Wood-folk comedies

by William J. Long

No sooner was twilight come than a wild calling began, and the woods were as near to noisy as I shall ever hear them. Loons were yelling, owls hooting, ducks quacking, and foxes yapping in all directions. At frequent intervals came the plaint of a black bear, a rare cry, and the loneliest you will ever hear in the night. When the moon rose in a marvelously clear sky I crossed the lake and entered the dim trail that led to my moose pond.

I was following the trail cautiously, feeling my way between a cedar swamp and a burnt hillside, when just ahead of me rang out a screech that seemed to split the air. It was an appalling sound in that lonely place; my skin wrinkled under it, like a dog’s skin under the lash. Again it sounded, making me cringe, though I was waiting for it. It was answered from the hill, and I began to suspect the creature that made it when a caterwauling began which made night hideous. The beasts were approaching each other slowly, screeching as they went, when up through the cedar swamp came a snarling, yowling, unseen thing that sped along the ground with the rush of an arrow. The three lynxes flew together in a rowdydow that spoke of tearing one another to ribbons; yet they were not fighting at all, I think, for when I crept near I could hear no sound of struggle, but only a fiendish yelling. When the rumpus seemed almost under my nose it ceased abruptly; there was no lynx in sight, nor any moving shadow to say what had become of them.

At any ordinary time such an outcry seems to stun the wilderness into deeper silence; but now it had an opposite effect, as if it were an alarm for which wild ears had been waiting. In the dark swamp, on the hillside flooded with pale light, even in the air overhead, alert creatures were moving or crying in nameless excitement. As I went on, following the dim trail, the woods on either side seemed alive with rustlings, some of which were surely not imaginary. Wood mice were abroad, scores of them, it seemed, for the moonlight caught the white edges of their scurrying tails; and within a short space I passed four or five porcupines. Every one of the prickly fellows had climbed to the top of a slender tree, and was perched there, swaying and whining. Birds that sleep by night were peeping or stirring in the shadows. Herons and bitterns, which are always restless when the moon shines, were circling by threes or fours over every lake and bog; while questing individuals winged their way from one group to another, as if seeking or bearing strange news.

Pausing under one of these groups, I would hear the hoarse kruk-kruk of a blue heron drawing nearer, nearer. Suddenly from the air above would come a sharp question, a challenge flung at my head, as the great birds discovered me. Whether by night or day, nothing can remain hidden from their bright yellow eyes. I would see a vague motion, as of wings, emerging from the silver radiance or melting away into it, like gleams and shadows in the eddy of a river under the moonlight. The wings would vanish going I knew not whither; but far and wide forest and lake and caribou barren would all be ringing to the heron’s challenge, Quoskh? Quoskh-quoskh? And I understood then why Indians call this bird the night’s question.

“Their very attitude made me feel queer, for they were in touch with a matter of which I had no warning.”

I had left the lake behind and was traveling through a stratum of silence, a restful silence which I devoutly hoped might endure, when an uproar of moose—grunts, splashings, the ring of smitten antler blades—sounded not far away in the direction I was heading. As I emerged from the woods upon the barren that bordered my moose pond, two bulls were having an argument in the shallow water near shore. At first they seemed to be fighting, mud and water flying over them as they surged about with locked antlers; but I soon judged them to be youngsters that were trying their strength while waiting for something else to happen. At intervals they would listen intently to a message I could not hear; then they would drop heads, lock antlers once more, and strive mightily to push each other over.

As they backed away from one of these encounters the nearer bull turned and threw his nose into the wind. The other, instead of driving brow prongs into his rival’s flank (as he surely would have done had they been fighting), took a step toward shore, and both stood at tense attention. Their attitude made me feel queer, for they were in touch with a matter of which I had no warning. Something was passing yonder on the hill, something too fine or distant for me to sense, and the moose were following every rumor of it minutely. Suddenly they leaped from the water, laid their antlers back, thrust their great muzzles out ahead of them, and raced away side by side. They passed close by my hiding place, heading for the thing to which they had been listening.

A little later I began calling from a point of evergreen that thrust itself into the barren from the southern side. Before me and on either hand stretched the level bog, misty and unreal, ringed about by dark woods. Beyond the bog to the right, whither the bulls had gone, rose low hills with pointed spruces standing over them like sentinels. On my left at a little distance was the pond, its placid face glimmering like silver in the moonlight.

Such was the stage, ideal in the perfection of its setting, on which I expected a shy and solitary actor to appear at my summons. Of the moose-caller’s art I knew very little, having at odd times tried to imitate Simmo, who was an excellent caller, but, like all his secretive tribe, an unwilling teacher. Without any preliminary whining, therefore, such as a careful caller employs on the chance that a bull may be near, I sent the bellow of a cow-moose rolling out of my birch-bark trumpet.