A little brother to the bear, and other animal studies

by William J. Long

Once, to my knowledge, he fell like a fury upon the shoulders of a man who was hurrying homeward through the twilight, and who happened to stop unawares under the tree where Pekompf was watching the runways. The man had no idea that a wildcat was near, and he probably never would have known had he gone steadily on his way. As he told me afterwards, he felt a sudden alarm and stopped to listen. The moment he did so the savage creature above him thought himself discovered, and leaped to carry the war into Africa. There was a pounce, a screech, a ripping of cloth, a wild yell for help; then the answering shout and rush of two woodsmen with their axes. And that night Pekompf's skin was nailed to the barn-door to dry in the sun before being tanned and made up into a muff for the woodsman's little girl to warm her fingers withal in the bitter winter weather.

Where civilization has driven most of his fellows away, Pekompf is a shy, silent creature; but where the farms are scattered and the hillsides wild and wooded, he is bolder and more noisy than in the unpeopled wilderness. From the door of the charcoal-burner's hut in the Connecticut hills you may still hear him screeching and fighting with his fellows as the twilight falls, and the yowling uproar causes a colder chill in your back than anything you will ever hear in the wilderness. As you follow the trout stream, from which the charcoal man daily fills his kettle, you may find Pekompf stretched on a fallen log under the alders, glaring intently into the trout pool, waiting, waiting—for what?

It will take many seasons of watching to answer this natural question, which every one who is a follower of the wild things has asked himself a score of times. All the cats have but one form of patience, the patience of quiet waiting. Except when hunger-driven, their way of hunting is to watch beside the game paths or crouch upon a big limb above the place where their game comes down to drink. Sometimes they vary their programme by prowling blindly through the woods, singly or in pairs, trusting to luck to blunder upon their game; for they are wretched hunters. They rarely follow a trail, not simply because their noses are not keen—for in the snow, with a trail as plain as a deer path, they break away from it with reckless impatience, only to scare the game into a headlong dash for safety. Then they will crouch under a dwarf spruce and stare at the trail with round unblinking eyes, waiting for the frightened creatures to come back, or for other creatures to come by in the same footprints. Even in teaching her young a mother wildcat is full of snarling whims and tempers; but now let a turkey gobble far away in the woods, let Musquash dive into his den where she can see it, let but a woodmouse whisk out of sight into his hidden doorway,—and instantly patience returns to Pekompf. All the snarling ill-temper vanishes. She crouches and waits, and forgets all else. She may have just fed full on what she likes best, and so have no desire for food and no expectation of catching more; but she must still watch, as if to reassure herself that her eyes are not deceived and that Tookhees is really there under the mossy stone where she saw the scurry of his little legs and heard his frightened squeak as he disappeared.

But why should a cat watch at a trout pool, out of which nothing ever comes to reward his patience? That was a puzzling question for many years. I had seen Pekompf many times stretched on a log, or lying close to a great rock over the water, so intent on his watching that he heard not my cautious approach. Twice from my canoe I had seen Upweekis the lynx on the shore of a wilderness lake, crouched among the weather-worn roots of a stranded pine, his great paws almost touching the water, his eyes fixed with unblinking stare on the deep pool below. And once, when trout fishing on a wild river just opposite a great jam of logs and driftwood, I had stopped casting suddenly with an uncanny feeling of being watched by unseen eyes at my solitary sport.

It is always well to heed such a warning in the woods. I looked up and down quickly; but the river held no life above its hurrying flood. I searched the banks carefully and peered suspiciously into the woods behind me; but save for the dodging of a winter wren, who seems always to be looking for something that he has lost and that he does not want you to know about, the shores were wild and still as if just created. I whipped out my flies again. What was that, just beyond the little wavelet where my Silver Doctor had fallen? Something moved, curled, flipped and twisted nervously. It was a tail, the tip end that cannot be quiet. And there—an irrepressible chill trickled over me as I made out the outlines of a great gray beast stretched on a fallen log, and caught the gleam of his wild eyes fixed steadily upon me. Even as I saw the thing it vanished like a shadow of the woods. But what was the panther watching there before he watched me?

The answer came unexpectedly. It was in the Pemigewasset valley in midsummer. At daybreak I had come softly down the wood road to the trout pool and stopped to watch a mink dodging in and out along the shore. When he passed out of sight under some logs I waited quietly for other Wood Folk to show themselves. A slight movement on the end of a log—and there was Pekompf, so still that the eye could hardly find him, stretching a paw down cautiously and flipping it back with a peculiar inward sweep. Again he did it, and I saw the long curved claws, keen as fish-hooks, stretched wide out of their sheaths. He was fishing, spearing his prey with the patience of an Indian; and even as I made the discovery there was a flash of silver following the quick jerk of his paw, and Pekompf leaped to the shore and crouched over the fish that he had thrown out of the water.

So Pekompf watches the pools as he watches a squirrel's hole because he has seen game there and because he likes fish above everything else that the woods can furnish. But how often must he watch the big trout before he catches one? Sometimes, in the late twilight, the largest fish will move out of the pools and nose along the shore for food, their back fins showing out of the shallow water as they glide along. It may be that Pekompf sometimes catches them at this time, and so when he sees the gleam of a fish in the depths he crouches where he is for a while, following the irresistible impulse of all cats at the sight of game. Herein they differ from all other savage beasts, which, when not hungry, pay no attention whatever to smaller animals.

"A flash of silver following the quick jerk of his paw"