Wilderness Ways by William J Long
W >>
William J Long >> Wilderness Ways
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 | 4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8
Kagax whirled when the eyes found him and two sets of strong curved
claws dropped down from the shadow. With a savage snarl he sprang up,
and his teeth met; but no blood followed the bite, only a flutter of
soft brown feathers. Then one set of sharp claws gripped his head;
another set met deep in his back. Kagax was jerked swiftly into the
air, and his evil doing was ended forever.
There was a faint rustle in the thicket as the shadow of Kookooskoos
swept away to his nest. The long lithe form of a pine marten glided
straight to the fir tip, where Kagax had been a moment before. His
movements were quick, nervous, silent; his eyes showed like two drops
of blood over his twitching nostrils. He circled swiftly about the end
of the lost trail. His nose touched a brown feather, another, and he
glided back to the fir tip. A drop of blood was soaking slowly into a
dead leaf. The marten thrust his nose into it. One long sniff, while
his eyes blazed; then he raised his head, cried out once savagely, and
glided away on the back track.
IV. KOOKOOSKOOS, WHO CATCHES THE WRONG RAT.
[Illustration: Kookooskoos]
Kookooskoos is the big brown owl, the _Bubo Virginianus_, or Great
Horned Owl of the books. But his Indian name is best. Almost any night
in autumn, if you leave the town and go out towards the big woods, you
can hear him calling it, _Koo-koo-skoos, koooo, kooo_, down in the
swamp.
Kookooskoos is always catching the wrong rat. The reason is that he is
a great hunter, and thinks that every furry thing which moves must be
game; and so he is like the fool sportsman who shoots at a sound, or a
motion in the bushes, before finding out what makes it. Sometimes the
rat turns out to be a skunk, or a weasel; sometimes your pet cat; and,
once in a lifetime, it is your own fur cap, or even your head; and
then you feel the weight and the edge of Kookooskoos' claws. But he
never learns wisdom by mistakes; for, spite of his grave appearance,
he is excitable as a Frenchman; and so, whenever anything stirs in the
bushes and a bit of fur appears, he cries out to himself, _A rat,
Kookoo! a rabbit!_ and swoops on the instant.
Rats and rabbits are his favorite food, by the way, and he never lets
a chance go by of taking them into camp. I think I never climbed to
his nest without finding plenty of the fur of both animals to tell of
his skill in hunting.
One evening in the twilight, as I came home from hunting in the big
woods, I heard the sound of deer feeding just ahead. I stole forward
to the edge of a thicket and stood there motionless, looking and
listening intently. My cap was in my pocket, and only my head appeared
above the low firs that sheltered me. Suddenly, without noise or
warning of any kind, I received a sharp blow on the head from behind,
as if some one had struck me with a thorny stick. I turned quickly,
surprised and a good bit startled; for I thought myself utterly alone
in the woods--and I was. There was nobody there. Not a sound, not a
motion broke the twilight stillness. Something trickled on my neck; I
put up my hand, to find my hair already wet with blood. More startled
than ever, I sprang through the thicket, looking, listening everywhere
for sight or sound of my enemy. Still no creature bigger than a wood
mouse; no movement save that of nodding fir tips; no sound but the
thumping of my own heart, and, far behind me, a sudden rush and a bump
or two as the frightened deer broke away; then perfect stillness
again, as if nothing had ever lived in the thickets.
I was little more than a boy; and I went home that night more puzzled
and more frightened than I have ever been, before or since, in the
woods. I ran into the doctor's office on my way. He found three cuts
in my scalp, and below them two shorter ones, where pointed things
seemed to have been driven through to the bone. He looked at me
queerly when I told my story. Of course he did not believe me, and I
made no effort to persuade him. Indeed, I scarcely believed myself.
But for the blood which stained my handkerchief, and the throbbing
pain in my head, I should have doubted the reality of the whole
experience.
That night I started up out of sleep, some time towards morning, and
said before I was half awake: "It was an _owl_ that hit you on the
head--of course it was an owl!" Then I remembered that, years before,
an older boy had a horned owl, which he had taken from a nest, and
which he kept loose in a dark garret over the shed. None of us younger
boys dared go up to the garret, for the owl was always hungry, and the
moment a boy's head appeared through the scuttle the owl said _Hoooo!_
and swooped for it. So we used to get acquainted with the big pet by
pushing in a dead rat, or a squirrel, or a chicken, on the end of a
stick, and climbing in ourselves afterwards.
As I write, the whole picture comes back to me again vividly; the
dark, cobwebby old garret, pierced here and there by a pencil of
light, in which the motes were dancing; the fierce bird down on the
floor in the darkest corner, horns up, eyes gleaming, feathers all
a-bristle till he looked big as a bushel basket in the dim light,
standing on his game with one foot and tearing it savagely to pieces
with the other, snapping his beak and gobbling up feathers, bones and
all, in great hungry mouthfuls; and, over the scuttle, two or three
small boys staring in eager curiosity, but clinging to each other's
coats fearfully, ready to tumble down the ladder with a yell at the
first hostile demonstration.
The next afternoon I was back in the big woods to investigate. Fifty
feet behind the thicket where I had been struck was a tall dead stub
overlooking a little clearing. "That's his watch tower," I thought.
"While I was watching the deer, he was up there watching my head, and
when it moved he swooped."
I had no intention of giving him another flight at the same game, but
hid my fur cap some distance out in the clearing, tied a long string
to it, went back into the thicket with the other end of the string,
and sat down to wait. A low _Whooo-hoo-hoo!_ came from across the
valley to tell me I was not the only watcher in the woods.
Towards dusk I noticed suddenly that the top of the old stub looked a
bit peculiar, but it was some time before I made out a big owl sitting
up there. I had no idea how long he had been there, nor whence he
came. His back was towards me; he sat up very straight and still, so
as to make himself just a piece, the tip end, of the stub. As I
watched, he hooted once and bent forward to listen. Then I pulled on
my string.
With the first rustle of a leaf he whirled and poised forward, in the
intense attitude an eagle takes when he sights the prey. On the
instant he had sighted the cap, wriggling in and out among the low
bushes, and swooped for it like an arrow. Just as he dropped his legs
to strike, I gave a sharp pull, and the cap jumped from under him. He
missed his strike, but wheeled like a fury and struck again. Another
jerk, and again he missed. Then he was at the thicket where I stood;
his fierce yellow eyes glared straight into mine for a startled
instant, and he brushed me with his wings as he sailed away into the
shadow of the spruces.
Small doubt now that I had seen my assailant of the night before; for
an owl has regular hunting grounds, and uses the same watch towers
night after night. He had seen my head in the thicket, and struck at
the first movement. Perceiving his mistake, he kept straight on over
my head; so of course there was nothing in sight when I turned. As an
owl's flight is perfectly noiseless (the wing feathers are wonderfully
soft, and all the laminae are drawn out into hair points, so that the
wings never whirr nor rustle like other birds') I had heard nothing,
though he passed close enough to strike, and I was listening intently.
And so another mystery of the woods was made plain by a little
watching.
Years afterwards, the knowledge gained stood me in good stead in
clearing up another mystery. It was in a lumber camp--always a
superstitious place--in the heart of a Canada forest. I had followed a
wandering herd of caribou too far one day, and late in the afternoon
found myself alone at a river, some twenty miles from my camp, on the
edge of the barren grounds. Somewhere above me I knew that a crew of
lumbermen were at work; so I headed up river to find their camp, if
possible, and avoid sleeping out in the snow and bitter cold. It was
long after dark, and the moon was flooding forest and river with a
wonderful light, when I at last caught sight of the camp. The click of
my snowshoes brought a dozen big men to the door. At that moment I
felt rather than saw that they seemed troubled and alarmed at seeing
me alone; but I was too tired to notice, and no words save those of
welcome were spoken until I had eaten heartily. Then, as I started out
for another look at the wild beauty of the place under the moonlight,
a lumberman followed and touched me on the shoulder.
"Best not go far from camp alone, sir. 'T isn't above safe
hereabouts," he said in a low voice. I noticed that he glanced back
over his shoulder as he spoke.
"But why?" I objected. "There's nothing in these woods to be afraid
of."
"Come back to camp and I'll tell you. It's warmer there," he said. And
I followed to hear a strange story,--how "Andy there" was sitting on a
stump, smoking his pipe in the twilight, when he was struck and cut on
the head from behind; and when he sprang up to look, there was nothing
there, nor any track save his own in the snow. The next night
Gillie's fur cap had been snatched from his head, and when _he_ turned
there was nobody in sight; and when he burst into camp, with all his
wits frightened out of him, he could scarcely speak, and his face was
deathly white. Other uncanny things had happened since, in the same
way, and coupled with a bad accident on the river, which the men
thought was an omen, they had put the camp into such a state of
superstitious fear that no one ventured alone out of doors after
nightfall.
I thought of Kookooskoos and my own head, but said nothing. They would
only have resented the suggestion.
Next day I found my caribou, and returned to the lumber camp before
sunset. At twilight there was Kookooskoos, an enormous fellow, looking
like the end of a big spruce stub, keeping sharp watch over the
clearing, and fortunately behind the camp where he could not see the
door. I called the men and set them crouching in the snow under the
low eaves.--"Stay there a minute and I'll show you the ghost." That
was all I told them.
Taking the skin of a hare which I had shot that day, I hoisted it
cautiously on a stick, the lumbermen watching curiously. A slight
scratch of the stick, a movement of the fur along the splits, then a
great dark shadow shot over our heads. It struck the stick sharply
and swept on and up into the spruces across the clearing, taking
Bunny's skin with it.
Then one big lumberman, who saw the point, jumped up with a yell and
danced a jig in the snow, like a schoolboy. There was no need of
further demonstration with a cap; and nobody volunteered his head for
a final experiment; but all remembered seeing the owl on his nightly
watch, and knew something of his swooping habits. Of course some were
incredulous at first, and had a dozen questions and objections when we
were in camp. No one likes to have a good ghost story spoiled; and,
besides, where superstition is, there the marvelous is most easily
believed. It is only the simple truth that is doubted. So I spent half
the night in convincing them that they _had_ been brought up in the
woods to be scared by an owl.
Poor Kookooskoos! they shot him next night on his watch tower, and
nailed him to the camp door as a warning.
I discovered another curious thing about Kookooskoos that night when I
watched to find out what had struck me. I found out why he hoots.
Sometimes, if he is a young owl, he hoots for practice, or to learn
how; and then he makes an awful noise of it, a rasping screech, before
his voice deepens. And if you are camping near and are new to the
woods, the chances are that you lie awake and shiver; for there is no
other sound like it in the wilderness. Sometimes, when you climb to
his nest, he has a terrifying _hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo_, running up
and down a deep guttural scale, like a fiendish laugh, accompanied by
a vicious snapping of the beak. And if you are a small boy, and it is
towards twilight, you climb down the tree quick and let his nest
alone. But the regular _whooo-hoo-hoo_, _whooo-hoo_, always five
notes, with the second two very short, is a hunting call, and he uses
it to alarm the game. That is queer hunting; but his ears account for
it.
If you separate the feathers on Kookooskoos' head, you will find an
enormous ear-opening running from above his eye halfway round his
face. And the ear within is so marvelously sensitive that it can hear
the rustle of a rat in the grass, or the scrape of a sparrow's toes on
a branch fifty feet away. So he sits on his watch tower, so still that
he is never noticed, and as twilight comes on, when he can see best,
he hoots suddenly and listens. The sound has a muffled quality which
makes it hard to locate, and it frightens every bird and small animal
within hearing; for all know Kookooskoos, and how fierce he is. As the
terrifying sound rolls out of the air so near them, fur and feathers
shiver with fright. A rabbit stirs in his form; a partridge shakes on
his branch; the mink stops hunting frogs at the brook; the skunk takes
his nose out of the hole where he is eating sarsaparilla roots. A leaf
stirs, a toe scrapes, and instantly Kookooskoos is there. His fierce
eyes glare in; his great claws drop; one grip, and it's all over. For
the very sight of him scares the little creatures so, that there is no
life left in them to cry out or to run away.
A nest which I found a few years ago shows how well this kind of
hunting succeeds. It was in a gloomy evergreen swamp, in a big tree,
some eighty feet from the ground. I found it by a pile of pellets of
hair and feathers at the foot of the tree; for the owl devours every
part of his game, and after digestion is complete, feathers, bones,
and hair are disgorged in small balls, like so many sparrow heads.
When I looked up, there at the top was a huge mass of sticks, which
had been added to year after year till it was nearly three feet
across, and half as thick. Kookooskoos was not there. He had heard me
coming and slipped away silently.
Wishing to be sure the nest was occupied before trying the hard climb,
I went away as far as I could see the nest and hid in a thicket.
Presently a very large owl came back and stood by the nest. Soon
after, a smaller bird, the male, glided up beside her. Then I came on
cautiously, watching to see what they would do.
At the first crack of a twig both birds started forward the male
slipped away; the female dropped below the nest, and stood behind a
limb, just her face peering through a crotch in my direction. Had I
not known she was there, I might have looked the tree over twenty
times without finding her. And there she stayed hidden till I was
halfway up the tree.
When I peered at last over the edge of the big nest, after a
desperately hard climb, there was a bundle of dark gray down in a
little hollow in the middle. It touched me at the time that the little
ones rested on a feather bed pulled from the mother bird's own breast.
I brushed the down with my fingers. Instantly two heads came up, fuzzy
gray heads, with black pointed beaks, and beautiful hazel eyes, and a
funny long pin-feather over each ear, which made them look like little
wise old clerks just waked up. When I touched them again they
staggered up and opened their mouths,--enormous mouths for such little
fellows; then, seeing that I was an intruder, they tried to bristle
their few pin-feathers and snap their beaks.
They were fat as two aldermen; and no wonder. Placed around the edge
of the big nest were a red squirrel, a rat, a chicken, a few frogs'
legs, and a rabbit. Fine fare that, at eighty feet from the ground.
Kookooskoos had had good hunting. All the game was partly eaten,
showing I had disturbed their dinner; and only the hinder parts were
left, showing that owls like the head and brains best. I left them
undisturbed and came away; for I wanted to watch the young grow--which
they did marvelously, and were presently learning to hoot. But I have
been less merciful to the great owls ever since, thinking of the
enormous destruction of game represented in raising two or three such
young savages, year after year, in the same swamp.
Once, at twilight, I shot a big owl that was sitting on a limb facing
me, with what appeared to be an enormously long tail hanging below the
limb. The tail turned out to be a large mink, just killed, with a
beautiful skin that put five dollars into a boy's locker. Another time
I shot one that sailed over me; when he came down, there was a ruffed
grouse, still living, in his claws. Another time I could not touch one
that I had killed for the overpowering odor which was in his feathers,
showing that _Mephitis_, the skunk, never loses his head when
attacked. But Kookooskoos, like the fox, cares little for such
weapons, and in the spring, when game is scarce, swoops for and kills
a skunk wherever he finds him prowling away from his den in the
twilight.
The most savage bit of his hunting that I ever saw was one dark winter
afternoon, on the edge of some thick woods. I was watching a cat, a
half-wild creature, that was watching a red squirrel making a great
fuss over some nuts which he had hidden, and which he claimed somebody
had stolen. Somewhere behind us, Kookooskoos was watching from a pine
tree. The squirrel was chattering in the midst of a whirlwind of
leaves and empty shells which he had thrown out on the snow from under
the wall; behind him the cat, creeping nearer and nearer, had crouched
with blazing eyes and quivering muscles, her whole attention fixed on
the spring, when broad wings shot silently over my hiding place and
fell like a shadow on the cat. One set of strong claws gripped her
behind the ears; the others were fastened like a vise in the spine.
Generally one such grip is enough; but the cat was strong, and at the
first touch sprang away. In a moment the owl was after her, floating,
hovering above, till the right moment came, when he dropped and struck
again. Then the cat whirled and fought like a fury. For a few moments
there was a desperate battle, fur and feathers flying, the cat
screeching like mad, the owl silent as death. Then the great claws did
their work. When I straightened up from my thicket, Kookooskoos was
standing on his game, tearing off the flesh with his feet, and
carrying it up to his mouth with the same movement, swallowing
everything alike, as if famished.
Over them the squirrel, which had whisked up a tree at the first
alarm, was peeking with evil eyes over the edge of a limb, snickering
at the blood-stained snow and the dead cat, scolding, barking,
threatening the owl for having disturbed the search for his stolen
walnuts.
I caught that same owl soon after in a peculiar way. A farmer near by
told me that an owl was taking his chickens regularly. Undoubtedly the
bird had been driven southward by the severe winter, and had not taken
up regular hunting grounds until he caught the cat. Then came the
chickens. I set up a pole, on the top of which was nailed a bit of
board for a platform. On the platform was fastened a small steel trap,
and under it hung a dead chicken. The next morning there was
Kookooskoos on the platform, one foot in the trap, at which he was
pulling awkwardly. Owls, from their peculiar ways of hunting, are
prone to light on stubs and exposed branches; and so Kookooskoos had
used my pole as a watch tower before carrying off his game.
There is another way in which he is easily fooled. In the early
spring, when he is mating, and again in the autumn, when the young
birds are well fed and before they have learned much, you can bring
him close up to you by imitating his hunting call. In the wilderness,
where these birds are plenty, I have often had five or six about me at
once. You have only to go well out beyond your tent, and sit down
quietly, making yourself part of the place. Give the call a few times,
and if there is a young bird near with a full stomach, he will answer,
and presently come nearer. Soon he is in the tree over your head, and
if you keep perfectly still he will set up a great hooting that you
have called him and now do not answer. Others are attracted by his
calling; they come in silently from all directions; the outcry is
startling. The call is more nervous, more eerie, much more terrifying
close at hand than when heard in the distance. They sweep about like
great dark shadows, hoo-hoo-hooing and frolicking in their own uncanny
way; then go off to their separate watch towers and their hunting. But
the chances are that you will be awakened with a start more than once
in the night, as some inquisitive young owl comes back and gives the
hunting call in the hope of finding out what the first summons was all
about.
V. CHIGWOOLTZ THE FROG.
[Illustration: Chigwooltz]
I was watching for a bear one day by an alder point, when Chigwooltz
came swimming in from the lily pads in great curiosity to see what I
was doing under the alders. He was an enormous frog, dull green with a
yellowish vest--which showed that he was a male--but with the most
brilliant ear drums I had ever seen. They fairly glowed with
iridescent color, each in its ring of bright yellow. When I tried to
catch him (very quietly, for the bear was somewhere just above on the
ridge) in order to examine these drums, he dived under the canoe and
watched me from a distance.
In front of me, in the shallow water along shore, four more large
frogs were sunning themselves among the lily pads. I watched them
carelessly while waiting for the bear. After an hour or two I noticed
that three of these frogs changed their positions slightly, turning
from time to time so as to warm the entire body at nature's fireplace.
But the fourth was more deliberate and philosophical, thinking
evidently that if he simply sat still long enough the sun would do the
turning. When I came, about eleven o'clock, he was sitting on the
shore by a green stone, his fore feet lapped by tiny ripples, the sun
full on his back. For three hours, while I watched there, he never
moved a muscle. Then the bear came, and I left him for more exciting
things.
Late in the afternoon I came back to get some of the big frogs for
breakfast. Chigwooltz, he with the ear drums, was the first to see me,
and came pushing his way among the lily pads toward the canoe. But
when I dangled a red ibis fly in front of him, he dived promptly, and
I saw his head come up by a black root, where he sat, thinking himself
invisible, and watched me.
Chigwooltz the second, he of the green stone and the patient
disposition, was still sitting in the same place. The sun had turned
round; it was now warming his other side. His all-day sun bath
surprised me so that I let him alone, to see how long he would sit
still, and went fishing for other frogs.
Two big ones showed their heads among the pads some twenty feet apart.
Pushing up so as to make a triangle with my canoe, I dangled a red
ibis impartially between them. For two or three long minutes neither
moved so much as an eyelid. Then one seemed to wake suddenly from a
trance, or to be touched by an electric wire, for he came scrambling
in a desperate hurry over the lily pads. Swimming was too slow; he
jumped fiercely out of water at the red challenge, making a great
splash and commotion.
Fishing for big frogs, by the way, is no tame sport. The red seems to
excite them tremendously, and they take the fly like a black salmon.
But the moment the first frog started, frog number two waked up and
darted forward, making less noise but coming more swiftly. The first
frog had jumped once for the fly and missed it, when the other leaped
upon him savagely, and a fight began, while the ibis lay neglected on
a lily pad. They pawed and bit each other fiercely for several
minutes; then the second frog, a little smaller than the other, got
the grip he wanted and held it. He clasped his fore legs tight about
his rival's neck and began to strangle him slowly. I knew well how
strong Chigwooltz is in his forearms, and that his fightings and
wrestlings are desperate affairs; but I did not know till then how
savage he can be. He had gripped from behind by a clever dive, so as
to use his weight when the right moment came. Tighter and tighter he
hugged; the big frog's eyes seemed bursting from his head, and his
mouth was forced slowly open. Then his savage opponent lunged upon him
with his weight, and forced his head under water to finish him.
The whole thing seemed scarcely more startling to the luckless big
frog than to the watcher in the canoe. It was all so brutal, so
deliberately planned! The smaller frog, knowing that he was no match
for the other in strength, had waited cunningly till he was all
absorbed in the red fly, and then stole upon him, intending to finish
him first and the little red thing afterwards. He would have done it
too; for the big frog was at his last gasp, when I interfered and put
them both in my net.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 | 4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8