Belford's Magazine, Vol II, No. 10, March 1889

by Various

Yet mephitis has the air of seeming rather to like, than to seek to avoid, mankind. It is one of his curious traits. You cannot certainly tell whether he really does; but, if he does not, it is strange with what frequency he is encountered, exhibiting on such occasions a singular confidence, not in any case reciprocated. It is certain that he has crossed a railroad bridge to visit the bustling metropolis of the Missouri Valley, and been seen complacently ambling the streets there at midnight. If, in crossing a "divide" or threading a reedy creek-bottom, there is seen before you one of those imposing plumes before referred to, standing erect above the long grass, without any perceptible attachment, and moving slowly along, it will be prudent not to permit any curiosity concerning the bearer of it to tempt you to a nearer acquaintance. Indeed, should he discover you, in turn, it will be rather out of the usual line of his conduct if he does not at once come amiably ambling in your direction, intent upon making your personal acquaintance, or, as is more likely, of finding out if there is anything about you which he considers good to eat. There is something both amusing and fearful in this desire to make acquaintances regardless of all the forms of introduction and the usages of society; and no other animal possesses the trait. No one, so far as known, has ever waited to see what special line of conduct he would pursue after he came. The chances are that he would stay as long as he had leisure, and then go without offence; yet no one can foretell his possible caprices. He might conclude to spend the afternoon with one; and, as he is known to be a pivotal animal, reversing himself, upon suspicion arising in his mind, with a celerity perhaps not fully appreciated until afterwards, one might find it at least irksome to remain so long idle and quite still. I knew a soldier once who had such a visit while walking his guard-beat. He did not dare to fire his gun in time, for fear of the serious accusation of wishing to kill game while on duty. He could not scare away the cat, and dared not leave his beat. He stood stock-still for an hour or two, and then called the corporal of the guard in a subdued and whining voice. When that non-commissioned autocrat at last appeared, he considered twenty yards a convenient distance for communication, and declined to come any nearer. Mephitis was at the moment engaged in stroking his sides against the sentinel's trousers, while his host did not dare to either move or speak in a voice the corporal could hear. The latter went away and obtained permission from the officer of the day to shoot something, and returned with four more armed men. The visitor here saw an opportunity to make new acquaintances, and started to meet the latest arrivals half way. They all ran, while the sentinel took the opportunity to walk off in a direction not included in his instructions. The animal was finally partially killed by a volley at forty paces, leaving a pungent reminiscence that did not depart during the remainder of the summer, and necessitated some new arrangements for the lines of defence about the post.

In more recent times an entire company of hunters, with a dog to every man, have been driven from the field repeatedly by the persistency of the innocent gaze, or the foolish confidence of the approach, of this extraordinary bore; for one can't shoot him if he is looking—not because one can't, but because, if one did, a souvenir would be left, at least among the dogs, that would linger with them until the natural time for the shedding of hair should come again, and deprive their owners of the pleasure of their company for an indefinite period. And, in addition, the people with whom one might wish to stop for the night might make remarks accompanied by nasal contortions not usual in ordinary conversation, and would be likely to suggest the barn, or otherwheres out-of-doors, as being good and refreshing places to spend the night in. Even the hunter's own family will prove inhospitable to the verge of cruelty under such circumstances, and conduct unheard of before will become perfectly proper on the part of one's best friends. Such discomfitures have happened ere now to most sportsmen in Western preserves, and for some reason a crowning misfortune of the kind is apt to be considered a joke ever afterwards.

But an uncontrollable desire for human intimacy is only one item of the oddities of this little beast. As a vagabond of the wilderness he was like other vagabonds there, and got on well enough without any human association. Carnivorous entirely, he cannot be accused of looking for the well-filled granary of later times; he invades no cabbage-patch, and is entirely guiltless of succulent sweet potatoes and milky roasting-ears. His presence in increased numbers among the fields and farms of civilization is accounted for by the fact that he has simply declined to move on. He will not retire to the wilds of the pan-handle or the neutral strip, driven thither by the too copious outpour of civilization. His conduct indicates the just conclusion that he can endure all the vicissitudes of the school-house States if they can, in turn, endure him. Doubly armed, this autocrat of the prairies holds in unique dignity the quality of absolute fearlessness, and, aside from any hydrophobic endowments, is now the chiefest terror of the free and boundless West.

A figure-head seems to be necessary in the conduct of all the larger affairs of life. From this idea have come all the griffins, and the sphinxes, and the St. Georges and Dragons, the hideous caryatids, gnomes, gorgons, chimeras dire, the eyes of Chinese junks, and the wooden cherubs that until later years looked over the waste of unknown waters beneath the bows of every ship that sailed. On the seals of one-half of all the Western States and territories mephitis might figure as the chiefest animal of their natural fauna, and for him might the buffalo and the bear be properly discarded. They are gone: he remains and impresses himself upon the community unmistakably. But mottoes and great seals and epitaphs are things not expected to be governed in their making by anything like actual fact.

It will be conceded that no other beast approaches this in the particulars of his armament. So confident of his resources is he that the idea that he can be worsted never enters his elongated cranium. Though he never uses his phenomenal powers except upon what he considers an emergency, these supposed emergencies arise quite too frequently for the general comfort and piety of his neighborhood. It is said that the little western church never thrives greatly in a neighborhood that is for some reason peculiarly infested by him. Yet it is a remarkable fact that when he visits the farmer's hen-roost, which he often does, the owner, if he came from some timbered country, nearly always lays the blame upon the much-maligned "coon;" meaning, of course, that pad-footed and ring-tailed creature who is credited with a slyness verging upon intellect, but who never visited a prairie in his life. He does this because there is no penetrating and abiding savor left behind—except in case of accident—in any of these maraudings. It is a mere piece of cunning. He wishes to come again some other time. The victims of his appetite, comprising everything smaller than himself in that region, are never subjected to his caudal essences, and a good reason for this would be that he wishes to eat them himself. Those who know mephitis well, and also know this trait of his character, are impressed anew by the mercifulness of some of nature's instincts and freaks.

And here arises the question of a certain occult power apparently possessed by this creature alone. It seems to be established by undisputed testimony that he is the most skilful packer of meats, with the least trouble and expense, known in the annals of the art preservative. His hollow logs have been repeatedly split in his absence, and found full of dead fowls, killed in a neighboring farm-yard, squeezed in closely side by side for future use, and all untainted and fresh. How does he accomplish this? There are evidently various things to learn from the field of natural history which might be turned to the uses of man. To say nothing of the value of the patent, this would be a very useful household recipe if known. The inference is that there may be an occult quality in his strange and characteristic endowment not heretofore suspected.

Our western friend has an extensive family relationship. There are at least six varieties of him in various latitudes. No one branch of the family is believed to have any fellowship with any other branch, probably for weighty and sufficient family reasons; though to the ordinary human senses there is so little difference in the sachet that one cannot see reason for being so particular among themselves. Two of him are very common west of the Missouri—one as big as a poodle and variously striped, and the other of a smaller and more concentrated variety, more active also in his habits. It is the bigger of these two who goes about waving his plume and seeking new acquaintances, as though he contemplated going into the Bohemian oats business among the farmers, and who courts admiration while he spreads consternation. It is he who lies in ambush in the corn-shocks, in the early days of the yellow autumn, apparently for the express purpose, through the media of the farmer's boys and the district school, of informing the whole neighborhood, and especially the little girls, that he is still about. It is he who is borne oftenest, in spirit and essence, through the open windows of the settler's house, causing the mistress thereof to wish, and to often say that she wishes, that she had never come away from Ohio, or wherever she used to reside, and where she declares mephitis to have been a nuisance utterly unknown. It is he who lopes innocently along the railroad track, declining to retire, meeting death without a murmur, knowing, perhaps, that his dire revenge will follow the fleeting train, whose wheels have murdered him, for many a mile, even across the plains and into mountain passes, and perhaps return with it and add a little something, a piquant mite, to the loud odors of the Missouri River terminus. The passengers all know he has been killed, and know it for the remainder of the journey, or else they wonder at the pungency of the atmosphere apparently pervading a stretch of country as big as all New England, and which they will talk about as one of the western drawbacks after they have returned home. It is he who rather rejoices than otherwise at the number and ferocity of the farmer's dogs, and who is indirectly blessed if they have the habit of going into the house and lying under the beds. Then indeed may he fulfil his mission. When they at first, and through inexperience, attack him, he routs them all without excitement or anger on his part, causes an armed domestic investigation of them, and their banishment without extradition, and through them impresses himself upon the unappreciative western understanding.

The little one, the other common variety, is perhaps more rarely seen, but he is at least frequently suspected. Not much bigger than a kitten, and almost or quite black, he lacks the look of innocence and the appearance of docility so falsely worn by his relative. Once they both hibernated: at least the books say so. Now, as one of the changes wrought by the settlement of the country, this small one becomes a frequent all-the-year tenant of the farmer's out-buildings. His battery is quite as formidable as the other's is, and may, indeed, be considered as an improvement in the way of rapidity and concentration, like the Gatling gun. The barn is not always his residence; and without inquiring if it is entirely convenient he frequently takes up his domicile in or under the dwelling. A mephitis in the cellar is one of the Kansas things. He does not, while there, produce any of the mysterious noises that indicate ghosts. The house is known not to be haunted, for everybody understands quite well who is there. But the owner must not attempt ejectment. Peace and quiet he insists upon. You must bar him out some time when he is absent on business, wait until spring, or move to another house. It is the middle one of these remedies that is usually adopted, if any. While he stays, there are no joint occupants with him in the place he has pre-empted. He will catch mice like a cat, and the joy of his life is the breaking of a rat's back with one nip behind the head. He has a most formidable array of teeth, and eschews vegetables entirely. He is the foe of all the little animals who live in walls or basements, or in holes or under stones. Even the weazel, that slim incarnation of predatory instinct, declines to enter into competition with him, and goes when he comes, or comes when the other goes. One of them is suspected, from this fact, of eating the other, and mankind, with the only form of disinterestedness of which we can justly boast, does not care which of the two it is.

The biggest one of the mephitis family lives in Texas, and that empire is not disposed to boast itself withal on that account. He came there from Mexico, possibly on account of his being preposterously considered a table luxury in the latter country. But it is a land of which such eccentricities may be expected. They eat the ground-lizard there,—a variety of the celebrated "Gila monster,"—and some other creatures to our pampered notions not less repulsive; though they seem to avoid, by peculiar management, that quadrennial banquet of crow which constitutes our great national dish. Mephitis is, however, purely American wherever he comes from. Europe knows him not in quadrupedal form. He is one of the things got by discovery, though he may not take rank, perhaps, with the gigantic grass we call "corn," or with tobacco, or even with ginseng or sassafras, or the host of acquisitions which would distinguish us as a people even if we had him not at all. And now that we have got him, we must apparently cherish him; and with our usual thrift we have made many attempts to utilize him. He often appears in polite society under the name of sable, or some such thing, and no odor betrays him. Of the strange fluid, which is one of the most wonderful natural defences ever bestowed upon an animal, pharmacy has concocted a medicine, and the perfumers an odor for the toilet. Yet it must be admitted that one of his chiefest uses, so far, is to furnish the western editor with a synonym and comparative, and a telling epithet in time of trouble. He often caps the climax of a controversial sentence as long as one's arm, and if you take the county paper you need not be long in discovering that while we scientific may call him mephitis, he hath another name not often heard by ears polite, or frequently mentioned in the society in which the reader moves.

That other vagabond who may be considered as being vaguely referred to at the head of this chapter has no possible kinship with him who has been desultorily sketched. Yet the two stand together in my mind in a kind of vague relationship of character. I was not surprised at my first sight of a coyote, but he grew greatly upon me afterwards. It was his voice. He is but a degenerate wolf,—the weakest of his family save in the one respect referred to,—but he is an old and persistent acquaintance of every frontiersman, ten times as numerous and prominent in every recollection of that far time of loneliness and silence as any other beast.