That day we retired into our dens for good. When I came out in the spring, Wooffa had not appeared, so I began to scratch away the stuff from the opening of her den, and as I did so I heard new noises inside; and all at once it dawned upon me that I was a father. Wooffa had brought me a little Kahwa and a little Wahka for my own.
[CHAPTER XI]
THE TROUBLES OF A FATHER
Every young cub, I imagine, gets into about the same amount of trouble and causes about the same worry and anxiety to his parents. I know that little Wahka took the earliest possible opportunity of getting himself stuck full of porcupine quills, and I do not suppose he made any more fuss when his mother pulled them out than I had done under similar circumstances five summers before. He nearly drowned himself by tumbling into the swiftest part of the stream that he could find, and when I laughed at him, shivering and whining, while his mother alternately licked and cuffed him on the head, I could not help thinking of my own misery when I went downhill into the snow.
As I looked at him, so preposterously small, and fluffy, and brown, it was, as I said at the beginning, hard to believe that I was ever quite like that. But I recognised myself in things that he did fifty times a day.
Kahwa, too, was exactly like the other little Kahwa, her aunt who was dead. Wahka would be sitting looking into the air at nothing, as cubs do, when she would steal up behind him and make a sudden grab at his hind-foot. I could remember just how it felt when her teeth caught hold. And he would roll over on his side, squealing, and smack her head until she let go. In a few minutes they were perfectly good friends again hunting squirrels up the trees, and standing down below with open mouths, waiting for them to drop in. I showed them how to play at pulling each other down the hill, and often of an afternoon I would sit with my own back against the tree, and invite them to pull me down. Then it was just as it used to be. Wahka came at me on one side, slowly and doggedly, almost in silence, but intensely in earnest, while on the other side Kahwa rushed on me like a little whirlwind, yapping and snarling, and scuffling all over me with her mouth wide open to grab anything that was within reach—the same ferocious, reckless little spitfire as I had known years ago. They were good children, I think. At all events, Wooffa and I were very proud of them, and she used to spend an astonishing amount of time licking them, and combing them, and smacking their little woolly heads.
Then we began to take them out and teach them how to find food, and what food to eat; that the easiest way to get at a lily bulb is not to scrabble at it with both paws straight down, but to scoop it out with one good scrape from the side; how to wipe off the top of an ant-hill at one smooth stroke; how to distinguish the wild-onion by its smell; and what the young shoots of the white camas look like. They soon learned not to pass any fair-sized stone without turning it over to look for the insects beneath, and also that it is useless to go on turning the same stone over and over again to keep looking at the ‘other side.’ Every fallen log had to be carefully inspected, the bark ripped off where it was rotten to get at the beetles and grubs and wood-lice underneath, and, if it were not too heavy, the log itself should be rolled over. We taught them that, in approaching a log or large stone, one should always sniff well first to see if there is a mouse or chipmunk underneath, and, if there be fresh scent, turn it over with one paw while holding the other ready to strike.
Mice bothered them dreadfully at first, dodging and zigzagging round their hind-legs, and keeping them hopping in the air, while they grabbed wildly at the little thing that was never where it ought to be when the paw came down to squash it. I shall never forget the first time that Wahka found a chipmunk by himself. He lifted a stone very cautiously, with his nose much too close to it, apparently expecting the chipmunk to run into his mouth, which it did not do; but as soon as the stone was lifted an inch it was out and on to Wahka’s nose, and over his head, down the middle of his back, and off into the wood. Wahka really never saw it at all, and was spinning round and round trying to get at the middle of his own back after the chipmunk was a hundred yards away.