The pickerel has a large mouth and a multitude of teeth on both upper and lower jaws, in the roof of his mouth, also on tongue and palate. These teeth are long and sharp and they slope inward; some of them also bend down to allow objects to pass into the throat, but they effectually prevent ejecting anything that has been swallowed. So, Grandad Pickerel, if he had regrets after swallowing a member of his own family, found it impossible to throw him up, as the Good Book says the whale cast up Jonah.
Bige and I found we could not separate the two fishes without first performing a surgical operation. In doing so, we also released a shiner which had been swallowed with Bige's trolling hook and was wedged in the throat alongside the smaller pickerel. This was the most amazing part of the incident, and proves the gluttonous character of the pickerel and his complete inability to appreciate the limits of his own capacity.
We found upon examination that the process of digestion was operating, and that the head of the smaller pickerel was nearly dissolved in the stomach of the larger fish. Another hour, and grandson would have slipped down an inch and the process of digestion would have been repeated upon another section.
A white man cuts his fire wood the proper length to use in his fireplace. An Indian puts one end of a long branch or sapling into his fire, and when it has burned off, he moves the stick in and burns off another section, thus conserving labor.
Our pickerel was digesting his food Indian fashion, or, so to speak, on the installment plan.
BIGE and I were hunting. I was placed on a "runway" on the bank of a small stream which was the outlet of Minnow Pond. Bige had gone around to the opposite side of the mountain and planned to come up over the top and follow the deer path which ran down the mountain side, into and through an old log-road which had not been used for lumber operations for fifteen years, and which was now overgrown with bushes and young spruce and balsam trees. This log-road followed the windings of the brook down the valley to where it emptied into the lake, and where the logs were dumped into the water and floated down to the mill.
Many years ago, when it was the practice to hunt with dogs, the deer acquired the habit of running to the nearest water, where, by wading or swimming they could throw the dogs off the scent. Thus all deer trails or runways lead, sooner or later, to a stream, a pond or lake, where the deer has a chance of evading pursuit of his natural enemy. Now, while the game laws forbid hunting deer with dogs, and while dogs are not allowed to enter forests inhabited by deer, yet the inherited instinct of self-preservation of the latter persists, and whenever alarmed by the appearance of man, who in the mind of a deer is still associated with his other enemy — the dog, he immediately starts down his trail to the nearest water.
It was Bige's hope to "scare up" a deer on the other side of the mountain and drive him down the runway past my watch ground, while it was my job to shoot him as he passed by.
The fallen tree on which I sat was on the bank of the brook and about ten feet above the water, while in the opposite direction, through an open space in the bushes, I had a clear view of the runway about twenty yards distant.