That is a good armchair argument, but a very doubtful explanation of the fox action, since it calls for more reasoning power than we commonly find [[167]]in a brute. Remember that this male fox was far away on his own affairs when his mate was captured, and he had no means of knowing where she had gone: he simply missed her from her accustomed haunts, and sought till he found her. Remember also that a male fox is never allowed to come near his mate’s den; that when she is heavy with young, as this vixen was when caught, he may join her of an evening and hunt for her, or bring her food that he has killed, but always, I think, at a distance from the place where she intends to bring forth her cubs. That the male, after missing his mate and yapping for her in vain through the woods, should at last seek her at the forbidden den, and there find the scent of men and conclude that they had taken her away; that he should follow the scent of a wagon-wheel over five miles of country roads, or else explore all the neighboring villages till he found what he sought; that he should then lay out a different trail, more secret and more reasonably safe, for his second visit,—all this is to me more ingenious, more unnatural and more incredible than that his mate should silently call him, as his mother had probably many times called him from the den when he was a cub, and that he should feel and answer her summons.
Such reasoning is purely speculative, but there [[168]]are certain facts which we must keep in mind if we are to explain the matter. The first, a general fact which is open to observation, is that it is fox nature at certain seasons to come to a captive; for what reason or with what self-forgetful motive it would be hard to say. I have known mother foxes and mother wolves to come where their cubs were imprisoned by men. I have heard a straight record of one male wolf that appeared at a ranch the second night after his wounded mate was captured by the ranchman. And I have seen a male fox come to the rescue of a female when she was driven by dogs and too heavy with young to make a long run, and wait beside her trail till the dogs appeared, and then lead them off after him while she made her escape. The second fact, which may imply some power of silent communication, is that when snow fell about the pen of this captive fox, a few nights after she was taken, there were the tracks to show that her mate already knew where she was. That he found and came to her in the midst of his enemies may be quite as significant as how he found her, by way of giving a new direction or interest to our skin-and-bones study of natural history.
In this first example the fox was perhaps moved by the mating impulse, which sharpened his wit and encouraged his will; but at times a wild creature [[169]]may seek and find his mate when no such “call of the blood” urges him, when he comes with his life in his hand in response to some finer or nobler motive, something perhaps akin to loyalty, which is the sum of all virtues. Witness the following:
A friend of mine was hunting one October day when his shot wing-tipped a quail, apparently the old female of the flock, which his dog caught and brought to him almost uninjured. What to do was the next question. It is easy, because thoughtless, to cut down a bird in swift flight; but when the little thing nestles down in your hand or tries to hide under your fingers; when you can feel its rapid heart-beat, and its eyes are big and wondrous bright,—well, then some hunters bite the head, and some wring the neck, and some would for the moment as lief be shot as to do either. So to avoid the difficulty my friend put the quail carefully away in a pocket of his hunting-coat, and brought her home with some vague idea of taming her, and some dream of trapping a mate in the spring and perhaps raising some little bob-whites of his own. At night he put the captive into a coop just inside the barn window, which was open wide enough to admit air but not a prowling cat; for he was already beginning to learn that a quail is a most lovable little pet, and [[170]]he was bound that she should not again be hurt or frightened.
Before sunrise next morning he heard low, eager whistlings in the yard; and there was another quail, a male bob-white, where never one was seen before nor since. He was perched warily on the window-sill of the barn, looking in at his captive mate, telling her in the softest of quail tones (for there were enemies all about) that he had found her and was glad; while from within the barn came a soft piping and gurgling which seemed to speak welcome and reassurance. The opening of a door frightened him; he buzzed away to the orchard, and presently from an apple-tree came the exquisite quoi-lee! quoi-lee! the assembly-call of the bob-white family.
The first quail had been caught miles away from the man’s house; there were no other birds of her own kind within hearing distance, so far as my friend and his dog ever discovered, and it was not the mating-time, when quail are questing widely. By a process of elimination, therefore, one reaches the conclusion that the male bird was, in all probability, the father of the flock over which the captive presided; that he had helped to raise the young birds, as quail commonly do; that he had stood by his family all summer in loyal bob-white fashion, and that he went out to seek [[171]]his vanished mate when she failed to answer his calling.
All that seems clear enough, and in perfect accord with quail habits; but when you ask, “How did he find her?” there is no answer except the meaningless word “chance” or a frank admission of our original premise: that wild birds and beasts all exercise a measure of that mysterious telepathic power which reappears now and then in some sensitive man or woman. It may be for the wood folk that “There is no speech nor language: their voice is not heard,” as the Psalmist wrote of the communing day and night; but they certainly communicate in some way, and the longer one studies them the more does it appear that part of their “talk” is of a finer character than that which our ears can hear.
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