Wood-folk comedies

by William J. Long

For a half-mile or more Eleemos holds steadily on his course, stopping once to listen and spring aside when he heard a wood mouse squeak under a fallen pine. See, there is a pinkish tinge in the snow where he dropped a morsel of his small game, and lapped it to the last smell. That does not mean necessarily that Eleemos was very hungry. A fox will stop to catch a mouse when his stomach is so full that you wonder how it can hold any more. One October day, when hunting with a gun, I called a fox by a mouselike squeaking. His stomach was tight as a drum; when I opened it I found that Eleemos had already eaten three or four mice, two birds, some stuff I could not name, and part of a young muskrat.

The fox we are following turns from his straight course and heads diagonally upward toward the ledges. Never mind the trail at your feet now; it will soon begin to twist, because a fox never goes straight to his day bed, and you should see the turn before you come to it. So look far ahead, and go carefully; don’t click the snowshoes or let your clothing scrape on a frozen twig. See, the trail turns sharp to the left, and beyond that to the right. There he is! a flash of ruddy color, as Eleemos slips away from the log on which he was curled up in the sun. He saw us before we saw him, though he was more or less asleep. Had he not waited to learn who was coming, you would not have caught even a glimpse of him. Now he half circles to get our wind, for like most animals he trusts his nose above all other senses. There are fleeting glimpses of fur as he passes an opening or halts behind a windfall that hides all but his ears; then he heads away in swift jumps, his brush quivering nervously, and disappears in thick cover. No use to follow; you will not see that fox again.

The older foxes are mating now, and their trails are amazingly devious. Ordinarily Eleemos leaves a plain story in the snow; but if you attempt to read it at a time when he is cajoling a mate, or in a region where his enemies, the wolves, have just been hunting, you will be at your wits’ end to untangle the puzzle. Aside from his courting or hunting habits, every fox has times or moods when his actions are humanly incomprehensible. Last week, for example, I found the trail of a fox that had taken one of Bob’s wolf baits; but instead of eating it he carried it off in his mouth, taking a very erratic course, and setting the bait down here or there to have another look at it. Once he dropped it under a drooping fir tip, crept completely around the fir, and crouched to watch the thing from hiding, as a kitten plays with a paralyzed mouse. Then he carried it hither and yon over the crookedest trail I ever tried to follow, sometimes trotting quietly, again rushing away as if something were chasing him, now and then squatting to look at his prize as it lay immobile under his nose. Though I had a perfect tracking snow, which showed every footprint of the fox and every resting place of the bait, what with his crisscrosses and back-tracking I could not trace him a straight mile from the starting point, and I left him without the faintest notion of where he was heading or what he would do with his stolen morsel.

That bait, by the way, was an odd thing for any fox to uncover in his familiar woods. It was invented in an idle, lunatic moment after the wolves had refused to go near a variety of natural baits, and immediately it brought forth the fantastic fruits of lunacy by becoming excellent “medicine.” It was the size of a teacup; it was compounded of meat scraps held together by melted lard; just before it hardened, it was rolled in powdered fish skins; then the tail feather of a crow was stuck into it, as a marker on the snow. From beginning to end of the alchemy no human hand touched it to leave a suspicious odor. No doubt the queer but appetizing thing was enough to puzzle any fox, making him cut strange capers; but I was unable to generalize about its effect on a canny beast, because the next fox that took a similar bait not only ate it on the spot, but licked up every crumb and looked about for more.

As we resume our course after seeing Eleemos, we run into another trail, which confuses us by its odd appearance until we read that it was made by a pair of foxes, male and female, that were carefully stepping in each other’s tracks. They came over the ridge one behind the other, not heading for the den, but approaching the lake by endless roundabouts, stopping here or there to leave a tangle of tracks which record some little comedy. Instead of trying to read the puzzle, which is beyond all woodcraft, I sketch a portion of the trail just as the foxes left it,—so:

A Pretty Crisscross

Sketch of the trail of a pair of foxes coming from a, at the right, and going at b. Arrow points indicate the direction of the trail; opposite points where a fox went off at a tangent, and returned, stepping carefully in his own tracks. Single lines show where the foxes followed one behind the other; double lines where they ran side by side. From a to b is about two hundred yards in a straight line. Note that, when the foxes end their crisscross, they head away in the direction they were holding when they first appeared.

On the farther side of the ridge, as we turn downward to a cedar swamp, we begin to cross other trails, each with a tale to tell if one follows it far enough. But the winter day is too short; we must hurry if we are to learn what the wolves were doing. Here is where a solitary Canada lynx passed, leaving round pugs like enormous cat tracks. His trail gives a curious impression of mingled cunning and stupidity; it is wavering, sneaky, suspicious, like all cat trails. Since it is heading our way, we follow it through the swamp, to see how Upweekis stalks a hare, before climbing the next ridge. Here in a wind-swept spot a few wood mice have ventured up from their tunnels under the snow; and red squirrels—’sh! there’s one now.

Meeko was hidden in a spruce as we approached, and we would never have seen him had he kept still. Being packed full of curiosity, he cannot be quiet, but must run down his tree to see a man, no doubt the first biped of that kind he has ever met. He begins to scold when we stand motionless, telling him nothing, and I answer him by talking squirrel talk between lips and teeth. Meeko listens in amazed silence; his eyes seem to enlarge, to snap fire; then, as if he had discovered something of vast importance, he leaps jabbering from the tree and scurries away in breakneck fashion. At his summons a second squirrel tumbles out from under a log; whereupon I talk more gibberish, and two more come rushing down the hill. From a sugar maple comes a volley of questions, protests, expostulations. A squirrel is up there who thinks he is being neglected; when he can stand his isolation no longer he comes down to join the crowd. That makes five in this small spot, and we hear more voices in the distance, shrill, querulous voices, demanding the news or scolding about it, whatever it may be.