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Secrets of the Woods
SECRETS OF THE WOODS BY WILLIAM J. LONG
Wood Folk Series Book Three
1901
TO CH'GEEGEE-LOKH-SIS, "Little Friend Ch'geegee," whose coming makes
the winter glad.
PREFACE
This little book is but another chapter in the shy 'wild life of the
fields and woods' of which "Ways of Wood Folk" and "Wilderness Ways "
were the beginning. It is given gladly in answer to the call for more
from those who have read the previous volumes, and whose letters are
full of the spirit of kindness and appreciation.
Many questions have come of late with these same letters; chief of
which is this: How shall one discover such things for himself? how
shall we, too, read the secrets of the Wood Folk? There is no space
here to answer, to describe the long training, even if one could
explain perfectly what is more or less unconscious. I would only
suggest that perhaps the real reason why we see so little in the woods
is the way we go through them--talking, laughing, rustling, smashing
twigs, disturbing the peace of the solitudes by what must seem strange
and uncouth noises to the little wild creatures. They, on the other
hand, slip with noiseless feet through their native coverts, shy,
silent, listening, more concerned to hear than to be heard, loving the
silence, hating noise and fearing it, as they fear and hate their
natural enemies.
We would not feel comfortable if a big barbarian came into our quiet
home, broke the door down, whacked his war-club on the furniture, and
whooped his battle yell. We could hardly be natural under the
circumstances. Our true dispositions would hide themselves. We might
even vacate the house bodily. Just so Wood Folk. Only as you copy
their ways can you expect to share their life and their secrets. And
it is astonishing how little the shyest of them fears you, if you but
keep silence and avoid all excitement, even of feeling; for they
understand your feeling quite as much as your action.
A dog knows when you are afraid of him; when you are hostile; when
friendly. So does a bear. Lose your nerve, and the horse you are
riding goes to pieces instantly. Bubble over with suppressed
excitement, and the deer yonder, stepping daintily down the bank to
your canoe in the water grasses, will stamp and snort and bound away
without ever knowing what startled him. But be quiet, friendly,
peace-possessed in the same place, and the deer, even after
discovering you, will draw near and show his curiosity in twenty
pretty ways ere he trots away, looking back over his shoulder for your
last message. Then be generous--show him the flash of a looking-glass,
the flutter of a bright handkerchief, a tin whistle, or any other
little kickshaw that the remembrance of a boy's pocket may
suggest--and the chances are that he will come back again, finding
curiosity so richly rewarded.
That is another point to remember: all the Wood Folk are more curious
about you than you are about them. Sit down quietly in the woods
anywhere, and your coming will occasion the same stir that a stranger
makes in a New England hill town. Control your curiosity, and soon
their curiosity gets beyond control; they must come to find out who
you are and what you are doing. Then you have the advantage; for,
while their curiosity is being satisfied, they forget fear and show
you many curious bits of their life that you will never discover
otherwise.
As to the source of these sketches, it is the same as that of the
others years of quiet observation in the woods and fields, and some
old notebooks which hold the records of summer and winter camps in the
great wilderness.
My kind publishers announced, some time ago, a table of contents,
which included chapters on jay and fish-hawk, panther, and musquash,
and a certain savage old bull moose that once took up his abode too
near my camp for comfort. My only excuse for their non-appearance is
that my little book was full before their turn came. They will find
their place, I trust, in another volume presently.
STAMFORD, CONN., June, 1901. Wm. J. LONG.
CONTENTS
TOOKHEES THE 'FRAID ONE A WILDERNESS BYWAY KEEONEKH THE FISHERMAN
KOSKOMENOS THE OUTCAST MEEKO THE MISCHIEF-MAKER THE OL' BEECH
PA'TRIDGE FOLLOWING THE DEER SUMMER WOODS STILL HUNTING WINTER TRAILS
SNOW BOUND GLOSSARY OF INDIAN NAMES
SECRETS OF THE WOODS
TOOKHEES THE 'FRAID ONE
Little Tookhees the wood mouse, the 'Fraid One, as Simmo calls him,
always makes two appearances when you squeak to bring him out. First,
after much peeking, he runs out of his tunnel; sits up once on his
hind legs; rubs his eyes with his paws; looks up for the owl, and
behind him for the fox, and straight ahead at the tent where the man
lives; then he dives back headlong into his tunnel with a rustle of
leaves and a frightened whistle, as if Kupkawis the little owl had
seen him. That is to reassure himself. In a moment he comes back
softly to see what kind of crumbs you have given him.
No wonder Tookhees is so timid, for there is no place in earth or air
or water, outside his own little doorway under the mossy stone, where
he is safe. Above him the owls watch by night and the hawks by day;
around him not a prowler of the wilderness, from Mooween the bear down
through a score of gradations, to Kagax the bloodthirsty little
weasel, but will sniff under every old log in the hope of finding a
wood mouse; and if he takes a swim, as he is fond of doing, not a big
trout in the river but leaves his eddy to rush at the tiny ripple
holding bravely across the current. So, with all these enemies waiting
to catch him the moment he ventures out, Tookhees must needs make one
or two false starts in order to find out where the coast is clear.
That is why he always dodges back after his first appearance; why he
gives you two or three swift glimpses of himself, now here, now there,
before coming out into the light. He knows his enemies are so hungry,
so afraid he will get away or that somebody else will catch him, that
they jump for him the moment he shows a whisker. So eager are they for
his flesh, and so sure, after missing him, that the swoop of wings or
the snap of red jaws has scared him into permanent hiding, that they
pass on to other trails. And when a prowler, watching from behind a
stump, sees Tookhees flash out of sight and hears his startled squeak,
he thinks naturally that the keen little eyes have seen the tail,
which he forgot to curl close enough, and so sneaks away as if ashamed
of himself. Not even the fox, whose patience is without end, has
learned the wisdom of waiting for Tookhees' second appearance. And
that is the salvation of the little 'Fraid One.
From all these enemies Tookhees has one refuge, the little arched nest
beyond the pretty doorway under the mossy stone. Most of his enemies
can dig, to be sure, but his tunnel winds about in such a way that
they never can tell from the looks of his doorway where it leads to;
and there are no snakes in the wilderness to follow and find out.
Occasionally I have seen where Mooween the bear has turned the stone
over and clawed the earth beneath; but there is generally a tough root
in the way, and Mooween concludes that he is taking too much trouble
for so small a mouthful, and shuffles off to the log where the red
ants live.
On his journeys through the woods Tookhees never forgets the dangerous
possibilities. His progress is a series of jerks, and whisks, and
jumps, and hidings. He leaves his doorway, after much watching, and
shoots like a minnow across the moss to an upturned root. There he
sits up and listens, rubbing his whiskers nervously. Then he glides
along the root for a couple of feet, drops to the ground and
disappears. He is hiding there under a dead leaf. A moment of
stillness and he jumps like a jack-in-abox. Now he is sitting on the
leaf that covered him, rubbing his whiskers again, looking back over
his trail as if he heard footsteps behind him. Then another nervous
dash, a squeak which proclaims at once his escape. and his arrival,
and he vanishes under the old moss-grown log where his fellows live, a
whole colony of them.
All these things, and many more, I discovered the first season that I
began to study the wild things that lived within sight of my tent. I
had been making long excursions after bear and beaver, following on
wild-goose chases after Old Whitehead the eagle and Kakagos the wild
woods raven that always escaped me, only to find that within the warm
circle of my camp-fire little wild folk were hiding whose lives were
more unknown and quite as interesting as the greater creatures I had
been following.
One day, as I returned quietly to camp, I saw Simmo quite lost in
watching something near my tent. He stood beside a great birch tree,
one hand resting against the bark that he would claim next winter for
his new canoe; the other hand still grasped his axe, which he had
picked up a moment before to quicken the tempo of the bean kettle's
song. His dark face peered behind the tree with a kind of childlike
intensity written all over it.
I stole nearer without his hearing me; but I could see nothing. The
woods were all still. Killooleet was dozing by his nest; the
chickadees had vanished, knowing that it was not meal time; and Meeko
the red squirrel had been made to jump from the fir top to the ground
so often that now he kept sullenly to his own hemlock across the
island, nursing his sore feet and scolding like a fury whenever I
approached. Still Simmo watched, as if a bear were approaching his
bait, till I whispered, "Quiee, Simmo, what is it?"
"Nodwar k'chee Toquis, I see little 'Fraid One'" he said,
unconsciously dropping into his own dialect, which is the softest
speech in the world, so soft that wild things are not disturbed when
they hear it, thinking it only a louder sough of the pines or a softer
tunking of ripples on the rocks.--"O bah cosh, see! He wash-um face in
yo lil cup." And when I tiptoed to his side, there was Tookhees
sitting on the rim of my drinking cup, in which I had left a new
leader to soak for the evening's fishing, scrubbing his face
diligently, like a boy who is watched from behind to see that he
slights not his ears or his neck.
Remembering my own boyhood on cold mornings, I looked behind him to
see if he also were under compulsion, but there was no other mouse in
sight. He would scoop up a double handful of water in his paws, rub it
rapidly up over nose and eyes, and then behind his ears, on the spots
that wake you up quickest when you are sleepy. Then another scoop of
water, and another vigorous rub, ending behind his ears as before.
Simmo was full of wonder, for an Indian notices few things in the
woods beside those that pertain to his trapping and hunting; and to
see a mouse wash his face was as incomprehensible to him as to see me
read a book. But all wood mice are very cleanly; they have none of the
strong odors of our house mice. Afterwards, while getting acquainted,
I saw him wash many times in the plate of water that I kept filled
near his den; but he never washed more than his face and the sensitive
spot behind his ears. Sometimes, however, when I have seen him
swimming in the lake or river, I have wondered whether he were going
on a journey, or just bathing for the love of it, as he washed his
face in my cup.
I left the cup where it was and spread a feast for the little guest,
cracker crumbs and a bit of candle end. In the morning they were gone,
the signs of several mice telling plainly who had been called in from
the wilderness byways. That was the introduction of man to beast. Soon
they came regularly. I had only to scatter crumbs and squeak a few
times like a mouse, when little streaks and flashes would appear on
the moss or among the faded gold tapestries of old birch leaves, and
the little wild things would come to my table, their eyes shining like
jet, their tiny paws lifted to rub their whiskers or to shield
themselves from the fear under which they lived continually.
They were not all alike--quite the contrary. One, the same who had
washed in my cup, was gray and old, and wise from much dodging of
enemies. His left ear was split from a fight, or an owl's claw,
probably, that just missed him as he dodged under a root. He was at
once the shyest and boldest of the lot. For a day or two he came with
marvelous stealth, making use of every dead leaf and root tangle to
hide his approach, and shooting across the open spaces so quickly that
one knew not what had happened- -just a dun streak which ended in
nothing. And the brown leaf gave no sign of what it sheltered. But
once assured of his ground, he came boldly. This great man-creature,
with his face close to the table, perfectly still but for his eyes,
with a hand that moved gently if it moved at all, was not to be
feared--that Tookhees felt instinctively. And this strange fire with
hungry odors, and the white tent, and the comings and goings of men
who were masters of the woods kept fox and lynx and owl far away--that
he learned after a day or two. Only the mink, who crept in at night to
steal the man's fish, was to be feared. So Tookhees presently gave up
his nocturnal habits and came out boldly into the sunlight. Ordinarily
the little creatures come out in the dusk, when their quick movements
are hidden among the shadows that creep and quiver. But with fear
gone, they are only too glad to run about in the daylight, especially
when good things to eat are calling them.
Besides the veteran there was a little mother-mouse, whose tiny gray
jacket was still big enough to cover a wonderful mother love, as I
afterwards found out. She never ate at my table, but carried her fare
away into hiding, not to feed her little ones-they were, too small as
yet--but thinking in some dumb way, behind the bright little eyes,
that they needed her and that her life must be spared with greater
precaution for their sakes. She would steal timidly to my table,
always appearing from under a gray shred of bark on a fallen birch
log, following the same path, first to a mossy stone, then to a dark
hole under a root, then to a low brake, and along the underside of a
billet of wood to the mouse table. There she would stuff both cheeks
hurriedly, till they bulged as if she had toothache, and steal away by
the same path, disappearing at last under the shred of gray bark.
For a long time it puzzled me to find her nest, which I knew could not
be far away. It was not in the birch log where she disappeared--that
was hollow the whole length--nor was it anywhere beneath it. Some
distance away was a large stone, half covered by the green moss which
reached up from every side. The most careful search here had failed to
discover any trace of Tookhees' doorway; so one day when the wind blew
half a gale and I was going out on the lake alone, I picked up this
stone to put in the bow of my canoe. That was to steady the little
craft by bringing her nose down to grip the water. Then the secret was
out, and there it was in a little dome of dried grass among some
spruce roots under the stone.
The mother was away foraging, but a faint sibilant squeaking within
the dome told me that the little ones were there, and hungry as usual.
As I watched there was a swift movement in a tunnel among the roots,
and the mother-mouse came rushing back. She paused a moment, lifting
her forepaws against a root to sniff what danger threatened. Then she
saw my face bending over the opening--Et tu Brute! and she darted into
the nest. In a moment she was out again and disappeared into her
tunnel, running swiftly with her little ones hanging to her sides by a
grip that could not be shaken,--all but one, a delicate pink creature
that one could hide in a thimble, and that snuggled down in the
darkest corner of my hand confidently.
It was ten minutes before the little mother came back, looking
anxiously for the lost baby. When she found him safe in his own nest,
with the man's face still watching, she was half reassured; but when
she threw herself down and the little one began to drink, she grew
fearful again and ran away into the tunnel, the little one clinging to
her side, this time securely.
I put the stone back and gathered the moss carefully about it. In a
few days Mother Mouse was again at my table. I stole away to the
stone, put my ear close to it, and heard with immense satisfaction
tiny squeaks, which told me that the house was again occupied. Then I
watched to find the path by which Mother Mouse came to her own. When
her cheeks were full, she disappeared under the shred of bark by her
usual route. That led into the hollow center of the birch log, which
she followed to the end, where she paused a moment, eyes, ears, and
nostrils busy; then she jumped to a tangle of roots and dead leaves,
beneath which was a tunnel that led, deep down under the moss,
straight to her nest beneath the stone.
Besides these older mice, there were five or six smaller ones, all shy
save one, who from the first showed not the slightest fear but came
straight to my hand, ate his crumbs, and went up my sleeve, and
proceeded to make himself a warm nest there by nibbling wool from my
flannel shirt.
In strong contrast to this little fellow was another who knew too well
what fear meant. He belonged to another tribe that had not yet grown
accustomed to man's ways. I learned too late how careful one must be
in handling the little creatures that live continually in the land
where fear reigns.
A little way behind my tent was a great fallen log, mouldy and
moss-grown, with twin-flowers shaking their bells along its length,
under which lived a whole colony of wood mice. They ate the crumbs
that I placed by the log; but they could never be tolled to my table,
whether because they had no split-eared old veteran to spy out the
man's ways, or because my own colony drove them away, I could never
find out. One day I saw Tookhees dive under the big log as I
approached, and having nothing more important to do, I placed one big
crumb near his entrance, stretched out in the moss, hid my hand in a
dead brake near the tempting morsel, and squeaked the call. In a
moment Tookhees' nose and eyes appeared in his doorway, his whiskers
twitching nervously as he smelled the candle grease. But he was
suspicious of the big object, or perhaps he smelled the man too and
was afraid, for after much dodging in and out he disappeared
altogether.
I was wondering how long his hunger would battle with his caution,
when I saw the moss near my bait stir from beneath. A little waving of
the moss blossoms, and Tookhees' nose and eyes appeared out of the
ground for an instant, sniffing in all directions. His little scheme
was evident enough now; he was tunneling for the morsel that he dared
not take openly. I watched with breathless interest as a faint quiver
nearer my bait showed where he was pushing his works. Then the moss
stirred cautiously close beside his objective; a hole opened; the
morsel tumbled in, and Tookhees was gone with his prize.
I placed more crumbs from my pocket in the same place, and presently
three or four mice were nibbling them. One sat up close by the dead
brake, holding a bit of bread in his forepaws like a squirrel. The
brake stirred suddenly; before he could jump my hand closed over him,
and slipping the other hand beneath him I held him up to my face to
watch him between my fingers. He made no movement to escape, but only
trembled violently. His legs seemed too weak to support his weight
now; he lay down; his eyes closed. One convulsive twitch and he was
dead--dead of fright in a hand which had not harmed him.
It was at this colony, whose members were all strangers to me, that I
learned in a peculiar way of the visiting habits of wood mice, and at
the same time another lesson that I shall not soon forget. For several
days I had been trying every legitimate way in vain to catch a big
trout, a monster of his kind, that lived in an eddy behind a rock up
at the inlet. Trout were scarce in that lake, and in summer the big
fish are always lazy and hard to catch. I was trout hungry most of the
time, for the fish that I caught were small, and few and far between.
Several times, however, when casting from the shore at the inlet for
small fish, I had seen swirls in a great eddy near the farther shore,
which told me plainly of big fish beneath; and one day, when a huge
trout rolled half his length out of water behind my fly, small fry
lost all their interest and I promised myself the joy of feeling my
rod bend and tingle beneath the rush of that big trout if it took all
summer.
Flies were no use. I offered him a bookful, every variety of shape and
color, at dawn and dusk, without tempting him. I tried grubs, which
bass like, and a frog's leg, which no pickerel can resist, and little
frogs, such as big trout hunt among the lily pads in the
twilight,--all without pleasing him. And then waterbeetles, and a red
squirrel's tail-tip, which makes the best hackle in the world, and
kicking grasshoppers, and a silver spoon with a wicked "gang" of
hooks, which I detest and which, I am thankful to remember, the trout
detested also. They lay there in their big cool eddy, lazily taking
what food the stream brought down to them, giving no heed to frauds of
any kind.
Then I caught a red-fin in the stream above, hooked it securely, laid
it on a big chip, coiled my line upon it, and set it floating down
stream, the line uncoiling gently behind it as it went. When it
reached the eddy I raised my rod tip; the line straightened; the
red-fin plunged overboard, and a two-pound trout, thinking, no doubt,
that the little fellow had been hiding under the chip, rose for him
and took him in. That was the only one I caught. His struggle
disturbed the pool, and the other trout gave no heed to more red-fins.
Then, one morning at daybreak, as I sat on a big rock pondering new
baits and devices, a stir on an alder bush across the stream caught my
eye. Tookhees the wood mouse was there, running over the bush,
evidently for the black catkins which still clung to the tips. As I
watched him he fell, or jumped from his branch into the quiet water
below and, after circling about for a moment, headed bravely across
the current. I could just see his nose as he swam, a rippling wedge
against the black water with a widening letter V trailing out behind
him. The current swept him downward; he touched the edge of the big
eddy; there was a swirl, a mighty plunge beneath, and Tookhees was
gone, leaving no trace but a swift circle of ripples that were
swallowed up in the rings and dimples behind the rock.--I had found
what bait the big trout wanted.
Hurrying back to camp, I loaded a cartridge lightly with a pinch of
dust shot, spread some crumbs near the big log behind my tent,
squeaked the call a few times, and sat down to wait. "These mice are
strangers to me," I told Conscience, who was protesting a little, "and
the woods are full of them, and I want that trout."
In a moment there was a rustle in the mossy doorway and Tookhees
appeared. He darted across the open, seized a crumb in his mouth, sat
up on his hind legs, took the crumb in his paws, and began to eat. I
had raised the gun, thinking he would dodge back a few times before
giving me a shot; his boldness surprised me, but I did not recognize
him. Still my eye followed along the barrels and over the sight to
where Tookhees sat eating his crumb. My finger was pressing the
trigger--"O you big butcher," said Conscience, "think how little he
is, and what a big roar your gun will make! Aren't you ashamed?"
"But I want the trout," I protested.
"Catch him then, without killing this little harmless thing," said
Conscience sternly.
"But he is a stranger to me; I never--"
"He is eating your bread and salt," said Conscience. That settled it;
but even as I looked at him over the gun sight, Tookhees finished his
crumb, came to my foot, ran along my leg into my lap, and looked into
my face expectantly. The grizzled coat and the split ear showed the
welcome guest at my table for a week past. He was visiting the
stranger colony, as wood mice are fond of doing, and persuading them
by his example that they might trust me, as he did. More ashamed than
if I had been caught potting quail, I threw away the hateful shell
that had almost slain my friend. and went back to camp.
There I made a mouse of a bit of muskrat fur, with a piece of my
leather shoestring sewed on for a tail. It served the purpose
perfectly, for within the hour I was gloating over the size and beauty
of the big trout as he stretched his length on the rock beside me. But
I lost the fraud at the next cast, leaving it, with a foot of my
leader, in the mouth of a second trout that rolled up at it the
instant it touched his eddy behind the rock.
After that the wood mice were safe so far as I was concerned. Not a
trout, though he were big as a salmon, would ever taste them, unless
they chose to go swimming of their own accord; and I kept their table
better supplied than before. I saw much of their visiting back and
forth, and have understood better what those tunnels mean that one
finds in the spring when the last snows are melting. In a corner of
the woods, where the drifts lay, you will often find a score of
tunnels coming in from all directions to a central chamber. They speak
of Tookhees' sociable nature, of his long visits with his fellows,
undisturbed by swoop or snap, when the packed snow above has swept the
summer fear away and made him safe from hawk and owl and fox and
wildcat, and when no open water tempts him to go swimming where
Skooktum the big trout lies waiting, mouse hungry, under his eddy.
The weeks passed all too quickly, as wilderness weeks do, and the sad
task of breaking camp lay just before us. But one thing troubled
me--the little Tookhees, who knew no fear, but tried to make a nest in
the sleeve of my flannel shirt. His simple confidence touched me more
than the curious ways of all the other mice. Every day he came and
took his crumbs, not from the common table, but from my, hand,
evidently enjoying its warmth while he ate, and always getting the
choicest morsels. But I knew that he would be the first one caught by
the owl after I left; for it is fear only that saves the wild things.
Occasionally one finds animals of various kinds in which the instinct
of fear is lacking--a frog, a young partridge, a moose calf--and
wonders what golden age that knew no fear, or what glorious vision of
Isaiah in which lion and lamb lie down together, is here set forth. I
have even seen a young black duck, whose natural disposition is wild
as the wilderness itself, that had profited nothing by his mother's
alarms and her constant lessons in hiding, but came bobbing up to my
canoe among the sedges of a wilderness lake, while his brethren
crouched invisible in their coverts of bending rushes, and his mother
flapped wildly off, splashing and quacking and trailing a wing to draw
me away from the little ones.
Such an one is generally abandoned by its mother, or else is the first
to fall in the battle with the strong before she gives him up as
hopeless. Little Tookhees evidently belonged to this class, so before
leaving I undertook the task of teaching him fear, which had evidently
been too much for Nature and his own mother. I pinched him a few
times, hooting like an owl as I did so,--a startling process, which
sent the other mice diving like brown streaks to cover. Then I waved a
branch over him, like a hawk's wing, at the same time flipping him end
over end, shaking him up terribly. Then again, when he appeared with a
new light dawning in his eyes, the light of fear, I would set a stick
to wiggling like a creeping fox among the ferns and switch him sharply
with a hemlock tip. It was a hard lesson, but he learned it after a
few days. And before I finished the teaching, not a mouse would come
to my table, no matter how persuasively I squeaked. They would dart
about in the twilight as of yore, but the first whish of my stick sent
them all back to cover on the instant.
That was their stern yet, practical preparation for the robber horde
that would soon be prowling over my camping ground. Then a stealthy
movement among the ferns or the sweep of a shadow among the twilight
shadows would mean a very different thing from wriggling stick and
waving hemlock tip. Snap and swoop, and teeth and claws,--jump for
your life and find out afterwards. That is the rule for a wise wood
mouse. So I said good-by, and left them to take care of themselves in
the wilderness.