Wood-folk comedies

by William J. Long

Meanwhile the bear was running for his life, going twice as fast as any cow or cookee ever went, in the opposite direction. The first human yell had scared him stiff; but the bovine bawl galvanized him into action. Then came the bounding root, whirling mad arms, tearing up the grass, and that petrified him once more. With a woof-woof! which sounded like an explosion, but which only said, “I’m a goner if I don’t light out of here!” he plunged headlong into the windfall over which he had just crept like a shadow, cracking a deal of dead branches as he went through. No more cat-footing for him; the world was too full of strange monsters. Across the meadow and into the big woods he rushed with great smashing of brush, making so much racket himself that he scarcely heard the sound of another flight. Behind him lay an amazing trail: here a hole in a wet spot with mud spattered all about; there a bunch of moss or a sliver of bark ripped from the top of a log; yonder, where the bear struck rising ground, a volley of dirt or chips flung out as he dug his toes into the hillside in frantic haste to get over the horizon.

WHEN BEAVER MEETS OTTER

ONE rainy day, while crossing a northern lake, I saw a commotion in the water and drove my canoe up to it, so quietly that I was alongside a pair of fighting beasts before they noticed me. And then, to my astonishment, they went on with their fighting.

They were a beaver and an otter, both uncommonly large, and therefore uncommonly shy by all familiar standards. Not by carelessness does any creature come to unwonted size or years in the wilderness. Ordinarily these alert beasts would have vanished before I had even a glimpse of them. Now they were intent on the business in hand, at times locked jowl to throat, again circling for an opening and watching each other so warily that they had eyes for nothing else.

The otter did most of the sparring; at times he made the water boil as he whirled with nervous strokes about his enemy or dove like a flash to get beneath him. The beaver, larger but more clumsy, seemed content with defensive tactics, turning within his own length so as to face the attack. His beady eyes showed a gleam of red; his great cutting teeth were bared in a ferocious grin. Every time the otter flashed under like a dipper duck, the beaver would go down with the oily roll of a porpoise to meet him under water. A violent swirling, a stream of bubbles gurgling and plopping; then the two animals would wabble up to the surface, their teeth fastened in each other’s neck. Down or up, they paid no attention to the huge object floating near them; if they were aware of the canoe, it was but vaguely, their senses being blunted by their battle fury.

As they went down for the third or fourth time I noticed the water reddening around them, showing that it was time for some blessed peacemaker to interfere. Not knowing who started the fight, I pushed the canoe over them impartially. When they came up I splashed them with the paddle, and they seemed to realize for the first time that a stranger, an enemy, was watching them. In a wink they were themselves once more; their native alertness returned; their lunacy was shed like a garment. The beaver sounded on the instant, giving the alarm signal of his tribe as he went down. He is a sociable creature, living by choice with a colony of his fellows, and in him the thought of his own safety is always associated with the safety of others. But the otter, accustomed to roaming alone, whirled without a sound and forged away on the surface, heading for the nearest shore. There I watched him twisting about uneasily, mewing over his wounds, dressing his rumpled fur like a sick cat.

That was the first time I ever learned of the grudge which seems to stand unsettled between beaver and otter. Had it been the last, I would have thought no more of it than of any other odd incident; but several times in later years I found signs of the same incomprehensible feud. Once the evidence took the form of two dead bodies, beaver and otter, floating together in a cove at the mouth of a brook, where the water circled aimlessly round and round. They had killed each other, I judged, since both were badly bitten about the neck. In a grip that neither had the will to break they sank to the bottom and died. There they rested awhile, till with lightened bodies they rose to the surface and went bumping each other around the eddy, as if their quarrel were still on.

Whether the feud were general among all otters and beavers of that region, or whether it was a private animosity kindled by a personal grievance, I had no means of knowing. Occasionally I would hear of a similar quarrel in other places, and every new indication of it puzzled me afresh. Fights being rarely exceptional between animals of different species, I could imagine no reason why a beaver, most inoffensive of the wood folk, should go out of his way to force a quarrel on an animal with whom he has no dealing from one year’s end to another. The two are not what we call natural enemies, meaning by the thoughtless expression that one does not eat the other as food. They belong to different tribes that have nothing in common, not even a cause of enmity. They cannot interfere with each other in the matter of food, since the otter lives on fish, the beaver on bark or water plants, according to season. Moreover, every wild animal avoids meddling with creatures that do not appeal to him momentarily when he is looking for something to eat, and the beaver is exemplary in minding his own business. He lives a secluded kind of life, wandering up or down the wilderness streams with his family all summer, shutting himself up in a narrow prison all winter; and, aside from wolves or lynxes, which gladly eat beaver meat when they have a rare chance, he has not an enemy in his quiet world so long as man keeps out of it.