Watched by Wild Animals

by Enos A. Mills

It often happened that the breeze was favourable and I watched the passing processions from my camp. Near camp two otters met and turned aside and later I followed their trail to otter slide. Two woodchucks met by a boulder on which I sat quietly. They counter-marched in half war-like half circles. A pause, then with apparently friendly negotiations progressing, they discovered a coyote slipping toward them.

Many times through the years I waited for odd hours, and days, at a promising place on a trail a few miles from my cabin. The tracks along this showed it to be in constant use, but never have I seen a traveller pass along it. My being at many a meeting elsewhere was just a coincidence. Years of wilderness wanderings often made me almost by chance an uninvited guest—I was among those present.

Dull fellows well met were skunk and porcupine. These dull-brained but efficiently armed fellows are conceded the right-of-way by conventional wilderness folk. They blundered to head-on clash. Never before had this occurred. Each was surprised and wrathy. There was a gritting of teeth. Each pushed and became furious. Then the skunk received several quills in the side and in turn the porcupine a dash of skunk spray. Both abandoned the trail, sadder but not wiser.

Deer, bear, beavers, and wolves travel because they need to do so, or for the fun of it. Deer shift for miles from a summer to a winter range, travelling a regular migration route. A number of enemy wolves may follow this moving food supply. Beavers may be seeking a home in new scenes and a bear may be off on an adventure.

Wild life trails were worn by generation after generation of wild animals using the same route, the line of least resistance long followed from one territory to another. Trampling feet assisted by wind and water maintained a plain trail. Indian trails often were wild life trails. Stretches of buffalo trails on the plains and bear trails in Alaska were abandoned because so deeply worn and washed.

From a low cliff by a mountain stream I watched the wild life along the trail on the other side of the stream. The cañon was wooded but the trail immediately opposite was in the open.

Two packs of wolves met on the trail across the river. The leaders rushed to grips and a general mix-up was on. But this was surprisingly brief. There was an outburst of snarling and the gangs passed with but little loss of time and with but one limping.

Often as these travellers passed out of sight after a meeting I wondered what and when would be their next adventure. Around a turn of the trail within five minutes after the black bear met the skunk he clashed with a lion, so tracks by the trail showed.

I often wondered, too, what experience an animal had been through immediately before he trailed into my sight. The peevish lion was just from her fat, safe, happy kittens. One of the two cross grizzlies was from a row with another grizzly, while the other had been playing along the trail and was on good terms with himself and the world.

When skunk and mink—the more offensive of the smelly family—meet in contest, then smells to heaven their meeting. Driven into a corner, the mink will spread high-power musk in the only avenue of advance. He then is in an impregnable position—no fellow has nose sufficiently strong to pass. Or, if the mink place a guarding circle of musk around a prize kill this makes a time lock and will hold his prize for hours against all comers.