How to Know the Wood Folk
[[175]]
VII
On Getting Acquainted
To know birds and beasts may be a greater or a lesser triumph than to know ornithology or zoölogy. That is a question of taste or temperament, the only certainty being that the two classes of subjects are altogether different. The latter deals with external matters, with form, classification, generalities. Its materials are books, specimens, museums, one as dead or desiccate as another; and because it is limited and exact, you can memorize its outlines in a few days, or become in a few years an authority in the science.
The former subject, of birds and beasts, deals with an endless and fascinating mystery. Its materials are living and joyous individuals, among [[176]]whom are no classes or species, concerning whom there can be no “authority”; and when, after a lifetime of study, you have made a small beginning of knowledge, you find that, like All Gaul of misty memory, it may be divided into three parts.
One part is observation, which is a simple matter of the eye. Another is sympathy, which belongs to the mind or heart. In dealing with wild creatures, as with civilized folk, one learns to appreciate De Quincey’s rule of criticism, “Not to sympathize is not to understand.” A third part, more rare and variable, may come from that penetrating but indescribable quality which we call a gift. A few men have it; the animals instinctively trust them, and they understand animals without knowing how they understand. The rest, lacking it, must struggle against a handicap to learn, substituting the slow wisdom of experience for the quick insight of the gift. It is for the latter chiefly that I write these wood notes.
One word more by way of preface, to express the conviction that you can learn nothing worth knowing about birds or beasts so long as you seek them with a gun in your hand. On that road you shall find only common dust, and at the end of it a valley of dry bones. Whether you carry the gun frankly for sport, or delude yourself with the notion that you can add to natural history by collecting [[177]]more skins or skulls, you have unconsciously placed destruction above fulfilment, stark death above the beautiful mystery of life. So must you estrange both the animal and yourself, making it impossible for you to meet on any common ground of understanding. And now for our lessons:
If I were to formulate rules for a subject which can never be learned by the book, I might say that there are three things you should know, and another you must do, if you expect to gain any intimate knowledge of the wood folk, or even to approach them near enough for fair and leisurely observation.
The first thing to know is that natural creatures, though instinctively shy or timid, are not wildly governed by fears and terrors, as we have been misinformed from our youth up. The “reign of terror” is another of those pet scientific delusions, like the “struggle for existence,” for which there is no basis in nature. Fear in any true sense of the word is an exclusively human possession, or affliction; it is a physical and moral poison, as artificial as sin, which the animal escapes by virtue of being natural. It is doubtful, indeed, whether anything remotely resembling our fear, a state of mind arising from a highly developed imagination which enables us to picture events before they happen, [[178]]is ever born into a hairy skin or hatched out of an egg. The natural timidity of all wild creatures is a protective and wholesome instinct, radically different from the fear which makes cowards of men who have learned to trace causes and to anticipate consequences.
So much for the mental analysis; and your eyes emphasize the same conclusion when you look frankly upon the natural world. The very attitude or visible expression of birds or beasts when you meet them in their native woods, feeding, playing, resting, seeking their mates, or roving freely with their little ones (all pleasurable matters, constituting nine-tenths or more of animal existence), is enough in itself to refute the absurd notion of a general reign of terror in nature. If you are wise, therefore, you will get rid of that prejudice, or at least hold it in abeyance till the animals themselves teach you how senseless it is. To go out obsessed with the notion of fear is to blind your eyes to the great comedy of the woods.
The second thing to know, and to remember when you go forth to see, is that sensitive creatures dislike to be watched, and become uneasy when they find a pair of eyes intently fixed upon them. You yourself retain something of this ancient animal inheritance, it seems, since there is nothing which more surely excites alarm if you are timid, or [[179]]challenge if you are well balanced, or anger if you have a fighting spirit, than to have a stranger watching your every move while you go about your lawful affairs. The fact that you cannot word a reason for your alarm or challenge or anger makes you all the more certain that you have an unanswerable reason; which is your inborn right to be let alone.
This natural and inalienable right (which society curbs for its own protection, and reform societies trample on for their peculiar pleasure) may help you to understand why the animal becomes alarmed when he finds you watching him closely. He desires above all things else, above his dinner even, to be let alone; and your eye may as surely disturb his peace, his self-possession, his sense of security, as any gun you may shoot at him or any fire you may kindle in his fragrant domain.
You have but to think a moment in order to understand why even your look may be too disturbing. When a beast of prey sees a buck that he wants to catch, what is his invariable mode of procedure? First he hides, then he creeps or skulks or waits, all the while keeping his eyes fastened upon his victim, watching every move with fierce intensity till the moment comes to spring. It follows, naturally enough, that when the same beast of prey finds other eyes fixed upon [[180]]himself, he knows well what the look means, that a rush will swiftly follow; and he anticipates the rush by taking to his heels. Or the buck, having once escaped the charge of a hunting beast, will remember his experience the next time he finds himself an object of scrutiny, and will flee from it as from any other discomfort.
Whether this action is the result of instinctive or deductive knowledge is here of no consequence: let the psychologists pick a bone over it. Since we have in our heads a strong aversion to being observed too closely, we are probably facing an instinct, which is stronger in the brute than in the man; but it is the fact, not the explanation thereof, which is important. The simple fact is, that wild birds and beasts will not endure watching; and you begin to sympathize with their notion when you mark the eyes of a stalking cat, with their terrible fire just before she springs. There is always more or less of that fire in a watchful eye; you may see it glow or blaze under a man’s narrowed lids before he takes quick action; and it is the kindling of that dangerous light which a sensitive creature expects and avoids when he finds you watching him.
Did you ever follow an old cock-partridge in the woods with intent to kill him? If so, you have a living picture of the truth I have explained [[181]]theoretically. Near our towns the partridge (ruffed grouse) is very wild, taking wing at your approach; but in the deep woods he is almost fearless. Even when you stumble into a flock of the birds, frightening them out of their calm, they are apt to flit into the trees and remain absolutely motionless. They are then hard to find, so well do they blend with their background; and if they are young birds, they will hold still after you discover them. Since they were helpless chicks they have trusted to quietness to conceal them; it serves them very well, much better than running away from stronger enemies; and the habit is strong upon them, as upon young ducks and other game-birds before they have learned to trust their wings. But when you stumble upon an old cock-grouse you meet a bird that has added experience to instinct, and that knows when to move as well as when to sit still. He dodges out of sight as you raise your rifle; as you follow him he bursts away on whirring wings and slants up into a tree in a distant part of the wood. Marking where he lights, you try to find him, cat-footing around his perch, peering into every tree-top, putting a “crik” in the back of your neck. For a half-hour, it may be, you search for him in vain; suddenly there he is, and—b’r-r-r-r! he is gone. The odd thing is that he sits still so long as you cannot find him; not a [[182]]feather stirs or a foot shifts or an eyelid blinks even when your glance roves blindly over him; you may give him up and go away, leaving him motionless; but the instant you see him he seems to know it, and in that instant he is off. This is not a single or an accidental but a typical experience; any woodsman who has hunted ruffed grouse with a rifle will smile as he tells you, “That’s true; but I can’t explain it.”
A third bit of woods lore, of which we shall presently make good use, is that natural birds and animals have a lively interest in every new or strange thing they meet. Far from being occupied in a constant struggle for existence, as the books misinform us, their lives are full of leisure; they have plentiful hours for rest or play or roving, and in these idle times they get most of their fun out of life by indulging their curiosity. I fancy that in this respect, also, most people are still natural creatures, seeing that men or women in a crowd are as easily set to stretching their necks as any flock of ducks or band of caribou.
So strong is the animal’s inquisitive instinct (for it surely is an instinct, the basis of all education, and without it we should be fools, learning nothing) that he will readily give over his play or even his feeding to investigate any new thing which catches his attention. I speak now not of [[183]]fearsome things, which may properly alarm the wood folk, but of pretty or harmless or attractive things, such as the repeated flash of a looking-glass or the rhythmic swing of a handkerchief or a whistled tune, which commonly bring wild creatures nearer with forward-set ears and eyes with questions in them. In a word, so far as I have observed birds and beasts, their first or natural attitude toward every new object, unless it be raising fearful smells or moving toward them with hostile intent, is invariably one of curiosity rather than of fear.
One proof of this universal trait, to me, is that when I approach wild animals carelessly they often run away; but of the hundreds that have approached me when I was quiet in the woods, every one without exception showed plainly by his action that he was keen to find out who or what I might be. Young animals are more inquisitive than old, having everything to learn, and they are easily attracted; but age cannot stale the wonder of the world for them, and I have never chanced to meet an old doe, no, nor a tough old bull moose, that did not come near to question me if the chance were given. Of the larger wood folk Mooween the bear is perhaps the least inquisitive; yet once an old bear came so close to me, his eyes a question and his nose an [[184]]exclamation point, that I could have touched him before his curiosity was satisfied; and several times, when I have been watching the berry-fields, a bear and her cubs have noticed some slight motion of mine and have left their feast of blueberries to approach rather too near for my comfort. At close quarters an old she-bear is a little uncertain. Commonly she runs away in sudden panic; but should you get between her and her cub, and the piggish little fellow squeal out as if frightened or hurt, she may fly into a fury and become dangerous to a man unarmed.
The obvious thing to do, in view of what has been learned, is to hold physically and mentally still when you meet a wild animal, and so take advantage of his curiosity. That is very easy when he happens to find you at rest, for then he is bound to find out something about you before he goes; but even when he catches you afoot you may still have a fair chance if you stop in your tracks and move no muscle while he is looking. Remember that so long as you are motionless you puzzle him; that you should advance only when his head is turned away, and that you should never move directly at any animal, but to one side, as if you would give him plenty of room in passing. If you must change your position or attitude while he is looking, move gently and very slowly, avoiding [[185]]every appearance of haste or nervousness. If he vanishes after one keen look, be sure he is a veteran that has seen men before, and bide still where you are. The chances are ten to one that no sooner does he think himself hidden than he will turn to have another look at you. It is always in your favor, since you have the better eyes, that an animal has the habit of concealment, and so long as you pretend not to see him he is very apt to think himself unseen.
Such a method applies particularly well to all members of the deer family, with their insatiable curiosity; but it serves almost as well with beasts of prey, which may be so surprised by meeting a motionless man that they will often “point” him in a way to suggest a setter pointing a woodcock. We think of the fox, for example, as the most cunning of animals; like the dolls’ dressmaker in Our Mutual Friend, he seems to be saying, “Oh, I know your tricks and your manners”; yet on a good tracking-snow I have trailed many foxes to their day-beds, and have found that with few exceptions they act in the same half-puzzled, half-inquisitive way. And this is the fashion of it:
Looking far ahead on the dainty trail you suddenly catch a glimpse of orange color, very warm against the cold whiteness of the snow, which tells you where Eleemos the sly one, as Simmo calls [[186]]him, is curled on a warm rock or stump with the winter sunshine fair upon him. Then you must leave the trail, as if you were not following it, and advance on noiseless feet till the fox raises his head, when you must “freeze” in your tracks. If he is a tramp fox (that is, one which has come hunting here out of his own territory) or a veteran that has already seen too much of men and their devices, he will dodge out of sight and be seen no more; but if he is an ordinary young fox, especially a cub weathering his first winter, he will almost certainly investigate that odd motionless object which was not there when he went to sleep. After “pointing” you a moment he slips into the nearest cover, not turning his head in your direction, but watching you keenly out of the corners of his yellow eyes. When he thinks himself hidden from your sight he circles to get your wind; and on this side or that you will have two or three good glimpses of him before he floats away—or seems to, so lightly does he run—to hunt up another day-bed. Your last view of him shows a slyly inquisitive little beast, perfectly self-possessed; but as he disappears you notice a nervous, quivering, fluttering motion of his great brush, which gives him away as a tail betrays a dog, and which says that Eleemos is greatly excited or puzzled over something. [[187]]
Better than roaming noisily through the woods in search of game is to sit still and let the game come to you—an arrangement which puts you at your ease, and at the same time encourages the animal to indulge his curiosity without alarm. You may not see so many birds or beasts in this way, but some of them you shall see much more intimately; and a single inquisitive jay may teach you more of nature than all the bird books in the world, as I have learned more of Latin humanity from Angelo, who polishes my shoes, than from Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Very often, if you hold perfectly still, a wild animal will pass down the runway close at hand without even seeing you, and you must draw his attention by a chirp or a slight motion. Then, when he whirls upon you in astonishment, his eyes saying that he was never so surprised in his life, observe him casually as it were, veiling your interest and never staring at him as if he were a wild or strange beast, but greeting him rather as one you have long known.
At such a moment quietness is the best medicine—quietness and friendly eyes. If the animal wavers, a low song or a whistled tune may or may not be helpful; it depends entirely on the tune. You are to keep physically quiet, because any sudden motion will alarm the sensitive creature, [[188]]so near is he to the unknown; and mentally quiet, because excitement is as contagious as fear or measles, or any other disease of mind or body. When I am alone in the woods wild animals are rarely hard to approach, and when I am sitting quietly by a runway they show no fear of me whatever, drawing near with questioning eyes or moving away reluctantly; but when I take another with me, especially one who grows excited in the presence of big game, the same animals appear suspicious, uneasy, and end by bolting away as if we had frightened them.
One day there came to my camp a friend who was eager to see a deer at close range, but who was doubtful of my assurance that animals could neither see nor smell him if he knew how to hold still. When I promised him a deer at ten feet he jumped for his camera, saying that in such an incredible event he would get what he had always wanted, a picture of the graceful creature against a background of his native woods, in soft light and shadow instead of the glaring black-and-white of a flashlight. At that disturbing proposition all his doubts moved into me, who have always found camera folk a fidgety folk. What with their fussing and focusing and everlasting uneasiness over distance or time or shutter, or something else which is never right and ready, they are sure to bedevil [[189]]any wild creature before he comes within speaking distance; so I took my friend and his camera along without faith, hoping for the best.
Our stand was a hardwood ridge where deer often passed on their way to the lake, and we had been sitting there hardly an hour when I saw a young spikebuck coming down the runway. The next moment there was a gasping “Oh, there’s a deer!” from the man who had been warned to keep mentally still. Then began the inevitable tinkering with the camera, which had been thrice prepared and was still as unready as all its kind. More than once I had sat in that precise spot while deer passed at a distance of three or four yards without noticing me; but now the little buck caught an uneasy motion and halted with head high and eyes flashing. If ever there was a chance for a wonderful picture, he offered it; but he did not like the focusing, or whatever it was, and after endless delay the camera clicked on a white flag bobbing among the shadows, where it looked in the negative like a smear of sunlight.
The camera reminds me of another way of approaching deer, a way often followed by summer campers; namely, by chasing the swimming animal in a canoe. I have but one word to say of such a method, and that is, Don’t! When a deer is [[190]]crossing broad water you can get as close to him as you will; you can take a grip on him and let him tow your canoe, as thoughtless people sometimes do, encouraged by their guides; but I suggest that it would be much better to shoot the creature and have done with it.
A deer’s powers are very delicately balanced; he is nervous, high strung, easily upset. Even on land, where he can distance you in a moment, he begins to worry if he finds you holding steadily to his trail; and I have known a young deer to become so flustered after he had been jumped and followed a few times that he began to act in most erratic fashion, and was very easily approached. When you chase him in the water, and he finds that he cannot get away from you, he may give up and drown, as a rabbit submits without a struggle when a weasel rises in front of him; but a vigorous deer is more apt to become highly excited, to struggle wildly, to waste ten times as much energy as would keep him afloat, to jump his heart action at a dangerous rate; and then a very little more will finish him as surely as a bullet in the brain.
Twice have I seen deer thus killed by thoughtless campers, the last victim being a splendid buck full grown. Two men saw him swimming an arm of Moosehead Lake, and launched a canoe with no unkinder purpose than to turn him back to shore, [[191]]so that a party of sportsmen there might get a picture of him. The buck labored mightily; but the paddles were swift, and wherever he turned the danger appeared close in front of him. Suddenly he rose in the water, pawing the air, and heaved over on his side. When the canoe reached him he was dead; and the surprising thing is that dissection revealed no ruptured blood-vessel nor any other visible cause of his death. It was probably a matter of heart paralysis. Such an ending was unusual, I know; but undoubtedly many of these overwrought animals reach shore exhausted, spent to the limit, and lie down in the first good cover, never to rise again.
Moose and caribou are stronger swimmers than deer, and of tougher fiber; but it is still dangerous, I think, to chase them in the water. Once I saw a canoe following close behind a cow and a calf moose, the canoeists yelling wildly to hurry up the pace. Had they thought to look once into the eyes of the struggling brutes, they might have learned something which they ought to know. As the calf lagged farther and farther behind, the mother turned to come between him and the canoe, and remained there trying to urge and push the little fellow along. So they reached shallow water at last, found their footing, and plunged into the cover. The canoe turned away, and no doubt the [[192]]incident was soon forgotten. I never saw the canoemen again, but I saw one of the moose. A few days later, in passing through the woods on that side of the lake, I found the calf stretched out dead where he had fallen, not fifty yards from the water’s edge.
Perhaps another “don’t” should here be memorized for the happy occasion when you find a fawn or a little cub in the woods, and are moved most kindly to pet him. If the mother is half-tame, or has lived near a clearing long enough to lose distrust of the man-scent, it may do no harm to treat her fawn or cub as you would a puppy; but to handle any wild little creature is to do him an injury. Until a fawn is strong enough to travel the rough country in which he was born, the doe often leaves him hidden in the woods, where he lies so close and still that you may pass without seeing him. Once you discover him, however, and he knows that he is seen, his beautiful eyes begin to question you with a great wonder. He has no fear of you whatever (this while he is very young, or before he begins to follow his mother); he will sometimes follow you when you go away, and he is such a lovable creature, so innocent and so appealing, that it is hard to keep your hands from him. Let him sniff your palm if he will, or lick it with his rough tongue for the faint taste of salt; [[193]]but as you value his life don’t pet him or leave the scent of you on his delicate skin. A wild mother knows her own by the sense of smell chiefly; if she finds the startling man-scent where she expected a familiar odor, she becomes instantly alarmed, and then the little one is a stranger to her or a source of violent anger.
So innocent and so appealing that it is hard to keep your hands from him.
[[193]]
Once, before I learned better than to handle any helpless cub, I saw a doe drive her own fawn roughly away from her, out of my sight and hearing. I had petted the fawn a little (a very little, I am glad to remember) and looked with wonder on the mother’s anger, not understanding it till some time later, when I learned of a similar incident with a sadder ending. Not far from my camp a sportsman with his guide found a fawn hidden near the stream where they were fishing, and being completely won by the beautiful innocent, as most men are, they petted him to their hearts’ content. When an old doe, the mother presumably, appeared heading in their direction they thoughtfully withdrew, hiding at a distance to watch the family reunion. The doe seemed to hasten her steps when she saw that the fawn was on his feet, instead of lying close where she had left him; but when near him she suddenly stiffened, with the hair bristling on her neck. Two or three times she thrust out her nose, only to back away, and [[194]]once she raised the harsh alarm-cry that a doe utters when she smells danger. Then, as the little fellow trotted up to her on his wabbly legs, she leaped upon him in fury and trampled him to death.
[[195]]
VIII
On Keeping Still
To return to our first lesson, of quietude: it was impressed upon me unconsciously, like most good lessons, before I had any thought that I was learning the true way of the woods. The teacher was Nature herself (she seldom fails to quiet boy or man if left alone with him), and the school-room was a lonely berry-pasture surrounded by pine and hardwood forests. The berry-pickers, a happy and carefree lot, often let me go with them while I was yet too small to find my way among the tall swamp-blueberry bushes, and would leave me under a tree at the edge of the woods, with an armful of berry-laden branches to keep me busy while they wandered far away in [[196]]search of the best picking. Sitting there in the breathing solitude, occupied with the task of filling my tin cup with berries and well content with my lot (for the woods always had a fascination for me, and seemed most friendly when I was alone), I would presently “feel” that something was watching me. There was never any suggestion of fear in the impression, only an awakening to the fact that I was not alone, that some living thing was near me. Then, as I looked up expectantly, I would almost always find a bird slipping noiselessly through the branches overhead, or a beastie creeping through the cover at my side; and in his bright eyes, his shy approach, his withdrawal to appear in another spot, I read plainly enough that he was asking who I was or what I was doing there. And by a whistled tune or a drumming on my cup, or by flashing a sunbeam into his eyes from a pocket glass, I always tried to hold him as long as I could.
This curious sense or feeling of being watched, by the way, is very real in some men, who do not regard it as a matter of chance or imagination. I have known of two elaborate courses of “laboratory” experiments which aimed to determine how far such a feeling is trustworthy, and both resulted in a neutral or fifty-fifty conclusion; but I wonder, if the experiments had been tried on [[197]]Indians or natural men under natural conditions, whether the result might not have been quite different. The fact that the first fifty men you meet get lost or turned around in a trackless forest is significant for the fifty, and for the vast majority of others; but it means nothing to the one bushman who can go where he will without thought or possibility of being lost, because of his sure sense of direction.
So, possibly, with this feeling of being watched: it may be too intangible for experiment, or even for definition. Many times since childhood when I have been alone in the big woods, fishing or holding vigil by a wilderness lake, I have the feeling, at times vaguely and again definitely, that strange eyes were upon me. Occasionally, it is true, I have found nothing on looking around, either because no animal was there or because he was too well hidden to be seen; but much more often the feeling proved true to fact—so often, indeed, that I soon came to trust it without doubt or question, as Simmo my Indian still does, and a few other woodsmen I have known. It is possible that one’s ears or nose may account for the feeling; that some faint sound or odor may make itself felt so faintly that one has the impression of life without knowing through what channel the impression is received. Of that I am not at all sure; at the moment it [[198]]seems that some extra sense is at work, more subtle than smell or hearing; and, whether rightly or wrongly, it is apparently associated with the penetrating stare of an animal’s eyes on your back.
To quote but a single incident, out of several that come to my memory: I was once sitting on the shore of a lake at twilight, wholly intent on following the antics of a bull moose I had called into the open. He was on the other side of a small bay, ranging up and down, listening, threshing the bushes with his antlers, blowing his penny-trumpet at intervals,—in a dozen impatient ways showing what a young and foolish moose he was. A veteran would have kept to the cover till he had located what he came for. I had ceased my bellowing when the bull first answered, had been thrilled by his rush through the woods, had cheered him silently when he burst into the open, grunting and challenging like a champion; now I was quietly enjoying his bewilderment at not finding the tantalizing cow he had just heard calling. He did not see or suspect me; I had the comedy all to myself, and was keenly interested to know how he would act when he rounded the bay, as he certainly would, and found me sitting in his path. Because he was big and truculent and a fool, I did not know what to expect; my canoe floated ready against the outer end of a stranded log, where a [[199]]push would send it and me into deep water. I mention these details simply to show where my thoughts were.
As I watched the play in the hushed twilight, suddenly came the feeling that something was watching me. The bull had started around the bay in my direction; possibly his eyes had picked me out—but no, he was in plain sight, and the feeling is always associated with something unseen. Without changing position I looked carefully all about, searching the lake and especially the woods, which were already in deep shadow. Finding no bird or beast, no motion, nothing alarming, I turned to question the bull, who had halted to sound his ridiculous trumpet. He was perhaps fifty or sixty yards away. He had not yet seen me; I had no fear of him, no anxiety whatever; yet again came the feeling, this time insistent, compelling, as if some one had touched me and said, “Get away!” I did so promptly, jumping to my feet; and out of a fir thicket behind me charged another bull that I had not dreamed of calling.
By his size, his antlers, his fierce grunting, I recognized this brute on the instant. I had met him before, once on a trail, once on the lake shore, and had given him all the room he wanted. He was a grizzled old bull, morose and ugly, that seemed to have lost his native fear of man—from [[200]]a galling wound, perhaps, or from living an outcast life by himself. He was a little crazy, I judged. That he was dangerous I knew from the fact that he had previously made an unprovoked attack upon my Indian. He, too, had heard the call; had approached it from behind as stealthily as a cat, and had no doubt watched me, puzzled by my stillness, till my first decided motion brought him out on the jump. But I am wandering away from the small boy getting his first lessons in the woods, and learning that the important thing is to hold perfectly still.
Later, when eight or nine years old, I went alone day after summer day to the wild berry-pastures. When my big pail would hold no more, I would make a bowl by bashing in the top of my hat, and fill it to the brim with luscious blueberries. These with a generous slice of bread made an excellent lunch, which I always ate within sight of a bird’s nest, or the den of a fox, or some other abode of life that I had discovered in the woods. And again, as I sat quiet in the solitude, the birds and small animals might be led by curiosity to approach as fearlessly as when I was too small to harm them. Now a vixen, finding me too near her den and cubs, would squall at me impatiently, like a little yellow dog with a cat’s voice; or again, a brooding bird that objected to my scrutiny [[201]]would first turn her tail to me, and presently come round again, and finally get mad and flutter about my head, scolding loudly to chivvy me away. So it often happened that one had nearer or happier or more illuminating glimpses of wild life in that small hour of rest than would be possible in a month of roaming the woods with gun or collecting-box.
Once as I was eating my lunch under the pines, meanwhile watching a den I had found to see what might come out of it, a crow sailed in on noiseless wings and lit so near me that I hardly dared wink for fear he would notice the motion. My first thought was that he was nest-robbing (a crow is very discreet about that business), but he appeared rather to be listening, cocking his head this way or that; and from a lazy hawing in the distance I concluded he was satisfying himself that his flock was occupied elsewhere and that he was quite alone. Presently he hitched along the branch on which he stood and glided off to the crotch of a pine-tree, where he began to uncover what was hidden under a mat of brown needles. The first thing he took out was a piece of glass, which sparkled with rainbow colors in a stray glint of sunshine. Then came a bit of quartz with more sparkles, a shell, a silvery buckle, and some other glistening objects which [[202]]I could not make out. He turned his treasures over and over, all the while croaking to himself in a pleased kind of way; then he put them all back, covered them again with needles, and slipped away without a sound. Having kept tame crows, I knew that they are forever stealing and hiding whatever bright objects they find about the house; and here in the pine woods was a thing to indicate that wild crows, perhaps all of them, have the same covetous habit.
Another day, a heavenly day when the budding woods were vocal and life stirred joyously in every thicket, I took a jews’-harp from my pocket and began to twang it idly. No, there was nothing premeditated in the act. I had been roving widely, following the winds or the bird-calls till a sunny opening invited me to rest, and had then fingered the music-maker with no more purpose than the poet’s boy, who “whistled as he went for want of thought.” The rhythmic, nasal twanging was a sound never heard in that place before or since, I think, and the first to come hurriedly to investigate was a bright-colored warbler, whose name I did not know; nor did I care to know it, feeling sure that by some note or sign he would presently suggest a name for himself, which would please me better than the barbarous jargon I might find in a bird-book. The alert little fellow [[203]]lit on a branch within three feet of my face, turning his head so as to view me with one eye or the other when I kept quiet, or chirping his indignation when I twanged the jews’-harp. Next came a jay, officious as the town constable; then more birds, half concealing their curiosity under gentle manners; and a squirrel who had no manners at all, scolding everybody and scurrying about in a fashion which seemed dangerous to his excited head.
As I watched this little assembly, which seemed to be asking, “What’s up? What’s up?” the meaning of it suddenly dawned on me like a surprising discovery. When I entered the opening I knew simply that birds or beasts would draw near if they found me quiet; before I left it I had found the explanation: that all the wood folk are intensely curious, as curious as so many human gossips, but without any of their malice; that by inner compulsion they are drawn to any strange sight or sound, as a crowd collects when a man cuts a caper or throws a fit or raises a whoop or looks up into the air, or does anything else out of the ordinary. When you appear in the quiet woods every bird or beast within sight or hearing is agog to know about you; they are like the Nantucket-Islanders, who named their one public hack the “Who’s Come?” Because you are a stranger, and [[204]]what you do is none of their business, they are all the more interested in you and your doings; you come to them with all the charm of the unknown, the unexpected; and they will gratify their curiosity, fearlessly and most pleasantly, so long as you know how to stimulate or play upon it and to hold still while enjoying it.
All that is natural enough, as natural as life; but it is not written in any book of natural history, and it came to me that day as a wonderful discovery. It suggested at once the right way to study birds or beasts, as living creatures; it has since led to many a fascinating glimpse of the wood-folk comedy, and to a lifelong pleasure which is too elusive to be set down in words. At the bottom of it, I suppose, is the fact that in every wild or natural creature is something, at once mysterious and familiar, which appeals powerfully to your interest or sympathy, as if you saw a faint shadow of your other self, or caught a fleeting memory of that vanished time when you lived in a child’s world of wonder and delight.
From the beginning, therefore, I met all birds and animals in a child’s impersonal way; which, strangely enough, ascribes personality to every living thing, yes, and honors it. These inquisitive little rangers of the wood or the berry-pasture, shy and exquisitely alert, were all individuals like [[205]]myself, each one seeking the joy of life in his own happy way. My only regret was that I was too clumsy, too obtrusive, too ignorant of the way of the wild, and so frightened many a timid bird or beast that I would gladly have known.
All this, too, is perfectly natural; the instinctive attitude of a child, as of an animal, is one of curiosity rather than of fear or destruction. If left to his natural instincts, a child meets every living creature with a mixture of shyness or timidity and bright interest; he becomes an enemy of the wild, learning to frighten and harry and kill, not from nature but from the evil example of his elders. I could prove that beyond a peradventure, I think, if this were the place; but there is no need of any man’s demonstration. Go yourself to the big woods at twilight, leaving custom behind you; go alone and unarmed; hear that rustle of leaves, that tread of soft feet which brings you to an instant halt; see that strange beast which glides out into the trail and turns to look at you with luminous eyes. Then quickly examine your own mental state, and you will know the truth of a man’s natural or instinctive attitude toward the mystery of life.
Unfortunately the wild birds and beasts near our home have learned that man is unnatural, a creature to be feared, and their curiosity has given [[206]]place to another motive. The young still display their natural bent freely; but the old have heard too many of our guns, have been too often disturbed by our meddlesome dogs or worthless cats, have suffered too much at the hands of outrageous egg-collectors or skin-collectors to be any longer drawn to us when we go afield. As you go farther away from civilization it becomes easier to play on the animals’ native curiosity; in the far North or the remote jungle, or wherever man is happily unknown, they still come fearlessly to investigate you, or to stand quiet, like the ptarmigan, watching with innocent eyes as you pass them by. In the intermediate regions, which are harried by sportsmen for a brief period in the autumn and then left to a long solitude, the animals are wild or tame according to season; and it has seemed to me, not always but on occasions, that in some subtle way they distinguish between man and man, taking alarm at the first sniff of a hunter, but stopping to show their interest in a harmless woods-rover.
This last is a mere theory, to be sure, and to some it may appear a fanciful one; but it rests, be assured, upon repeated experience. Thus, I came once at evening to a camp of hunters who were in a sorry plight. They were in a good deer country, and had counted largely on venison to supply [[207]]their table; but for more than a week they had tasted no meat, and they were very hungry. The deer were wild as hawks, they assured me. They had hunted every day; but because of the game’s wildness and the dry weather, which made the leaves rustle loudly underfoot, it had proved impossible to approach near enough for a shot—all of which made me think that, if you want to see game, you should leave your gun at home. I had met about a dozen deer that day; most of them were within easy range, and a few of them stood with questioning eyes while a man might have made ready his camera and taken a picture of them.
The very next morning, and within a mile of the hunters’ camp, I witnessed a familiar but fascinating display of deer nature. At sunrise I approached a bog, bordering a stream where a few good trout might be found, and on the edge of the opening stood a doe and her well-grown fawn, not twenty yards away. The fawn, a little buck with the nubs of his first antlers showing, threw up his head as I appeared, and in the same instant I dropped to the ground behind a mossy log. No whistle or sound of alarm followed the action; so I scraped a mat of moss from the log, put it on for a bonnet, and cautiously raised my head.
The old doe was still feeding; the buck stood [[208]]like a living statue, his whole attention fastened on the spot where I had disappeared. He had seen something, he knew not what, and was waiting for it to show itself again. When my bonnet appeared his eyes seemed to enlarge and flash as he caught the motion. Without changing his footing, for his surprise seemed to have rooted him in the ground, he began to sway his body to left or right, stretching his head high or dropping it low, taking a dozen graceful attitudes in order to view the queer bit of moss from different angles. Then he slowly raised a fore foot, put it down very gently, raised it again, stamped it down hard. Getting no response to his challenge, he sidled over to his mother, still keeping his eyes fastened on the log. At his touch or call she lifted her head, pointing her nose straight at me, as if he had somehow told her where to give heed.
It was a wonderful sight, the multicolored bog spread like a rug at the feet of the glorious October woods, and standing on the crimson fringe of it these two beautiful creatures, demanding with flashing eyes who the intruder might be. For a full minute, while I held motionless, the doe kept her eyes steadily on the log; then, “Nothing there, little buck; don’t worry,” she said in her own silent way, and went to feeding once more.
“But there is something; I saw it,” insisted the [[209]]little buck, nudging his mother by swinging his head against her side. That was the first and only time, in that quick swing, when he took his eyes from what attracted them. The doe looked a second time, saw nothing uncommon, and had turned to feed along the edge of the opening when the little buck recalled her in some way. “Can’t you see it, that white thing like a face under the moss?” he was saying. “There! it moved again!”
The mother, whose back was turned to me, twisted her head around as if to humor him, and to interest her I swayed the moss bonnet to and fro like a pendulum. At that she whirled, surprise written large on her, and I dropped my head, leaving her staring. When I looked again both deer were coming nearer, the mother ahead, the fawn holding back as if to say, “Careful now! It’s big, and it’s hiding just behind that log.” So they drew on warily, stopping to stamp a fore foot, and every time they challenged I gave the bonnet an answering wag. When they were so near that I knew they must soon distinguish my eyes from the moss, I sank out of sight. I was listening for their alarm-call or for the thud of their flying feet when a gray muzzle slid over the log, and I laid my hand fair on the mother’s cheek before she bounded away.
Now there was nothing strange or new in all [[210]]that; on the contrary, it was very much like what I had observed in other inquisitive deer. The only surprising part of the comedy was that the doe, though she had felt the touch of my hand and no doubt smelled the man behind it, stopped short after a few jumps and turned to stare at the log again. That she was still curious, still unsatisfied, was plain enough; what puzzles me to know is, whether she would have acted in the same way if one of the hungry hunters had been waiting in my shoes for the chance or moment to kill her.
[[211]]
IX
At Close Range
It is easy, much easier than you think, to get close to wild birds and beasts; for after you have met them a few times in the friendly, impersonal way I have tried to describe, two interesting traits appear: the first, that they do not see you clearly so long as you hold still; the second, that even their keen noses lose track of you after you have been quiet for a little time.
The eye is a weak point in all animals I have chanced to observe, which apparently depend less on sight than on any other sense—so far as safety goes, that is. In gratifying their curiosity they seem to be all eyes. At other times they will catch an abrupt or unusual motion quickly enough; [[212]]but they are strangely blind to any motionless object however large or small. Repeatedly when I have been sitting quiet, without concealment but with “neutral” clothes that harmonize with the soft woods colors, I have known deer, moose, caribou, bear, wolf, fox, lynx, otter, alert beasts of every kind, to approach within a few yards, giving no heed till a chirp or a slight motion called their attention. Then they would whirl upon me in astonishment, telling me by their attitude that till then they had not noticed or suspected me. Almost invariably at such times animals of the deer family would come a step nearer, their heads high, their eyes asking questions; but beasts of prey after one keen look would commonly drop their heads, as if I were of no consequence, and slyly circle me to get my wind. In either event success or a better view of the animal depended on just one condition, which was to hold absolutely still. So long as I met that condition, none of these wary beasts seemed to have any clear notion what they were looking at.
Occasionally, indeed, their lack of discernment almost passes belief. One winter day, while crossing a frozen lake in Ontario, I noticed a distant speck moving on the snow, and stopped in my tracks to watch it. The speck turned my way, drew near and changed into an otter, who came [[213]]rollicking along in his merry way, taking one or two quick jumps on his abbreviated legs and a long slide on his ample belly. As the air was dry and very still I had no fear of his nose, which is not as sensitive as many others (perhaps because of the peculiar valve or flap which closes it tight when an otter swims under water); but his eyes and other senses are extraordinarily good, and it seemed impossible that he should overlook a man standing erect on the snowy ice, as conspicuous as a fly in the milk. So I watched the approach with lively interest, wondering how Keeonekh would act in comparison with other members of his weasel family when he found himself near me, whether he would dart away like a fisher, or ignore me like a mink, or show his teeth at me like a little stoat.
On he came, confidently, as an otter travels, giving no heed to the enemy in his path, till he halted with a paw resting on one of my snow-shoes and began to wiggle his broad muzzle, as if he found something in the air which he did not like. For several moments he hesitated, sniffing here, listening there, looking sharply about the lake, into the near-by woods, everywhere except up into my face, and then went on as he had been heading, leaving a straight trail behind him. No man can tell what was in his head, and a very [[214]]intelligent head it is; but his action seemed to say that he did not see me when he passed literally under my nose. To him I was merely a stump, one of a dozen that projected here or there above the ice near the shore.
Such an incident would be merely freakish if it happened once; but it happens again and again, becoming almost common or typical, when a man stands motionless in the presence of other birds or beasts. Twice in the big woods has the Canada lynx, a dull beast in comparison with the otter, passed me with an unseeing stare in his wild eyes. And I have crouched in the snow on a treeless barren while a band of caribou filed past, so near that I could see the muscles ripple under their sleek skins and hear the click-click of their hoofs as they walked. The greater part of the herd did not even notice me; the rest threw a passing glance in my direction, one halting as if he had a moment’s doubt, and went on without a sign of recognition.
The eyes of birds are keener, as a rule; but it is still a question with me how much or how little they see of what is plain as a frog on a log to human vision. An owl has excellent eyes, which are at their best in the soft twilight; yet once as I sat quiet in the dusk a horned-owl swooped and struck at a motion of my head, not seeing the rest [[215]]of me, one must think, since he is quick to take alarm when a man appears. Another owl showed even less discernment in that he overlooked me, head and all, at a yard’s distance and tried to get his game out from under my feet.
A little dog had followed me that day, keeping out of sight till we were far from home, when he showed himself in a waggish way, as if he knew I would not have the heart to tie him up in that lonely place, as he deserved. All day long he had a vociferous and a “bully” time making a nuisance of himself, stirring up a hornets’ nest in every peaceful spot, chasing deer out of sight with a blithe rowdydow, swimming out to the raft on which I was fly-fishing, jumping in to get tangled in my landing-net when I reached for a big trout—in twenty ways showing that his business was to take care of me, though he was no dog of mine.
Late in the afternoon, as I rested beside the homeward trail, the little dog rambled off by himself, still looking for trouble, like all his breed. Presently there was a yelp, a scurry, a glimpse of broad wings swooping, and back came the trouble-seeker like a streak, his eyes saying, “Look at this thing I brought you!” and his ears flapping like a pair of wings to help him along. Over him hovered a big barred-owl, grim as fate, striking, missing, mounting, swooping again, brushing me with [[216]]his wings as he whirled around my head. Between my heels and the log on which I was sitting my protector wedged himself securely; the owl with a vicious snapping of his beak sailed up into an evergreen and made himself invisible. In a moment or two the little dog came out and was wagging his tail mightily over the adventure when the owl slanted down on noiseless wings and struck a double set of claws into him. Then I interfered, rising to my feet; and then, for the first time I think, the owl saw me as something other than a stump and vanished quickly in the spruce woods.
Hawks likewise have marvelous eyes for all things that move; but I began to question the quality of their vision one day when I was watching a deer, and a red-shouldered hawk lit so near me that I reached out a hand and caught him.
Another afternoon I came upon a goshawk, keenest of all the falcons, that had just killed a grouse in the tote-road I was following. He darted away as I came round a bend; but thinking he might soon return, for he is a bold and a persistent kind of pirate, I entered the woods at a swift walk, as if going away. Then I worked cautiously back to the road through a thicket, and waited on a log in deep shadow, some fifty yards above where the grouse lay undisturbed. [[217]]Luckily I had a rifle, an accurate little twenty-two, often carried as medicine for “vermin,” and I intended to kill the goshawk at the first chance. He is the viking among birds, and as such has a romantic interest; but wherever he appears he is a veritable pest, the most destructive of the hungry hordes that come down from the North to play havoc with our game.
For a long time the goshawk hovered about, sweeping on tireless wings high above the trees; but though I was quiet enough to deceive any bird or beast, he held warily aloof. Once he disappeared, remaining so long away that I was beginning to think he had wearied of the game of patience, when I heard an eery call and saw him wheeling over the road again. His absence became clear a little later when he perched on a blasted pine, far out of range, where he remained watching for fifteen or twenty minutes, his only motion being an occasional turning of the head. That he was hungry and bound to have his own was plain enough; the puzzle was why he did not come and get it, for it seemed highly improbable that he would notice a motionless figure at that distance. I think now that he was sailing high over my head when I re-entered the trail; that he knew where I was all the time, not because he saw me on the log, but because he did not see me [[218]]go away. Before sunset he headed off toward the mountain, going early to roost with all his kind.
Dawn found me back on the old road, as much to test the matter of vision as to put an end to the game-destroyer. As a precaution I had changed clothes, and now shifted position, avoiding the log because the wary bird would surely take a look at it before coming down. My stand was a weathered stump beside the road, against which I sat on a carpet of moss, without concealment of any kind. At a short distance lay the grouse, a poor crumpled thing, just as he had wilted under the hawk’s swoop.
Thus a half-hour or more passed comfortably. A gorgeous cock-partridge sauntered into the open, saw me when I nodded to him, and went slowly off with that graceful, balancing motion which a grouse affects when he is well satisfied with himself. Then, as the sun rose, there was a swift-moving shadow, a rustle of pinions; the goshawk swept down the road in front of me and lit beside his game. He was a handsome bandit, in full adult plumage; his gray breast was penciled in shadowy lines, while his back was a foggy blue, as if in his northern home he had caught the sheen of the heavens above and of rippling waters beneath his flight. His folded wings stood out squarely from his shoulders with an impression of power, [[219]]like an eagle’s. There was something noble in his poise, in his challenging eye, in the forward thrust of his fierce head; but the spell was broken at the first step. He moved awkwardly, unwillingly it seemed; his great curving talons interfered with his footing when he touched the earth.
This time, instead of a rifle, there was a trim shotgun across my knees. The hawk was mine whether he stood quiet or leaped into swift flight, and feeling sure of him now I watched awhile, wondering whether he would break up his game with his claws, as some owls do, or tear it to pieces with his hooked beak. For a moment he did neither, but stood splendidly alert over his kill. Once he turned his head completely around over either shoulder, sweeping his piercing glance over me, but seeing nothing unusual. Then he seized his game in one foot and struck his beak into the breast, making the feathers fly as he laid the delicate flesh open. When I found myself weakening, growing sentimental at the thought that it was his last meal, his last taste of freedom and the wild, I remembered the grouse and got quietly on my feet. Though busy with his feast, he caught the first shadow of a motion; I can still see the gleam in his wild eyes as he sprang aloft.
I thought him beyond all harm as he lay on his back, one outstretched wing among the feathers [[220]]of his victim; but he struck like a flash when I reached down for him carelessly. “Take that! and that! and remember me!” he said, driving his weapons up with astonishing force, a force that kills or paralyzes his game at the first grip. Four of his needle-pointed talons went to the bone, and the others were well buried in the flesh of my arm. The old viking had been some time with his ancestors before I pried him loose.
As for the sense of smell, on which most animals depend for accurate information, I have tried numerous experiments with deer, moose, bear and other creatures to learn how far they can wind a man, and how their powers compare one with another. There is no definite answer to the problem, so baffling are the conditions of observing these shy beasts; but you are in for some surprises, at least, when you attempt to solve it in the open. You will learn, for example, that when a gale is blowing the animals are more at sea than in a dead calm; or that in a gusty wind you can approach them about as easily from one side as from another. Such a wind rolls and eddies violently, rebounding from every hill or point or shore in such erratic fashion that the animals have no means of locating a danger when they catch a fleeting sniff of it. It is for this reason, undoubtedly, that all game is uncommonly [[221]]wild on a windy day: the constant motion of leaves or tossing boughs breeds confusion in their eyes, and the woodsy smells are so broken by cross-currents that they cannot be traced to their source. So it has happened more than once on a gusty day that a deer, catching my scent on the rebound, has whirled and rushed straight at me, producing the momentary illusion that he was charging.
With a steady but not strong wind blowing in their direction, I have seen deer become alarmed while I was yet a quarter-mile away; this on a lake, where there was nothing to interfere with the breeze or the scent. On the burnt lands or the open barrens I have seen bear and caribou throw up their heads and break away while I was even farther removed. In a light breeze the distance is much shorter, varying from fifty to two hundred yards, according to the amount of moisture in the air. On days that are still or very dry, or when the air is filled with smoke from a forest fire (the latter soon inflames all sensitive nostrils), the animals are at sea again, and depend less on their noses than on their eyes or ears.
Another surprising thing is, that the animal’s ability to detect you through his sense of smell is largely governed by your own activity or bodily condition. Thus, when a man is perspiring freely or moving quickly, his scent is stronger and [[222]]travels much wider than when he is sauntering about. But if a man sits absolutely quiet, a clean man especially, no animal can detect him beyond a few feet, I think, for the reason that a resting man is like a resting bird or beast in that he gives off very little body scent, which remains on the ground close about him instead of floating off on the air currents. Even when the trees are tossing in a gale there is little stir on the ground, not in the woods at least, and the closer you hold to Mother Earth the less likelihood is there of any beast smelling you.
All ground-nesting birds depend for their lives on this curious provision of nature. Were it not for the fact that practically no scent escapes while they are brooding their eggs, very few of them would live to bring forth a family in a wood nightly traversed by such keen-nosed enemies as the fox and the weasel. My old setter would wind a running grouse or quail at an incredible distance, and would follow him by picking his scent from the air; but I have taken that same dog on a leash near the same birds when they were brooding their eggs, and he could not or would not detect them unless he were brought within a few feet, or (a rare occurrence) unless a creeping ground-breeze blew directly from the nest into his face. [[223]]
The same provision guards animals, such as deer and caribou, which build no dens but leave their helpless young on the ground. Two or three times, after finding a fawn in the woods, I have tested his concealment by means of my young dog’s nose; and I may add that Rab will point a deer as stanchly as he points a grouse or woodcock, for he is still in the happy, irresponsible stage when everything that lives in the woods is game to him. So long as the fawn remains motionless where his mother hid him, the dog must be almost on top of him before pointing or showing any sign of game. But if the little fellow runs or even rises to his feet at our approach (fawns are apt to do this as they grow older), the dog seems to catch the scent after the first motion; he begins to cat-foot, his nose up as in following an air trail, and steadies to a point while he is still many yards away from where the fawn was hiding.
The nose of a wolf is keener than that of any dog I ever knew; yet I once trailed a pack of wolves that passed within sixteen measured feet of where two deer were sleeping in a hole in the snow. The wolves were hunting, too, for they killed and partially ate a buck a little farther on; but the trail said that they had passed close to these sleeping deer without detecting them. [[224]]
As for the man-scent, you may judge of that by the violent start or the headlong rush when an animal catches the first alarming whiff of it. If he passes quietly on his way, therefore, you may be reasonably sure he has not smelled you. To the latter conclusion I have been forced many times when I have been watching in the woods, sitting quiet for hours at a stretch, and a deer or bear or fox, or some other beast with nose as keen as a brier, has passed at a dozen yards’ distance without a sign to indicate that he was aware of me. Some of these animals came much nearer; so near, in fact, that I was scary of a closer approach until I had called their attention to what lay ahead of them.
So long as you are seen or suspected, you need have little fear of any wild beast (only the tame or half-tame are dangerous), but a brute that stumbles upon you in an unexpected place or moment is always a problem. Nine times out of ten he will fall all over himself in his haste to get away; but the tenth time he may fall upon you and give you a mauling. Moose, for example, are apt to strike a terrible blow with their fore feet, or to upset a canoe when the jack-light approaches them; not to attack, I think, at least not consciously, but in blind panic or to ward off a fancied enemy. So when I have watched from the shore of a lake [[225]]and a moose came swinging along without noticing me, I have risen to my feet or thrown my hat at the big brute when he was as near as I cared to have him. And more than once, after a tremendous start of surprise, he has come nearer with his hackles up as soon as he got over the first effect of my demonstration. Yet when I am roaming the woods that same brute will catch my scent at from two to five hundred yards, and rush away before I can get even a glimpse of him.
That the same surprising sense-limitation is upon deer and other game animals may be inferred from the following experience, which is typical of many others. I was perched among some cedar roots on the shore of a pond, one September day, watching a buck with the largest antlers I have ever seen on one of his kind. I had been some time quiet when he glided out to feed in a little bay, on my right; and my heart was with him in the wish that he might keep his noble crown through the hunting season, for his own pleasure and the adornment of the woods and the confusion of all head-hunters. There was no breeze; but a moistened finger told of a faint drift of air from the lake to the woods.
As I watched the buck, there came to my ears a crunching of gravel from the opposite direction, and two deer appeared on the point at my left, [[226]]heading briskly down into the bay. They passed between my outstretched feet and the water’s edge, where the strip of shore was perhaps three yards wide; then they turned in my direction, seeing or smelling nothing, went slowly up the bank and halted at the edge of the woods to the right and a little behind me, so close that I dared not move even my eyes to follow them. I measured the distance afterward, and found that from their hoof-marks to the cedar root against which I rested was less than eight feet. Imperceptibly I turned for another look, and saw both deer at attention, their heads luckily pointed away from me. They were regarding the big buck intently, as if to question him. They showed no alarm as yet; but they were plainly uneasy, searching the forest on all sides and at times turning to look over my head upon the breathless lake. Every nervous action said that they found something wrong in the air, some hint or taint or warning which they could not define. So they moved alertly into the woods, halting, listening, testing the air, using all their senses to locate a danger which they had passed and left behind them.
From such experiences one might reasonably conclude that, like the brooding grouse or the hidden fawn, a motionless man gives off so little scent that the keenest nose is at fault until it [[227]]comes almost within touching distance. If any further proof is needed, you may find it when you sleep in the open, and shy creatures draw near without any fear of you. By daylight deer, bear and moose are extremely timid; they rarely come within eyeshot of your camp, and they vanish at the first sniff which tells them that you have invaded their feeding-grounds. But when you are well asleep the same animals will pass boldly through your camp-yard; or they will awaken you, as they have many times awakened me, when you are tenting or sleeping under the stars by some outlying pond. If you lie quiet, content to listen, the invading animal will move freely here or there without concern; but no sooner do you begin to stir, however quietly, than he catches the warning scent, and a thudding of earth or a smashing of brush tells the rest of the story.
I recall one night, cloudy and very still, when I slept under my canoe on a strip of sand beside a wilderness lake. The movement of an animal near at hand awoke me. In the black darkness I could see nothing; but somehow I knew he was big, and aside from the crepitation of the sand, which I plainly heard, I seemed to feel the brute near me. For a moment there was a pause, a dead silence; then came a thump, a rattlety-bang; the canoe shook as something hit the lower end of [[228]]it, and the creature moved away. There was nothing to be done without eyes, so I snuggled the blanket closer and went to sleep again. In the morning there were the tracks of a moose, a bull as I judged from the shape of his feet, to say that he had come down the shore at a fast walk, halted, stepped over the stern of the canoe, and went on without hastening his pace.
That was odd enough; but more surprising were some tracks on the other side, between the bow of the canoe and the woods. Very faint and dainty tracks they were, as if a soft pad had touched the sand here and there in an uneven line; but they told of a fox who had come trotting along under the bank, and who had passed in the night without awakening me. That neither he nor the moose had smelled the sleeping man, or nothing alarming in him at least, is about as near to certainty as you will come in interpreting animal action.
There is another and not wholly unreasonable hypothesis which may help to explain such phenomena; namely, that it is not the scent of man but of excitement, anger, blood-lust or some other abnormal quality which alarms a wild animal. It sounds queer, I know, to say that anger can be smelled; but it is more than probable that anger or fierce excitement of any kind distils in the body [[229]]a kind of poison which is physical and sensible. Such excitement certainly weakens a man, clogging his system with the ashes of its hot fires; and there is no reason why it should not smell to earth as well as to high heaven.
You have but to open your eyes and expand your nostrils for some evidence of this matter. Bees when angered give off a pungent odor, which is so different from the ordinary smell of the hive that even your dull nose may detect the change of temper. The same is true of even cold-blooded reptiles. When you find a rattler or a black-snake squirming in the sun, you can smell him faintly at a few yards’ distance. Now stir him up with a pole, or pin him to the earth by pressing a forked stick with short prongs over his neck. As the snake becomes enraged he pours off a rank odor, very different from the musky smell that first attracted your notice, and it travels much wider, and clings to your clothes for an hour afterward. It is not only possible but very likely, therefore, that strong emotions affect the bodies of all creatures in a way perceptible to senses other than sight. If so, one man who is peaceable and another who is angry or highly excited may give off such different odors that a brute with sensitive nostrils may be merely curious about the one and properly afraid of the other. [[230]]
That wild animals instinctively fear the scent of humanity, as such, is probably not true. The notion arises, I think, from judging the natural animal by those we have made unnatural by abuse or persecution. Whenever man penetrates a wild region for the first time he finds, as a rule, that the animals have little fear of him, the tameness of wild game having been noted with surprise by almost every explorer. It has been noted also, but without surprise, by saints and ascetics who “for the greater glory of God” have adopted a life of solitude and meditation, and who have often found the birds or beasts about their hermitage to be quite fearless of them, and receptive of their kindness. Not till the abundant flocks and herds of a new region have been harried and decimated by senseless slaughter do the survivors begin to be fearful and unapproachable, as we unfortunately know them. Yet even now, no sooner do we drop our persecution and assume a rational or humane attitude than the wild ducks come to the boat landing of a winter hotel, deer feed at our haystacks, and bears come in broad daylight to comfort themselves at our garbage-cans. Such things could hardly be if the fear of man were an age-old or instinctive inheritance.
Nearer home, on any farm bordering the wilderness, you may see wild deer feeding quite tamely [[231]]about the edges of the cleared fields all summer. I recall one such farm in Maine, where the owner had fifteen acres of green oats waving over virgin soil—a glorious crop for me, but for him an occasion of lamentation. You could go through that field at any hour before six in the morning or after six at night and find a dozen deer with a moose or two making themselves at home. The owner’s cattle were kept out by a rail fence; but the moose simply leaned against the fence and went through, while the nimble deer sailed over the obstruction like grasshoppers. On all such farms the deer have the scent of man almost constantly in their nostrils, and they are simply watchful, running when you approach too near, but turning after a short flight to have a look at you. At times you may see them feeding when the scent of laborers or fishermen blows fairly over them. But when October comes, and the law is “off,” and wild-eyed hunters appear with guns in their hands and death in their thoughts, then the same deer quickly become as other and wilder creatures, rushing off in alarm at the first sniff of an enemy. The fact and the changed action are evident enough; the only interesting question is, To what extent does the smell of man change when he changes his peaceable ways?
Two or three times I have had opportunity to [[232]]test the effect of the human scent in another way, the first time being when I had the good luck to see a natural child and a natural animal together. The child, a baby girl just beginning to toddle, was making a journey by means of a comfortable Indian paukee on my back, and I had left her in an opening beside a portage trail while I went back to my canoe for a thing I had forgotten. While I was gone, three deer sauntered into the opening. They saw the baby, and were instantly as curious about her as so many gossips, a little spotted fawn especially. The baby saw them, and began creeping eagerly forward, calling or “crowing” as she went. The deer saw and heard and smelled her every moment; yet they walked around her with springy steps, now on this side, now on that, showing a world of curiosity in their bright eyes, but never a sign of fear.
From a distance I watched the lovely scene, kindling at the beauty of it, or feeling a bit anxious when I saw the sharp feet of the old doe a little too near the sunny head or the outstretched hands. Then an eddy of wind from the mountain got behind me and whirled over the deer. They caught the scent and were away with a wild alarm-call, their white flags flying, and the baby waving by-by as they vanished in the woods.
Quite naturally, therefore, when a sensitive [[233]]animal runs away from me, I find myself thinking that perhaps it is not the smell of humanity but of some evil trait or quality which frightens him. I first laid down this hypothesis after meeting a strange, childlike man, who had a passion for roaming by himself in the fields or woods. White men, after a puzzling acquaintance, would tap their heads or call him crazy; an Indian would look once in his eyes and say, very softly, “The Great Spirit has touched him.” He was all gentleness, without a thought or possibility of harm in his nature. He was also without fear, and perhaps for this reason he inspired no fear in others. When he appeared in the woods, singing to himself, the animals would watch him for a moment, and then go their ways quietly, as if they understood him. What would happen if a race of such men lived near the wood folk must be left to the imagination.
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