Wood-folk comedies

by William J. Long

Just over the low ridge yonder is another lake; and under the ledge which you see cropping out is a spring-hole that never freezes. It is nearer than the mouth of the inlet, though the traveling looks much harder, uphill through deep snow. With the wolf in sight, coming up the lake like a cyclone, Keeonekh takes a desperate chance, knowing his advantage if he can top the ridge. Both trails go up the bank by a natural runway, otter and wolf sinking shoulder-deep at every jump. The wolf is gaining here at a frightful rate, one of his flying leaps covering two or three of the otter’s. Nose to tail, they reach the top, where Keeonekh springs aside from the runway and plunges headlong over the ledge. One clean slide of thirty feet, and with a final convulsive leap he lands on the edge-ice of the spring-hole. It breaks under his impact; down he goes in a swirl of black water.

The trail now brings a smile or a chuckle, for we follow Malsun the wolf. Here he hesitates at the brink of the ledge, slippery where snow has melted by day or frozen by night; looking down the almost perpendicular slope, he sees the glistening body of Keeonekh glance away from under his nose. Malsun will sit on his tail and slide down an ordinary bank, but he balks at this icy ledge. It is too steep; and the black ice below, with water lapping over its broken edges, looks dangerous. Turning from the ledge, he leaps down the runway and creeps around to the farther side of the spring-hole, where he stands waiting expectantly. Keeonekh is under water, and can go where he pleases; he can even cross the lake to another spring-hole, if need be, since he has learned the trick of breathing under the ice. But the wolf, who has no notion of such possibilities in a mere beast, thinks that whoever goes into water must soon come out again, and waits for Keeonekh to reappear.

Malsun is not a patient waiter, being too much like a dog. Soon a doubt enters his head, then a suspicion which sends him sniffing around the edges of the spring-hole to be sure the game did not slip away while he was coming down the runway. “No, nothing went away from here,” he says. “Nothing could possibly go away without telling my nose about it.”

The uneasy trail, weaving here and there, shows that Malsun is more puzzled than ever. Suddenly a notion strikes him, a cunning notion that his game is hiding somewhere, waiting for a chance to continue the flight. He trots off to the woods, as if going away; but no sooner is he hidden than he creeps back behind a stump, where he can see the spring-hole without being seen. He is a young wolf, sure enough; the cub habit of stalking things, like a cat, is still strong in him; but his patience is no better than before. He fidgets, changes position; after watching awhile, as you see by a depression in the snow, he goes to have another sniff around the spring-hole. Then he turns away reluctantly and lopes off eastward, probably to rejoin the pack, which we heard howling in this direction last night.

We shall follow him later, to see what else he chased and how he fared; but now a heavy blue shadow drawn across the second lake demands attention. It is trail of some kind; but most wilderness trails are devious, and this goes straight as a string from one wooded point to another on the opposite shore. From this distance it looks like an artificial roadway; we must see who made it.

The shadow, as we draw near it, turns into a path beaten deep in the snow; so deep that, in places near shore, it would easily hide the animals that made use of it. On either side are curious marks or scratches, all slanting one way; in the fresh snow at the bottom are tracks which say that a pair of large beavers have gone back and forth many times. That is an amazing thing, since Hamoosabik the builder, as Simmo calls him, ought now to be safe in his winter lodge, especially in a wolf and lynx country like this. He is a clumsy creature on land or ice; he is courting sudden death to be more than a few jumps from open water at this hungry time of year.

Following the path to the nearer woods, on our right, we find that the beavers have been felling poplar trees and trimming branches into convenient lengths for transportation. The heavy butts lie where they fell, but all smaller pieces have disappeared, showing that the animals are gathering a new supply of food. I have known beavers, driven by necessity, to leave their winter lodge and forage in the woods, eating where they could; but here are no signs of feeding, and no peeled sticks such as a beaver leaves when he has eaten the good bark.

The cutting has been done near a brook, which you hear singing to itself under its blanket of snow and ice. To the brook go several snow tunnels, each starting beside the stump of a fallen poplar, and examination brings out this interesting bit of animal foresight: wherever the beavers fell a tree, they also dig a tunnel leading to the unseen brook. The digging was first in order, and its purpose was to furnish a way of escape should the beavers be surprised at their work.

It is plain now that we are following an uncommonly cunning pair of animals; that they are working in great danger to transport food-wood to their lodge (which must be on the other side of the lake), and that the curious marks beside their path were made by projecting ends of sticks that they carried crosswise in their teeth. Since beavers store an ample food supply in autumn, some misfortune must have sent this pair abroad in the snow; but why do they not eat their bark where they find it? That they know the danger of crossing an expanse of ice, where they may be caught under their burden by prowling enemies, becomes increasingly apparent as we follow the trail. It heads straight across the narrowest part of the lake to a wooded point, where it turns southward, hiding under banks or underbrush, and then cuts across a bay to the open mouth of a large brook.

Here the beavers have their winter home in a great domed lodge. Around the open water are tracks made by three generations of beaver, and these with the uncommonly big house tell us that the family is a large one. Probably their bark soured under water, the wood having been cut early with too much sap, and they were compelled to go afield for a fresh supply. It is hard, perhaps impossible, for a man to judge what went on in their troubled heads when the need of food grew imperative; but a little memory and some study of the trail bring out two facts to make one thoughtful. The first fact, from memory, is that old and young members of a beaver family habitually work together in gathering their winter store of food; the second, from the trail, is that this particular family is not following its habitual or instinctive custom. Though there are kits and well-grown yearlings in the lodge, only two of the largest beavers have gone forth on their dangerous foraging.