Frenzied Fiction

by Stephen Leacock

“Why don’t you stand up and walk?” I heard him call.

I turned half round and growled at him. Then I plunged deeper into the bush, growling as I went.

After ten minutes’ active crawling I found myself in the heart of the forest. It reached all about me on every side for hundreds of miles. All around me was the unbroken stillness of the woods. Not a sound reached my ear save the twittering of a squirrel, or squirl, in the branches high above my head or the far-distant call of a loon hovering over some woodland lake.

I judged that I had reached a spot suitable for my habitation.

My first care was to make a fire. Difficult though it might appear to the degenerate dweller of the city to do this, to the trained woodsman, such as I had now become, it is nothing. I selected a dry stick, rubbed it vigorously against my hind leg, and in a few moments it broke into a generous blaze. Half an hour later I was sitting beside a glowing fire of twigs discussing with great gusto an appetizing mess of boiled grass and fungi cooked in a hollow stone.

I ate my fill, not pausing till I was full, careless, as the natural man ever is, of the morrow. Then, stretched out upon the pine-needles at the foot of a great tree, I lay in drowsy contentment listening to the song of the birds, the hum of the myriad insects and the strident note of the squirrel high above me. At times I would give utterance to the soft answering call, known to every woodsman, that is part of the freemasonry of animal speech. As I lay thus, I would not have exchanged places with the pale dweller in the city for all the wealth in the world. Here I lay remote from the world, happy, full of grass, listening to the crooning of the birds.

But the mood of inaction and reflection cannot last, even with the lover of Nature. It was time to be up and doing. Much lay before me to be done before the setting of the sun should bring with it, as I fully expected it would, darkness. Before night fell I must build a house, make myself a suit of clothes, lay in a store of nuts, and in short prepare myself for the oncoming of winter, which, in the bush, may come on at any time in the summer.

I rose briskly from the ground to my hands and knees and set myself to the building of my house. The method that I intended to follow here was merely that which Nature has long since taught to the beaver and which, moreover, is known and practised by the gauchos of the pampas, by the googoos of Rhodesia and by many other tribes. I had but to select a suitable growth of trees and gnaw them down with my teeth, taking care so to gnaw them that each should fall into the place appointed for it in the building. The sides, once erected in this fashion, another row of trees, properly situated, is gnawed down to fall crosswise as the roof.

I set myself briskly to work and in half an hour had already the satisfaction of seeing my habitation rising into shape. I was still gnawing with unabated energy when I was interrupted by a low growling in the underbrush. With animal caution I shrank behind a tree, growling in return. I could see something moving in the bushes, evidently an animal of large size. From its snarl I judged it to be a bear. I could hear it moving nearer to me. It was about to attack me. A savage joy thrilled through me at the thought, while my union suit bristled with rage from head to foot as I emitted growl after growl of defiance. I bared my teeth to the gums, snarling, and lashed my flank with my hind foot. Eagerly I watched for the onrush of the bear. In savage combat who strikes first wins. It was my idea, as soon as the bear should appear, to bite off its front legs one after the other. This initial advantage once gained, I had no doubt of ultimate victory.

The brushes parted. I caught a glimpse of a long brown body and a hairy head. Then the creature reared up, breasting itself against a log, full in front of me. Great heavens! It was not a bear at all. It was a man.