How animals talk

by William J. Long

To quote but a single incident, out of several that come to my memory: I was once sitting on the shore of a lake at twilight, wholly intent on following the antics of a bull moose I had called into the open. He was on the other side of a small bay, ranging up and down, listening, threshing the bushes with his antlers, blowing his penny-trumpet at intervals,—in a dozen impatient ways showing what a young and foolish moose he was. A veteran would have kept to the cover till he had located what he came for. I had ceased my bellowing when the bull first answered, had been thrilled by his rush through the woods, had cheered him silently when he burst into the open, grunting and challenging like a champion; now I was quietly enjoying his bewilderment at not finding the tantalizing cow he had just heard calling. He did not see or suspect me; I had the comedy all to myself, and was keenly interested to know how he would act when he rounded the bay, as he certainly would, and found me sitting in his path. Because he was big and truculent and a fool, I did not know what to expect; my canoe floated ready against the outer end of a stranded log, where a [[199]]push would send it and me into deep water. I mention these details simply to show where my thoughts were.

As I watched the play in the hushed twilight, suddenly came the feeling that something was watching me. The bull had started around the bay in my direction; possibly his eyes had picked me out—but no, he was in plain sight, and the feeling is always associated with something unseen. Without changing position I looked carefully all about, searching the lake and especially the woods, which were already in deep shadow. Finding no bird or beast, no motion, nothing alarming, I turned to question the bull, who had halted to sound his ridiculous trumpet. He was perhaps fifty or sixty yards away. He had not yet seen me; I had no fear of him, no anxiety whatever; yet again came the feeling, this time insistent, compelling, as if some one had touched me and said, “Get away!” I did so promptly, jumping to my feet; and out of a fir thicket behind me charged another bull that I had not dreamed of calling.

By his size, his antlers, his fierce grunting, I recognized this brute on the instant. I had met him before, once on a trail, once on the lake shore, and had given him all the room he wanted. He was a grizzled old bull, morose and ugly, that seemed to have lost his native fear of man—from [[200]]a galling wound, perhaps, or from living an outcast life by himself. He was a little crazy, I judged. That he was dangerous I knew from the fact that he had previously made an unprovoked attack upon my Indian. He, too, had heard the call; had approached it from behind as stealthily as a cat, and had no doubt watched me, puzzled by my stillness, till my first decided motion brought him out on the jump. But I am wandering away from the small boy getting his first lessons in the woods, and learning that the important thing is to hold perfectly still.

Later, when eight or nine years old, I went alone day after summer day to the wild berry-pastures. When my big pail would hold no more, I would make a bowl by bashing in the top of my hat, and fill it to the brim with luscious blueberries. These with a generous slice of bread made an excellent lunch, which I always ate within sight of a bird’s nest, or the den of a fox, or some other abode of life that I had discovered in the woods. And again, as I sat quiet in the solitude, the birds and small animals might be led by curiosity to approach as fearlessly as when I was too small to harm them. Now a vixen, finding me too near her den and cubs, would squall at me impatiently, like a little yellow dog with a cat’s voice; or again, a brooding bird that objected to my scrutiny [[201]]would first turn her tail to me, and presently come round again, and finally get mad and flutter about my head, scolding loudly to chivvy me away. So it often happened that one had nearer or happier or more illuminating glimpses of wild life in that small hour of rest than would be possible in a month of roaming the woods with gun or collecting-box.

Once as I was eating my lunch under the pines, meanwhile watching a den I had found to see what might come out of it, a crow sailed in on noiseless wings and lit so near me that I hardly dared wink for fear he would notice the motion. My first thought was that he was nest-robbing (a crow is very discreet about that business), but he appeared rather to be listening, cocking his head this way or that; and from a lazy hawing in the distance I concluded he was satisfying himself that his flock was occupied elsewhere and that he was quite alone. Presently he hitched along the branch on which he stood and glided off to the crotch of a pine-tree, where he began to uncover what was hidden under a mat of brown needles. The first thing he took out was a piece of glass, which sparkled with rainbow colors in a stray glint of sunshine. Then came a bit of quartz with more sparkles, a shell, a silvery buckle, and some other glistening objects which [[202]]I could not make out. He turned his treasures over and over, all the while croaking to himself in a pleased kind of way; then he put them all back, covered them again with needles, and slipped away without a sound. Having kept tame crows, I knew that they are forever stealing and hiding whatever bright objects they find about the house; and here in the pine woods was a thing to indicate that wild crows, perhaps all of them, have the same covetous habit.

Another day, a heavenly day when the budding woods were vocal and life stirred joyously in every thicket, I took a jews’-harp from my pocket and began to twang it idly. No, there was nothing premeditated in the act. I had been roving widely, following the winds or the bird-calls till a sunny opening invited me to rest, and had then fingered the music-maker with no more purpose than the poet’s boy, who “whistled as he went for want of thought.” The rhythmic, nasal twanging was a sound never heard in that place before or since, I think, and the first to come hurriedly to investigate was a bright-colored warbler, whose name I did not know; nor did I care to know it, feeling sure that by some note or sign he would presently suggest a name for himself, which would please me better than the barbarous jargon I might find in a bird-book. The alert little fellow [[203]]lit on a branch within three feet of my face, turning his head so as to view me with one eye or the other when I kept quiet, or chirping his indignation when I twanged the jews’-harp. Next came a jay, officious as the town constable; then more birds, half concealing their curiosity under gentle manners; and a squirrel who had no manners at all, scolding everybody and scurrying about in a fashion which seemed dangerous to his excited head.

As I watched this little assembly, which seemed to be asking, “What’s up? What’s up?” the meaning of it suddenly dawned on me like a surprising discovery. When I entered the opening I knew simply that birds or beasts would draw near if they found me quiet; before I left it I had found the explanation: that all the wood folk are intensely curious, as curious as so many human gossips, but without any of their malice; that by inner compulsion they are drawn to any strange sight or sound, as a crowd collects when a man cuts a caper or throws a fit or raises a whoop or looks up into the air, or does anything else out of the ordinary. When you appear in the quiet woods every bird or beast within sight or hearing is agog to know about you; they are like the Nantucket-Islanders, who named their one public hack the “Who’s Come?” Because you are a stranger, and [[204]]what you do is none of their business, they are all the more interested in you and your doings; you come to them with all the charm of the unknown, the unexpected; and they will gratify their curiosity, fearlessly and most pleasantly, so long as you know how to stimulate or play upon it and to hold still while enjoying it.

All that is natural enough, as natural as life; but it is not written in any book of natural history, and it came to me that day as a wonderful discovery. It suggested at once the right way to study birds or beasts, as living creatures; it has since led to many a fascinating glimpse of the wood-folk comedy, and to a lifelong pleasure which is too elusive to be set down in words. At the bottom of it, I suppose, is the fact that in every wild or natural creature is something, at once mysterious and familiar, which appeals powerfully to your interest or sympathy, as if you saw a faint shadow of your other self, or caught a fleeting memory of that vanished time when you lived in a child’s world of wonder and delight.

From the beginning, therefore, I met all birds and animals in a child’s impersonal way; which, strangely enough, ascribes personality to every living thing, yes, and honors it. These inquisitive little rangers of the wood or the berry-pasture, shy and exquisitely alert, were all individuals like [[205]]myself, each one seeking the joy of life in his own happy way. My only regret was that I was too clumsy, too obtrusive, too ignorant of the way of the wild, and so frightened many a timid bird or beast that I would gladly have known.

All this, too, is perfectly natural; the instinctive attitude of a child, as of an animal, is one of curiosity rather than of fear or destruction. If left to his natural instincts, a child meets every living creature with a mixture of shyness or timidity and bright interest; he becomes an enemy of the wild, learning to frighten and harry and kill, not from nature but from the evil example of his elders. I could prove that beyond a peradventure, I think, if this were the place; but there is no need of any man’s demonstration. Go yourself to the big woods at twilight, leaving custom behind you; go alone and unarmed; hear that rustle of leaves, that tread of soft feet which brings you to an instant halt; see that strange beast which glides out into the trail and turns to look at you with luminous eyes. Then quickly examine your own mental state, and you will know the truth of a man’s natural or instinctive attitude toward the mystery of life.