Days in the Open

by Lathan A. Crandall

Just above the spot where the sucker turned about was a bend in the stream, and, passing that, you came upon a reach of shallow water running over the most beautiful bed of gravel in that whole section. It was here that the Bully was born, in the afternoon of the very day when destruction in the form of a predatory sucker came so near to him. Not that he appeared much like a bully in those first hours of conscious existence. In fact he looked more like an animated sliver with a sack suspended from underneath. He moved slowly about the stream in company with a hundred or so other little fellows until the sack had disappeared, and then it was easy to see that he had the advantage of all his comrades in the matter of size at least.

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When they began feeding upon the tiny forms of life found in the creek, the Bully soon gained a reputation for pugnaciousness. He did not hesitate to crowd his best friend away from a larva, and, before he was an inch long, he had bitten the left pectoral fin from one of his comrades who had ventured to resist the Bully’s attempt to rob him of a luscious little snail that he had discovered. One day when the Bully was yet a fingerling he joined battle with a chub twice his size, and, although he lost a part of his tail in the fray, and all the spectators thought he was whipped before the conflict had fairly begun, the thought of giving up never occurred to him, and he fought until his foe turned tail and fled into the river, a quarter of a mile away.

He was still living in the brook and had come to be almost four inches in length when he had an experience that shook his nerves somewhat. As he was resting beside a sod a little worm, all bent out of shape, but undeniably of the vermes family, came floating down the stream and he promptly grabbed it. Then came a sharp prick in his lip and something was pulling him out from under the sod. He braced and twisted and threshed about, but all in vain. Up he went out of the water, all the time doing fancy somersaults such as he had never attempted before. A moment later he struck the water with a splash and was soon safely hidden under the sod again. From his hiding-place he watched that worm come floating past him again and yet again, but he had learned caution. Now that he looked closely, he saw that the worm was fastened to the end of a string, and a little later he discovered that this string was tied to a stick which was in the possession of some creature that walked along the bank of the stream. Later on he learned that this strange animal was a small boy and that all members of this species were his enemies. Whether or not he ever realized that he owed his life to the fact that the boy had lost the last of his store hooks and was using a bent pin that day, no one knows.

All that summer the Bully lived in the brook; but when the days grew shorter and it began to freeze he moved with his friends into the river. That winter, when the river was frozen over except in shallow places where the current was swift, he had a narrow escape from a mink. He was talking with a trout much older and larger than himself about the comparative merits of worms and flies as food when a dark form darted towards them with open jaws, and, with one snap, his neighbour was captured and carried away. This foray caused great excitement in the trout colony, and the Bully learned for the first time of the existence of rapacious animals frequenting the banks of the river which made their living by capturing unwary trout.

The following summer he spent in exploring the river above the point where the brook joined it. Here there were hills crowding close in on either side of the river, and rapids were numerous and strong. Practice in rushing up the swift water brought his muscles to such a state of development that every now and then he would spend half an hour in jumping out of the water as far as he could. In fact he entered a jumping contest held under the auspices of the Hemlock Point Trout Club late in July, and carried off the first prize, an enormous blue-bottle fly. The judges on this occasion decided that his jump was two and a half times his own length which would probably make it some twelve inches. It was during this summer that he became expert in taking game on the wing. There is a tradition among the Oswegatchie trout that on one occasion, with a favourable start, he pulled down a “devil’s darning-needle” that was flying eighteen inches above the surface of the water and going at the rate of sixty miles an hour. N. B.—This is merely a tradition and is unsupported by trustworthy historical evidence.

The bullying tendencies waxed strong during this second summer. One dislikes to set it down, but it was about this time that he entered upon those cannibalistic practices in which he persisted for the rest of his life. One dark and chilly day, when all the millers and bugs and flies seemed to have gone into retreat, noon came and found him with a gnawing pain in his stomach which made him almost beside himself. Unfortunately when his hunger was at its height a little trout that was playing tag with some of its fellows happened to jostle him. In his anger the Bully snapped at and swallowed him. For a moment he was conscience-stricken, and then, when he realized what a delicious morsel he had taken to himself, he turned to and grabbed up fifteen other little members of his family without stopping to take breath. Henceforth he was looked upon as a social outcast by the best people in troutdom and his only intimacies were among the tough and lawless members of the community. Doubtless he brooded over this ostracism, and grew bitter as he realized the evident contempt in which he was held. At any rate, he waxed more and more cantankerous and disagreeable as he grew bigger and stronger.

A record of all the experiences through which the Bully passed would fill a volume. Only a few of the many can be set down in this brief biography, and those the more important ones. When he was three years old he was recognized as the boss of the river above the brook. For some time stories had come up stream of the prowess of a big trout living five miles down the stream in a mill pond. Confident in his ability to whip anything that wore fins, the Bully started down stream one May morning bent upon challenging this far-famed warrior to mortal combat. He had gone about one-half the distance and had stopped to rest for a little in a riffle, head up stream, when a strange looking fly came hopping and dancing across the water. It was many coloured, but that which attracted him most strongly was its body, which shone like burnished silver. Without the least hesitation, he made a grab for it only to feel that same stinging in the lip which followed upon his experience with the crooked worm when he was a little fellow. Fortunately for him he had touched the fly lightly, and, while he felt a pull for an instant, it was only in the skin of his lip, and that, for some strange reason, was torn. Fie started down stream vowing that never again would he snap at a fly with a silver body.