A beak like cold steel driven deep into a dog’s flank just as he is engulfing a particularly delicious morsel, tends to make him choke. He does so in fact, and his feathered aggressor, striking hard now at his nose, snatches the lump of meat from him in the very act of flapping and floating off to safety in mid air. The dog, disgusted and disappointed beyond expression, sits down and howls maledictions on thieves in general and ravens in particular, to the remotest of their generations.
No one loves the raven. The hunter uses every art to catch him, but generally in vain. He will set out early of a winter’s morning with a supply of the most cunning traps he can contrive, and of the most tempting bait. Nothing is in sight as he leaves the camp. When he reaches the trapping grounds he sets a line of fox traps in all the most likely places, and carefully conceals his work with snow. But his every movement his been ’cutely watched, and as soon as his back is turned there comes an amused and contemptuous croak, as who should say: “What an ass! Do you suppose I’m not equal to that?”
The croaker spreads bold wings and sails over to the trap. Inserting his bill beneath it like a lever, he simply wrests it over and so springs it. In a trice he tweaks out the bait and bolts it. He makes a point of being there on the hunter’s return in the evening, just to hear his remarks. The bird has the audacity [[261]]indeed to sit there, close by, his head upon one side and a bored expression in his eye, as though he were reflecting on the pitiable amateurishness of the whole affair.
A Seagull Trap.
The skins of these birds are used for socks, which go over the fur stocking and inside the boot to prevent the cold striking through to the foot. The old hunters build a small igloo amid the broken ice of the sea shore, leaving a hole in the top. Pieces of blubber are scattered outside to attract the gulls, who alight by the side of the hole and are caught by their legs and dragged inside. The flesh is eaten.
“What!” he seems to say. “You call that a snare? And you think you’re eloquent about it now! Why, if it comes to that, I could make your hair stand on end with the force and aptness of my remarks!” [[262]]
With a hoarse, derisive note, he rises then and wheels off into the arctic empyrean.
The gulls, on the other hand, come well within the category of those creatures whom the Eskimo hunter can outwit. These birds are always much in demand, both as food and for the sake of their skins, which latter, turned inside out, make capital socks. The old men spend a good deal of their time in winter, catching gulls.
The hunter builds himself a small igloo among the rough ice by the seashore, and creeps inside. He proceeds to cut a hole in the top just big enough for the passage of a bird’s body, and round this opening, on the outside, he spreads attractive bits of seal meat and blubber. Then he prepares to wait. Presently a gull, sweeping by on the endless search for food, spies these dainties, and descrying no sign of foe or danger, swoops ever nearer and nearer, until at last it alights on top of the igloo for a brief second, seizes a morsel and wheels off again. Nothing untoward having occurred, the bird grows bolder, returns, and finally settles down to the feast outspread in that tempting spot.