Some Animal Stories
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Presently the fox came trotting home, intent on getting out of the wind and having a nap in his snug den. But just before the threshold he stopped short, the fur on his neck stood up, and his eyes went green. He had scented the trail of Quills, and it led straight into his lair. Stealthily he tiptoed forward, peered in, and saw confronting him that spiny tail and rump, just inside the doorway.
His blood boiled at the intruder's insolence. But he was a wise old beast, and in his rash youth he had once been lame for a month, with a steely quill burning and festering under his knee-joint, through having tried to interfere with a most insignificant-looking porcupine. Curbing his righteous wrath – as there was nothing else to do – he turned about and with his scratching hind paws insultingly sent a shower of soiled earth upon the slumbering Quills. Then he trotted off to seek another retreat. Quills, thus rudely awakened, crawled forth, chattering indignantly, and shook out the defilement from his long coat. But, as the fox was nowhere in sight, he promptly forgot his wrath and turned into the den again to resume his nap.
Gradually, but inexorably, winter now closed down upon the valley of the Tobique. And it was a hard winter – for all the hunting beasts and birds, a desperate winter. The rabbits that autumn had been smitten with one of their periodical epidemics, and died off like flies. This did not trouble Quills directly – a strict vegetarian, he was assured of plenty so long as the forest stood. But indirectly it made a vital difference to him. All the prowling and pouncing kindred – the great horned owls and the eagles, the lynxes, foxes, martens, and minks, and even certain surly old he-bears who were too restless to "hole-up" for the winter – soon found themselves goaded by such a hunger as might at any moment drive them to take unwonted risks. Quills little guessed how often, as he was gnawing complacently at his meal of hemlock bark, he would be watched longingly by savage and hungry eyes. But, had he guessed it, his indifference would have remained quite unruffled. He had all he could eat, and a warm hole to sleep in, and why should he borrow trouble?
But one biting December afternoon, when the straight shadows of the fir trees were stretching long and blue across the snow, Quills's complacency got something of a shock. Just as he was crawling luxuriously into his den, one of those great horned owls which are the feathered Apaches of the wilderness came winnowing low overhead on wings as silent as sleep. His round staring eyes caught sight of Quills's hind-quarters just vanishing into the hole. There was no time to note exactly what it was, and hunger had made the great bird rash even beyond his wont. He swooped instantly and struck his terrible talons into the tail and haunch.
With a loud hiss, like that of an angry cat, he let go precipitately and fairly bounced up into the air again, both murderous talons stuck deep with spines which seemed to burn into his sinews. He flew in haste to the nearest branch, steadied himself with difficulty on the perch, and set himself to the painful task of plucking out the torments with his beak, holding up first one claw and then the other. With some of the spines he was successful, but others he merely managed to nip off close to the skin. His feet began to swell immediately. For several weeks he could do no hunting, for the fiery anguish in them, but could only sit moping in his hollow tree, where he would soon have starved but for the food brought to him by his faithful mate.
As for Quills, this was his first experience of physical pain, and it was his first taste of fear. Whining and squealing and grunting all at once, he shrank into his den, and, carefully parting the spines and fur with his nose, strove to lick the wounds made by those steel-sharp talons. For a day or two he had no appetite, and stayed sulking in the den. But the healthy flesh, being unpoisoned, soon healed, and Quills was himself again, except for a certain unaccustomed watchfulness. He did not know what creature it was which had dared to attack him, so at sight of any strange beast whatsoever, up would go his spines and he would put himself on guard. Even a malevolent – but to him harmless – little weasel, or a scouting mink, he would honour with his suspicions; and one day, when a gigantic bull moose came and stood beneath the tree in which he was feeding, he chattered down at him furiously and arrayed all his defences as if expecting immediate attack. But as the huge black beast did not even trouble to look at him, his fears were soon allayed.
A porcupine's memory, however, seems to be extraordinarily short, and Quills's was no exception to the rule. In the course of three or four weeks, when his wounds no longer pricked him to remembrance, he forgot all about the affair and recovered his old indifference. One day when he was returning to his den for a doze – and only a score of yards away from the entrance – right into his pathway, with a noiseless pounce, dropped a great, grey, furry beast with tufted ears, and long, white snarling teeth, and huge pads of paws. It crouched before him, its stub of a tail twitching, and glared upon him with pale, cruel, moon-like eyes. Up went Quills's spines at once, and he ducked his nose between his fore-paws; but he was determined to get to his den, so he came right on. Seeing, however, that the intruder showed no sign of getting out of the way, Quills suddenly turned round and came on backwards, lashing out fiercely with his tail. The lynx was wild with hunger, but not to the pitch of suicidal recklessness. He ached intolerably for the well-nourished flesh that he knew lay hidden beneath those bristling spines, but he knew the price that he would have to pay for it. With a screech of disappointed rage, he restrained himself and slipped from the path; and Quills, chattering noisily, disappeared into his hole.
As the long and bitter winter drew on, burying the wilderness under five or six feet of snow and scourging it with storm and iron frost, Quills had many more or less similar encounters with the lynxes, and twice with a surly old black-bear. Paradoxical as the statement may appear, he usually faced the foe with his tail. And the result was always the same. No prowler was prepared to pay the price which Quills would have exacted for his carcase. But along in March, when the snow had begun to settle heavily under a week of thaw, Quills was confronted by a new enemy before whom his indifference melted more swiftly than the snow.
Very early one morning, when the first ghost-grey light of dawn was beginning to glimmer through the windless forest, Quills had just come down out of an old hemlock, when he caught sight of a strange beast gliding over the snow some thirty or forty yards away. The stranger, dark brown in colour, with a bushy tail, long and low-set body, weasel-shaped head, and grizzly-grey face with black snout, was somewhat under three feet in length. It was distinctly smaller, and at first glance less dangerous-looking, than a lynx. But some inherited instinct told Quills at once that this was an enemy far more to be dreaded than the fiercest of lynxes. He had never seen a fisher before. Fortunately for the porcupine tribe, fishers were very scarce in the valley of the Tobique. But a chill of ancestral fear struck to Quills's heart.
The fisher, catching sight of him, whirled in his tracks and darted at him with a light swiftness and deadly intensity of purpose very different from the hesitating attitude of Quills's other foes. And Quills's tactics were now different. Jutting from the snow, near the trunk of the hemlock, was a heavy windfall, its top supported by the lower branches of a neighbouring beech tree. Under this protection Quills thrust his nose and head, clear to the shoulders, leaving only his armed back and fiercely-slashing tail exposed to the assault. He was no more than in position ere the enemy was upon him.
Now, in nine cases out of ten – perhaps even in ninety-nine out of a hundred – the fight between a porcupine and a fisher has but one result. The fisher eats the porcupine. He is incomparably the stronger. He is, taking it all in all, the most savage, swift, and crafty of all the marauders of the wilderness, and, above all else, for some reason as yet unexplained by the naturalists, the porcupine's quills, so deadly to others, have for him comparatively few terrors. They do not poison or inflame his flesh, which seems to possess the faculty of soon rejecting them and casting them forth again through the skin. All he has to do is to flip the victim over on its back – annexing as few spines as possible in the act – and he has the unprotected throat and belly at the mercy of his fangs.
In the present case, however, the too-confident fisher had an exceptional porcupine to deal with. Quills was not only unusually large and vigorous, but, for a porcupine, sagacious. He had settled himself down solidly into the snow, and when the fisher, dodging a blow of his tail, and accepting a sharp dose of spines in the shoulder, tried to turn him over with a twist of the paw, Quills resisted successfully, and, with a timely swing of his haunches, stabbed his assailant's whole flank full of spines.
The fisher had expected some resistance, some more or less futile defence, but this was attack. Always short in temper, he flew into a blind rage at the pain and the surprise of it. He drew back a few inches to gain impetus for the next effort, and this was his mistake – this, and underrating his opponent. At that very instant he got a full, flailing stroke across his face from Quills's tail. It filled his nose and mouth with spines – that was to be expected; but – for the blow had surely been guided by the patron spirit of all the porcupines – it also filled both his eyes.
With a screech of anguish he flung himself full on Quills's back and strove to bite down through the armour of spines. But he was now totally blind, and his jaws were stuck so full of spines as to be practically powerless. Meanwhile his mad struggles were simply driving deeper and deeper into all his tender underparts those terrible four-inch spikes which clothed the back of his intended victim. All at once the agony grew too appalling for even his indomitable spirit. He lurched off and dragged himself away, stumbling and staggering, and bumping into tree trunk and bush, till he reached a thicket which he felt to be dense enough to hide his defeat. And here death came to him, not too soon.
For some minutes after his defeated foe had gone, Quills remained with his head thrust under the branch, chattering fierce defiance and lashing wildly with his tail. Then very cautiously he backed off and looked about him. He had been roughly mauled. His spines and fur were dishevelled, and he was bleeding from some deep scratches where his assailant's claws had got home. But he was not seriously the worse from his terrible encounter, and he had beaten, fairly and overwhelmingly, the terrible killer of porcupines. His sombre and solitary spirit glowed with triumph. Rather hurriedly he crawled on to his lair, and there set himself to a much-needed toilet. And outside his retreat the first long, level rays of the sunrise crept across the snow, touching the trunks of the birches and the poplars to a mystical rose-pink and saffron.
STRIPES THE UNCONCERNED
On the edge of evening, when the last of the light was gathered in the pale-green upper sky, and all the world of the quiet backwoods clearings was sunken in a soft violet dusk, a leisurely and self-possessed little animal came strolling among the ancient stumps and mossy hillocks of the open upland sheep-pasture. He was about the size of an average cat, but shorter of leg, with a long, sharp-muzzled head, and he carried his broad feathery tail very high in a graceful arch, like a squirrel in good humour. Unlike most other creatures of the wild, his colouring was such as to make him conspicuous rather than to conceal him. He was black, with a white stripe down his face, a white patch on the back of his neck, and a white stripe all the way along each side of his body. And, also unlike the rest of the furtive folk, he seemed quite unconcerned to hide his movements from observation. Neither was he for ever glancing this way and that, as if on the watch for enemies. Rather he had the air of being content that his enemies should do the watching – and avoid him.
The skunk – for such was the undignified appellation of this very dignified personality of the wilderness – was pleasantly engrossed in his own business. That business, at the moment, consisted in catching the big, fat, juicy, copper-brown "June-bugs" as they emerged from their holes in the sod, crawled up the bending grass-stems, and spread their wings for their heavy evening flight. It was easy hunting, and he had no need of haste. To snap up these great slow and clumsy beetles as they clung upon the grass-stems was as easy as picking strawberries, and, indeed, not altogether dissimilar, as he would nip off the hard, glossy wing-cases of the big beetles as one nips off the hull of the berry before munching the succulent morsel.
Having slept the day through in his snug burrow, in the underbrush which fringed the forest edge of the clearing, he had come forth into the dewy twilight equipped with a fine appetite. He had come with the definite purpose of hunting "June-bugs," this being the season, all too brief, for that highly-favoured delicacy. At first he had thought of nothing else; but when he had taken the edge off his hunger, he began to consider the chances of varying his diet. As he seized an unlucky beetle, close to the edge of a flat, spreading juniper bush, a brooding ground-sparrow flew up, with a startled cheep, from under his very nose. He dropped the beetle and made a lightning pounce at the bird. But her wing had flicked him across the eyes, confusingly, and he missed her. He knew well enough, however, what her presence there among the warm grass-tussocks meant. He went nosing eagerly under the juniper bush, and soon found a nest with four little brown-mottled eggs in it. Tiny though they were, they made a tit-bit very much to his taste, all the more so that they were very near hatching. Having licked his jaws and fastidiously polished the fur of his shrewd, keen face, he sauntered off to see what other delicacies the evening might have in store for him.
A little further on, toward the centre of the pasture, he came upon a flat slab of rock, its surface sloping toward the south, its southward edge slightly overhanging and fringed with soft grass. He knew the rock well – knew how its bare surface drank in the summer sun all day long, and held the warmth throughout the dew-chill nights. He knew, too, that other creatures besides himself might very well appreciate this genial warmth. Stealthily, and without the smallest disturbance of the grassy fringe, he sniffed along the overhanging edge of the rock. Suddenly he stiffened, and his sharp snout darted in under the rock. Then he jerked back, with the writhing tail of a snake between his jaws.
The prize was a big black-and-yellow garter snake, not far from three feet long – not venomous, but full of energy and fight. It tried to cling to its hiding-place; but the shrewd skunk, instead of attempting to pull it out straight, like a cork from a bottle-neck, ran forward a pace or two and, as it were, "peeled" it forth. It doubled out, struck him smartly in the face with its harmless fangs, and then coiled itself about his neck and fore-legs. There was a moment of confused rough-and-tumble, but the skunk knew just how to handle this kind of antagonist. Having bitten the reptile's tail clean through, he presently, with the help of his practised little jaws, succeeded in getting hold of it by the back, an inch or two behind the head. This ended the affair, as a struggle, and the victor proceeded to round off his supper on snake. He managed to put away almost all but the head and tail, and then, after a meticulous toilet to fur and paws – for he was as fastidiously cleanly as a cat – he sauntered back toward his burrow in the underbrush, to refresh himself with a nap before seeking further adventures.
Directly in his path stood three or four young seedling firs, about two feet high, in a dense cluster. Half a dozen paces beyond this tiny thicket a big red fox, belly to earth, was soundlessly stalking some quarry, perhaps a mouse, which could be heard ever so faintly rustling the grass-stems at the edge of the thicket. To the skunk, with his well-filled belly, the sound had no interest. He rounded the thicket and came face to face with the fox.
Neither in size, strength, nor agility was he any match for the savage red beast which stood in his path, and was quite capable, indeed, of dispatching him in two snaps of his long, lean jaws. But he was not in the least put out. Watchful, but cool, he kept straight on, neither delaying nor hastening his leisurely and nonchalant progress. The fox, on the other hand, stopped short. He was hungry. His hunting was interfered with, for that rustling under the fir-branches had stopped. His fine red brush twitched angrily. Nevertheless, he had no stomach to tackle this easy-going little gentleman in the black-and-white stripes. Showing his long white teeth in a vindictive but noiseless snarl, he stepped aside. And the skunk, glancing back with bright eyes of vigilance and understanding, passed on as if the twilight world belonged to him. He knew – and he knew his enemy knew as well – that he carried with him a concealed weapon of such potency that no fox, unless afflicted with madness, would ever willingly run up against it.
Reaching his burrow in the underbrush without further adventure, he found it empty. His mate and her young ones – now three-quarters grown – were scattered away foraging for themselves over the wide, forest-scented clearings. It was a spacious burrow, dug by a sturdy, surly old wood-chuck, who, though usually as pugnacious as a badger and an obstinate stickier for his rights, had in this case yielded without a fight to the mild-mannered little usurper, and humped off in disgust to hollow a new abode much deeper in the forest, where such a mischance would not be likely to happen to him again. Under the tenancy of the skunk family the burrow was sweet and dry and daintily kept. With a little grumble of content deep in his throat he curled himself up and went to sleep.
When he woke and set forth again to renew his foraging, although he had only slept an hour, his vigorous digestion had quite restored his appetite. He had no more thought for June-bugs. He wanted bigger game, more red-blooded and with some excitement in it. He thought of the farmyard, half a mile away across the clearings, down over the round of the upland. It was weeks now since he had visited it. There might be something worth picking up. There might be a mother-hen with chickens, in a pen which he could find a way into. There might be a hen sitting on her clutch of eggs in a stolen nest under the barn. He had discovered in previous seasons that most sitting hens had their nests provided for them in secure places which he could in no way manage to come at. But he had also found that sometimes a foolish and secretive – and very young – hen will hide her nest in some such out-of-the-way place as under the barn floor, where the troublesome human creatures who preside over the destinies of hens cannot get at it. Here she keeps her precious eggs all to herself till she has enough to cover comfortably, and then she proceeds to the pleasant task of brooding them, and has things all her own way till some night-prowler comes along and convicts her, finally and fatally, of her folly.
A full moon, large and ruddy like a ripe pumpkin, was just rising behind the jagged black tops of the spruce forest. It threw long, fantastic, confusing shadows across the dewy hillocks of the pasture. Hither and thither, in and out and across the barred streaks of light, darted the wild rabbits, gambolling as if half beside themselves, as if smitten with a mid-summer madness by the capricious magic of the night. But if mad, they retained enough sound sense to keep ever at a prudent distance from the leisurely striped wayfarer who appeared so little interested in their sport. Though they were bigger than he, they knew that, if they should venture within reach of his pounce, his indifference would vanish and his inexorable fangs would be in their throats.
Knowing his utter inability to compete with the speed of the rabbits, now they were wide awake, the skunk hardly noticed their antics, but kept on his direct path toward the farmyard. Presently, however, his attention was caught by the rabbits scattering off in every direction. On the instant he was all alert for the cause. Mounting a hillock, he caught sight of a biggish shaggy-haired dog some distance down the pasture. The dog was racing this way and that as crazily, it seemed, as the rabbits, with faint little yelps of excitement and whines of disappointment. He was chasing the rabbits with all his energy; and it was evident that he was a stranger, a new-comer to the wilderness world, for he seemed to think he might hope to catch the fleet-foot creatures by merely running after them. As a matter of fact, he had just arrived the same day at the backwoods farm from the city down the river. His experience had been confined to streets and gardens and the chasing of cats, and he was daft with delight over the spacious freedom of the clearings. The skunk eyed him scornfully, and continued his journey with the unconcern of an elephant.
A moment later the dog was aware of a little, insignificant black-and-white creature coming slowly towards him as if unconscious of his presence. Another rabbit! But as this one did not seem alarmed, he stopped and eyed it with surprise, his head cocked to one side in inquiry. The skunk half turned and moved off slowly, deliberately, at right angles to the path he had been following.
With a yelp of delight the dog dashed at this easy victim, which seemed so stupid that it made no effort to escape. He was almost upon it. Another leap and he would have had it in his jaws. But the amazing little animal turned its back on him, stuck its tail straight in the air, and jerked up its hindquarters with a derisive gesture. In that instant something hot and soft struck the inexperienced hunter full in the face – something soft, indeed, but overwhelming, paralysing. It stopped him dead in his tracks. Suffocating, intolerably pungent, it both blinded him and choked him. His lungs refused to work, shutting up spasmodically. Gasping and gagging, he grovelled on his belly and strove frantically to paw his mouth and nostrils clear of the dense, viscous fluid which was clogging them. Failing in this, he fell to rooting violently in the short grass, biting and tearing at it and rolling in it, till some measure of breath and eyesight returned to him. Thereupon, his matted head all stuck with grass and moss and dirt, he set off racing madly for the farmhouse, where he expected to get relief from the strange torment which afflicted him. But when he pawed and whined at the kitchen door for admittance, he was driven off with contumely and broomsticks. There was nothing for him to do but slink away with his shame to a secluded corner between the wagon-shed and the pig-pen, where he could soothe his burning muzzle in the cool winds and fresh earth. On the following day one of the farm hands, with rude hands and unsympathetic comment, scrubbed him violently with liquid soap and then clipped close his splendid shaggy coat. But it was a week before he was readmitted to the comfortable fellowship of the farmhouse kitchen.
For a moment or two, with a glance of triumph in his bright eyes, the skunk had watched the paroxysms of his discomfited foe. Then, dropping the tip of his tail into its customary disdainful arch, he had turned back towards his burrow. This was a redoubtable foe whom he had just put to rout, and he had expended most of his armoury upon him. He had no wish to risk another encounter until the potent secretion which he carried in a sac between the powerful muscles of his thighs should have had time to accumulate again. He dropped, for that night, all notion of the distinctly adventurous expedition to the farmyard, contenting himself with snapping up a few beetles and crickets as he went. He was lucky enough to pounce upon an indiscreet field-mouse just as she emerged from her burrow, and then a few minutes' digging with his powerful and expert fore-paws had served to unearth the mouse's nest with her half-dozen blind sucklings. So he went home well satisfied with himself. Before re-entering he again made a careful toilet; and as the opening of the sac from which he had projected the potent fluid into his enemy's face had immediately closed up tight and fast, he carried no trace of the virulent odour with him. Indeed, that fluid was a thing which he never by any chance allowed to get on to his own fur. Always, at the moment of ejecting it, the fur on his thighs parted and lay back flat to either side of the naked vent of the sac, and the long tail cocked itself up rigidly, well out of the way. It was a stuff he kept strictly for his foes, and never allowed to offend either himself or his friends.