A STRANGE COMBAT.
WE are told that the old Romans greatly delighted in witnessing the combats of wild beasts, as well as gladiators, and that they used to ransack their whole broad empire for new and unheard-of animals—anything and everything that had fierceness and fight in it. Those vast amphitheatres, like the Coliseum, were built to gratify these rather sanguinary tastes in that direction.
But I doubt whether even the old Romans, with all their large experience, ever beheld so strange and grotesque a “set-to” (I’m pretty sure none of our American boys ever did) as the writer once stumbled upon, on the shores of one of our Northern Maine lakes—Lake Pennesseewassee, if you can pronounce that; it trips up editors sometimes.
I had been spending the day in the neighboring forest, hunting for a black squirrel I had seen there the evening before, having with me a great, red-shirted lumberman, named Ben—Ben Murch. And not finding our squirrel, we were making our way, towards evening, down through the thick alders which skirted the lake, to the shore, in the hope of getting a shot at an otter, or a mink, when all at once a great sound, a sort of quock, quock, accompanied by a great splashing of the water, came to our ears.
“Hush!” ejaculated Ben, clapping his hand to his ear (as his custom was), to catch the sound. “Hear that? Some sort of a fracas.”
And cautiously pushing through the dense copse, a very singular and comical spectacle met our eyes. For out some two or three rods from the muddy, grassy shore stood a tall, a very tall bird,—somewhere from four to five feet, I judged,—with long, thin, black legs, and an awkward body, slovenly clad in dull gray-blue plumage. The neck was as long as the legs, and the head small, and nearly bare, with a long, yellowish bill. Standing knee deep in the muddied water, it was, on the whole, about the most ungainly-looking fowl you can well imagine; while on a half-buried tree trunk, running out towards it into the water, crouched a wiry, black creature, of about average dog size, wriggling a long, restless tail, and apparently in the very act of springing at the long-legged biped in the water. Just now they were eying each other very intently; but from the splashed and bedraggled appearance of both, it was evident there had been recent hostilities, which, judging from the attitude of the combatants, were about to be renewed.
“Show!” exclaimed Ben, peering over my shoulder from behind. “An old hairn—ain’t it? Regular old pokey. Thought I’d heered that quock before. And that creatur’? Let’s see. Odd-looking chap. Wish he’d turn his head this way. Fisher—ain’t it? Looks like one. Should judge that’s a fisher-cat. What in the world got them at loggerheads, I wonder?”
By “hairn” Ben meant heron, the great blue heron of American waters—Ardea Herodias of the naturalists. And fisher, or fisher-cat, is the common name among hunters for Pennant’s marten, or the Mustela canadensis, a very fierce carnivorous animal, of the weasel family, growing from three to four feet in length, called also “the black cat.”
The fisher had doubtless been the assailant, though both had now that intent, tired-down air which marks a long fray. He had probably crept up from behind, while old long-shanks was quietly frogging along the shore.