of river. And the sheldrake eats a dozen fish to his one.
The same thing is noticeable among the sheldrakes also, namely,
that each pair, or rather each mother and her brood, have their
own piece of lake or river on. which no others are allowed to
fish. The male sheldrakes meanwhile are far away, fishing on
their own waters.
I had not half settled this matter of the division of trout
streams when another observation came, which was utterly
unexpected. Koskomenos, half reptile though he seem, not only
recognizes riparian rights, but he is also capable of
friendship--and that, too, for a moody prowler of the wilderness
whom no one else cares anything about. Here is the proof.
I was out in my canoe alone looking for a loon's nest, one
midsummer day, when the fresh trail of a bull caribou drew me to
shore. The trail led straight from the water to a broad alder
belt, beyond which, on the hillside, I might find the big brute
loafing his time away till evening should come, and watch him to
see what he would do with himself.
As I turned shoreward a kingfisher sounded his rattle and came
darting across the mouth of the bay where Hukweem the loon had
hidden her two eggs. I watched him, admiring the rippling sweep
of his flight, like the run of a cat's-paw breeze across a
sleeping lake, and the clear blue of his crest against the deeper
blue of summer sky. Under him his reflection rippled along, like
the rush of a gorgeous fish through the glassy water. Opposite my
canoe he checked himself, poised an instant in mid-air, watching
the minnows that my paddle had disturbed, and dropped bill
first--plash! with a silvery tinkle in the sound, as if hidden
bells down among the green water weeds had been set to ringing by
this sprite of the air. A shower of spray caught the rainbow for
a brief instant; the ripples gathered and began to dance over the
spot where Koskomenos had gone down, when they were scattered
rudely again as he burst out among them with his fish. He swept
back to the stub whence he had come, chuckling on the way. There
he whacked his fish soundly on the wood, threw his head back, and
through the glass I saw the tail of a minnow wriggling slowly
down the road that has for him no turning. Then I took up the
caribou trail.
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