The Three Bears of Porcupine Ridge

by Jean M. Thompson

EVEN by day it was dark, lonely, and scary down in the Balsam Swamp, right under the frowning shadow of the mountain, and so wild that only an occasional cranberry picker ventured down into the marsh when the berries were ripe and red. Most people gave the lonely place a very wide berth, for it is easy to lose one’s way in such a wilderness. So only the little wild creatures of the forest really knew very much about the many interesting inhabitants who lived in the swamp.

The little black bears came scrambling and sliding down from Porcupine Ridge occasionally to feed upon crawfish and frogs, and to wallow in the ooze and mud of the marsh, and when the red deer were hard pressed, and the hounds were baying close behind them, they found a safe hiding-place among the densely growing balsams. Thousands of the pointed green spires of the pine arose from the swamp, for the trees which grew there never had been chopped down by lumbermen. And so, if you only knew, the swamp was not, after all, such a lonely place, for many there were who loved it, and found a very safe home right there in the marsh.

Just over in the great black birch lived a very old raccoon and his interesting family; so old was this raccoon that he actually had rheumatism, and was quite gray in the face. The old raccoon could tell you many an exciting experience he had met with down in the swamp; how he had been chased by dogs and men, nights, when he had gone out to forage, how, when the hounds were baying, close upon his scent, he had cunningly doubled upon his track, crossed a brook many times, and so thrown them completely off the scent, leaving them to flounder and whine in the soft mud of the marshes while he had shinned up the great black birch in safety, and lying out flat upon a limb, actually grinned at the foolish hounds, showing all his little sharp white teeth for joy as they bayed and howled beneath the wrong tree.

Just beneath the great birch, in a dense clump of balsams, a young mother doe had come with her little dappled, frightened fawn, when the hunters were after them, and the mother’s leg had been hurt. And the thick balsams and hemlocks hid them well, and the gray mosses and pine-needles beneath made a soft thick bed for them, and there they stayed until the danger was over and the doe was able to travel once more.

Up aloft, in the tall swaying tops of the pines, whole colonies of squirrels, red and gray, lived with the birds, for there was plenty of good food in the swamp: small, sweet beechnuts, and wild cherries with a puckery tang, and sweet nutty pits. Then there were bobcats, who snarled and howled and spit at each other in the dark nights, and an old Canadian lynx with sharp, tufted ears, and the ugliest disposition, for he snarled at everything which crossed his tracks.

Down beneath the low-lying branches of the spruces which swept the ground, forming regular tents, crept and grunted the stupid hedgehog family, grubbing for nuts and fresh water clams and crawfish, and bristling their sharp quills indignantly when any one presumed to disturb them; even at the gentle partridge family, who loved to cuddle in bunches beneath the green, tent-like branches, and then the brave little cock partridge would ruffle up his feathers and rush out upon the hedgehogs furiously with a “whir-r-r-r,” and a drumming commotion, which often startled the lazy hedgehogs out of their wits, so that they would roll over in sudden terror and bristle out their quills until they looked like a round ball of sharp needles. Well the hedgehog knew that no enemy would care to come very near him then, lest they get a snout full of sharp quills.

If the Balsam Swamp was a creepy, dark place in the daytime, at night it was ten times more fearsome, for then every wild dweller in the depths of the swamp awoke, and the place was filled with strange sounds. The first signal for all to begin stirring in the swamp was given by the frogs who began their evening chorus, “Zoom, zoom, kerchung, kerchung,” down in the bogs. Just as soon as the old raccoon heard the first “zoom, zoom” of the old giant bullfrog, he hastily began to scratch and claw himself up out of his hole in the black birch, where he had been sleeping all day long. Next, the snarling lynx glided like a shadow from his lair, and went, with soft, velvet-padded footsteps, skulking off between the thick balsams after his prey; and then something else happened. For when it was just about dark enough, from right in the very heart of the marsh the King of the swamp sent out his lonely, blood-curdling cry: “Who-ho-ho, who-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho.” It was the great white owl, the very oldest inhabitant of the swamps; a regular old hermit was this great snowy owl, and he lived all alone in a giant pine, which had long ago been blasted by lightning. The pine towered over all the spire-like tops of the balsams and spruces of the marsh; white and lonely looking it stretched its blasted, crooked limbs forth like the arms of some great forest giant.

The trunk of the old pine was hollow, and deep within the whitened depths of this tree lived the King. Alone, despised, and forsaken by his mate and all his kindred, because of his fierce, vindictive temper, and shunned by all his furry neighbors also, because the sly old King had a way of knowing just where to find young baby raccoons when their mother was away; and he would even carry off a very young lynx cub, if he chanced to be pressed by hunger, while nothing delighted him more than to steal like a shadow upon a covey of sleeping partridges and scatter then like leaves, taking his pick of the family, and when the angry little father bravely “whirr’d and whirr’d,” the King was not at all frightened; for nothing ever daunted him very much.

Silently, on his great, soft white wings, he swooped down upon any tender little furry creature that chanced to come in sight of his great, staring yellow eyes, and then with one cruel blow of his lance-like beak he killed his prey and carried it swiftly off in his great horny talons to the old blasted pine in the heart of the swamp.

Only once or twice had the King been caught napping. That was when he made a great mistake and tried to rob the farmer’s muskrat trap, and the steel teeth had caught and nipped off one of his great horny toes, so that ever after that time he always hated the very sight of a muskrat, and never troubled them. Another time the King had a hard fight with a great blue heron. He had tried to take away a fish from the heron for which it had been fishing a long, long time, and somehow the heron’s long, sharp bill had punctured one of the King’s great, yellow eyes. Since his encounter with the heron, the King’s sight had not been so keen, and sometimes, when weary, or on a long flight, he flew with sideway motion.