Wood-folk comedies

by William J. Long

As the short winter day fades into the long night, the gloom thickens in the arched living room. Voices are hushed; not a sound comes from the lodge, which is covered with a blanket of snow. In the forest an owl hoots, or a wolf wails to the sky, or a stealthy tread is heard as some night prowler climbs the lodge for a sniff at the ventilator. That hungry beast is only three or four feet away; but the beavers care not; their house is burglar-proof. Its one doorway leads down through the bank to water under the ice, and no enemy can come from that direction. When the prowler goes away, an old beaver stirs himself; like a watchman he goes down the stairway to the tunnel, finds the water at its safe level, comes back whining a low call, and curls up in his bed with a satisfied grunt. Then the family fall asleep, each in his own nest; in their ears is a little song, the endless song of the spillway with its quieting burden, All’s well with our world; all’s well!

Yes, a curious life, monotonous and dismal, or cheery and forever expectant, according as you view it from without or from within. Coming upon the lodge now, you see only a mound of white swelling above the expanse of pond or beaver meadow, and beyond stand ranks of evergreen, dark and silent. That mound is as dull or dead as anything else in the somber landscape until, as you pass indifferently, your eye catches a wisp of vapor, like a breath, or your ear detects a faint plop, plop, as bodies slide down into the tunnel one after another. In an instant the whole landscape changes, as it always does change, and glow and fall away into the golden frame of a picture, when a living creature moves across the face of it. The mound is no longer a dull mass, but the fascinating abode of life; the wilderness sun rises or sets not on snow and ice, but on work, play, companionship, and all else that makes life the one interesting and eternally mysterious thing in the universe.

So when my friend of the telescope looks in, as I write this, and tries to stir my lagging enthusiasm for the satellites of Jupiter or the vastness of the Milky Way, I find myself thinking that Jupiter might allure me if there were a beaver lodge on its meadows, and that I shall never feel any human interest in stars or interstellar spaces until someone discovers a squirrel track on the Milky Way.

COMEDIANS ALL

WHILE watching a chipmunk one summer, a fascinating little fellow whom I had tamed till he would sit on my knee to beg with eloquent eyes for nuts or rice or sweet chocolate, I learned first the location of his den, and then, when he abandoned it for a roomy winter storehouse, the whole secret of his building.

For years our naturalists have debated the mystery of the squirrel’s digging, how he can excavate den or tunnel without leaving fresh earth at the entrance to betray him; but when I was a boy any farmer’s lad in the countryside could have given instant explanation. “How does a chipmunk dig a hole without leaving any earth at the entrance? Why, very simply; he begins at the other end.” And though the answer is true, beyond cavil or gainsaying, some doubting Thomas who clothes all animal action in a mysterious fog of instinct is bound to make hocus-pocus of the chipmunk’s art by demanding, “But how does he get to the other end?”

That also is simple; but you will not appreciate the answer till you know by observation that a chipmunk never digs a den. He trusts nature for that, contenting himself with furnishing a suitable tunnel and doorway.

In some way (probably by tapping the earth, as a woodpecker sounds a limb to see if it be hollow) Chick’weesep learns that there is a den under a certain tree or rock, a natural hollow engineered by frost or rain or settling earth, which by a little alteration may be made to serve his double need of room and safety. At any rate, it will do no harm to go down and have a look at it; he can find another if he is not satisfied.