Tale XIX: Wild Animals in the Water
Few persons know how much water there is in northern Canada. Even fewer people realize what enormous distances all animals have to swim in quest of food or to escape from danger.
Moose and Caribou will not hesitate to cross lakes several miles wide, and for no apparent reason but to change from one feeding ground to another. I have often seen them swim over four miles in the bitterest cold weather in the early spring or late in the fall when the snow was on the ground and the temperature at freezing point.
Black Bears will swim for miles; young cubs barely four months old keeping up with their mothers.
Lynx, although hating water like all the cat tribe, will cross the widest river when migrating.
Small animals, such as porcupines and squirrels, are often found swimming a mile or so from shore.
Two years ago when paddling down the Churchill River, we found a fat old porcupine leisurely crossing the river where it was over a mile wide. He was then about eight hundred yards from where he wanted to land and his speed must have averaged one mile per hour. He took absolutely no notice of us. At each stroke of his short foreleg he grunted loudly. Now and then he would lift his quills and shake them so as to get some of the weight of the water off his back.
Squirrels, I have noticed, always swim with the wind in their backs and invariably carry their tails straight up in the air out of the water. The Indians maintain that they only take to water when the wind is favorable as they know that their tail, acting like a sail, will help them along.