Wood folk at school

by William J. Long

“Bes’ keep still; big moose make-um trouble sometime,” muttered Noel behind me; and we dropped back silently into the lee of the friendly rock, to watch awhile longer and let the big creature do as she would.

For ten minutes more we tried every kind of threat and persuasion to get the moose out of the way, ending at last by sending a bullet zipping into the water under her body; but beyond an angry stamp of the foot there was no response, and no disposition whatever to give us the stream. Then I bethought me of a trick that I had discovered long before by accident. Dropping down to the nearest bank, I crept up behind the moose, hidden in the underbrush, and began to break twigs, softly at first, then more and more sharply, as if something were coming through the woods fearlessly. At the first suspicious crack the moose whirled, hesitated, started nervously across the stream, twitching her nostrils and wigwagging her big ears to find out what the crackle meant, and hurrying more and more as the sounds grated harshly upon her sensitive nerves. Next moment the river was clear and our canoe was breasting the rippling shallows, while the moose watched us curiously, half hidden in the alders.

That is a good trick, for occasions. The animals all fear twig snapping. Only never try it at night, with a bull, in the calling season, as I did once unintentionally. Then he is apt to mistake you for his tantalizing mate and come down on you like a tempest, giving you a big scare and a monkey scramble into the nearest tree before he is satisfied.

Within the next hour I counted seven moose, old and young, from the canoe; and when we ran ashore at twilight to the camping ground on the big lake, the tracks of an enormous bull were drawn sharply across our landing. The water was still trickling into them, showing that he had just vacated the spot at our approach.

How do I know it was a bull? At this season the bulls travel constantly, and the points of the hoofs are worn to a clean, even curve. The cows, which have been living in deep retirement all summer, teaching their ungainly calves the sounds and smells and lessons of the woods, travel much less; their hoofs, in consequence, are generally long and pointed and overgrown.

Two miles above our camp was a little brook, with an alder swale on one side and a dark, gloomy spruce tangle on the other—an ideal spot for a moose to keep her little school, I thought, when I discovered the place a few days later. There were tracks on the shore, plenty of them; and I knew I had only to watch long enough to see the mother and her calf, and to catch a glimpse, perhaps, of what no man has ever yet seen clearly; that is, a moose teaching her little one how to hide his bulk; how to move noiselessly and undiscovered through underbrush where, one would think, a fox must make his presence known; how to take a windfall on the run; how to breast down a young birch or maple tree and keep it under his body while he feeds on the top,—and a score of other things that every moose must know before he is fit to take care of himself in the big woods.

I went there one afternoon in my canoe, grasped a few lily stems to hold the little craft steady, and snuggled down till only my head showed above the gunwales, so as to make canoe and man look as much like an old, wind-blown log as possible. It was getting toward the hour when I knew the cow would be hungry, but while it was yet too light to bring her little one to the open shore. After an hour’s watching, the cow came cautiously down the brook. She stopped short at sight of the floating log; watched it steadily for two or three minutes, wigwagging her ears; then began to feed greedily on the lily pads that fringed all the shore. When she went back I followed, guided now by the crack of a twig, now by a swaying of brush tops, now by the flip of a nervous ear or the push of a huge dark body, keeping carefully to leeward all the time and making the big, unconscious creature guide me to where she had hidden her little one.

Just above me, and a hundred yards in from the shore, a tree had fallen, its bushy top bending down two small spruces and making a low den, so dark that an owl could scarcely have seen what was inside. “That’s the spot,” I told myself instantly; but the mother passed well above it, without noting apparently how good a place it was. Fifty yards farther on she turned and circled back, below the spot, trying the wind with ears and nose as she came on straight towards me.

“Aha! the old moose trick,” I thought, remembering how a hunted moose never lies down to rest without first circling back for a long distance, parallel to his trail and to leeward, to find out from a safe distance whether anything is following him. When he lies down, at last, it will be close beside his trail, but hidden from it; so that he hears or smells you as you go by. And when you reach the place, far ahead, where he turned back he will be miles away, plunging along down wind at a pace that makes your snowshoe swing like a baby’s toddle. So you camp where he lay down, and pick up the trail in the morning.

When the big cow turned and came striding back I knew that I should find her little one in the spruce den. But would she not find me, instead, and drive me out of her bailiwick? You can never be sure what a moose will do if she finds you near her calf. Generally they run—always, in fact—but sometimes they run your way. And besides, I had been trying for years to see a mother moose teaching in her little school. Now I dropped on all fours and crawled away down wind, so as to get beyond ken of the mother’s inquisitive nose if possible.