A little brother to the bear, and other animal studies

by William J. Long

It may be, also, that Pekompf's cunning is deeper than this. Old Noel, a Micmac hunter, tells me that both wildcat and lynx, whose cunning is generally the cunning of stupidity, have discovered a remarkable way of catching fish. They will lie with their heads close to the water, their paws curved for a quick grab, their eyes half shut to deceive the fish, and their whiskers just touching and playing with the surface. Their general color blends with that of their surroundings and hides them perfectly. The trout, noticing the slight crinkling of the water where the long whiskers touch it, but not separating the crouching animal from the log or rock on which he rests, rise to the surface, as is their wont when feeding, and are snapped out by a lightning sweep of the paws.

Whether this be so or not I am not sure. The raccoon undoubtedly catches crabs and little fish in this way; and I have sometimes surprised cats—both wildcats and Canada lynxes, as well as domestic tabbies—with their heads down close to the water, so still that they seemed part of the log or rock on which they crouched. Once I tried for five minutes to make a guide see a big lynx that was lying on a root in plain sight within thirty yards of our canoe, while the guide assured me in a whisper that he could see perfectly and that it was only a stump. Then, hearing us, the lynx rose, stared, and leaped for the brush.

Such hiding would easily deceive even a trout, for I have often taken my position at the edge of a jam and after lying perfectly still for ten minutes have seen the wary fish rise from under the logs to investigate a straw or twig that I held in my fingers and with which I touched the water here and there, like an insect at play.

So Old Noel is probably right when he says that Pekompf fishes with his whiskers, for the habits of both fish and cats seem to carry out his observations.

But deeper than his cunning is Pekompf's inborn suspicion and his insane fury at being opposed or cornered. The trappers catch him, as they catch his big cousin the lucivee, by setting a snare in the rabbit paths that he nightly follows. Opposite the noose and attached to the other end of the cord is a pole, which jumps after the cat as he starts forward with the loop about his neck. Were it a fox, now, he would back away out of the snare, or lie still and cut the cord with his teeth and so escape. But, like all cats when trapped, Pekompf flies into a blind fury. He screeches at the unoffending stick, claws it, battles with it, and literally chokes himself in his rage. Or, if he be an old cat and his cunning a bit deeper, he will go off cautiously and climb the biggest tree he can find, with the uncomfortable thing that he is tied to dangling and clattering behind him. When near the top he will leave the stick hanging on one side of a limb while he cunningly climbs down the other, thinking thus to fool his dumb enemy and leave him behind. One of two things always happens. Either the stick catches in the crotch and Pekompf hangs himself on his own gibbet, or else it comes over with a sudden jerk and falls to the ground, pulling Pekompf with it and generally killing him in the fall.

It is a cruel, brutal kind of device at best, and fortunately for the cat tribe has almost vanished from the northern woods, except in the far Northwest, where the half-breeds still use it for lynx successfully. But as a study of the way in which trappers seize upon some peculiarity of an animal and use it for his destruction, it has no equal.

That Pekompf's cunning is of the cat kind, suspicious without being crafty or intelligent like that of the fox or wolf, is curiously shown by a habit which both lynx and wildcat have in common, namely, that of carrying anything they steal to the top of some lofty evergreen to devour it. When they catch a rabbit or fish fairly themselves, they generally eat it on the spot; but when they steal the same animal from snare or cache, or from some smaller hunter, the cat suspicion returns—together with some dim sense of wrongdoing, which all animals feel more or less—and they make off with the booty and eat it greedily where they think no one will ever find them.

Once, when watching for days under a fish-hawk's nest to see the animals that came in shyly to eat the scraps that the little fish-hawks cast out when their hunger was satisfied, this cat habit was strikingly manifest. Other animals would come in and quietly eat what they found and slip away again; but the cats would seize on a morsel with flashing eyes, as if defying all law and order, and would either growl horribly as they ate or else would slink away guiltily and, as I found out by following, would climb the biggest tree at hand and eat the morsel in the highest crotch that gave a foothold. And once, on the Maine coast in November, I saw a fierce battle in the tree-tops where a wildcat crouched, snarling like twenty fiends, while a big eagle whirled and swooped over him, trying to take away the game that Pekompf had stolen.

By far the most curious bit of Pekompf's cunning came under my eyes, one summer, a few years ago. Until recently I had supposed it to be a unique discovery; but last summer a friend, who goes to Newfoundland every year for the salmon fishing, had a similar experience with a Canada lynx, which emphasizes the tendency of all cats to seek the tree-tops with anything that they have stolen; though curiously enough I have never found any trace of it with game that they had caught honestly themselves. It was in Nova Scotia, where I was trout fishing for a little season, and where I had no idea of meeting Pekompf, for the winters are severe there and the wildcat is supposed to leave such places to his more powerful and longer-legged cousin, the lynx, whose feet are bigger than his and better padded for walking on the snow. Even in the southern Berkshires you may follow Pekompf's trail and see where he makes heavy weather of it, floundering belly-deep like a domestic tabby through the soft drifts in his hungry search for grouse and rabbits, and lying down in despair at last to wait till the snow settles. But to my surprise Pekompf was there, bigger, fiercer, and more cunning than I had ever seen him; though I did not discover this till after a long search.

I had fished from dawn till almost six o'clock, one morning, and had taken two good trout, which were all that the stream promised to yield for the day. Then I thought of a little pond in the woods over the mountain, which looked trouty when I had discovered it and which, so far as I knew, had never been fished with a fly. Led more by the fun of exploring than by the expectation of fish, I started to try the new waters.