Wood Folk at School

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Title: Wood Folk at School

Author: William J. Long

Release Date: July 19, 2007 [EBook #22101]

Language: English

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Wood Folk at School

THERE AT A TURN IN THE PATH, NOT TEN YARDS AHEAD, STOOD A HUGE BEAR.

WOOD FOLK AT SCHOOL

BY

WILLIAM J. LONG

WOOD FOLK SERIES

BOOK FOUR

GINN & COMPANY

BOSTON · NEW YORK · CHICAGO · LONDON

Entered at Stationers' Hall

COPYRIGHT, 1902, 1903

by WILLIAM J. LONG

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Athenæum Press

GINN & COMPANY · CAMBRIDGE · MASSACHUSETTS

PREFACE

It may surprise many, whose knowledge of wild animals is gained from rare, fleeting glimpses of frightened hoof or wing in the woods, to consider that there can be such a thing as a school for the Wood Folk; or that instruction has any place in the life of the wild things. Nevertheless it is probably true that education among the higher order of animals has its distinct place and value. Their knowledge, however simple, is still the result of three factors: instinct, training, and experience. Instinct only begins the work; the mother’s training develops and supplements the instinct; and contact with the world, with its sudden dangers and unknown forces, finishes the process.

For many years the writer has been watching animals and recording his observations with the idea of determining, if possible, which of these three is the governing factor in the animal’s life. Some of the results of this study were published last year in a book called School of the Woods, which consisted of certain studies of animals from life, and certain theories in the form of essays to account for what the writer’s eyes had seen and his own ears heard in the great wilderness among the animals.

A school reader is no place for theories; therefore that part of the book is not given here. The animal studies alone are reproduced in answer to the requests from many teachers that these be added to the Wood Folk books. From these the reader can form his own conclusions as to the relative importance of instinct and training, if he will. But there is another and a better way open: watch the purple martins for a few days when the young birds first leave the house; find a crow’s nest, and watch secretly while the old birds are teaching their little ones to fly; follow a fox, or any other wild mother-animal, patiently as she leaves the den and leads the cubs out into the world of unknown sights and sounds and smells,—and you will learn more in a week of what education means to the animals than anybody’s theories can ever teach you.

These are largely studies of individual animals and birds. They do not attempt to give the habits of a class or species, for the animals of the same class are alike only in a general way; they differ in interest and intelligence quite as widely as men and women of the same class, if you but watch them closely enough. The names here given are those of the Milicete Indians, as nearly as I can remember them; and the incidents have all passed under my own-eyes and were recorded in the woods, from my tent or canoe, just as I saw them.

WILLIAM J. LONG.

Stamford, Conn., March, 1903.

CONTENTS

Page

What the Fawns must know1

A Cry in the Night11

Ismaques the Fishhawk31

A School for Little Fishermen48

When you meet a Bear58

Quoskh the Keen Eyed75

Unk Wunk the Porcupine111

A Lazy Fellow’s Fun124

The Partridges’ Roll Call134

Umquenawis the Mighty151

At the Sound of the Trumpet175

Glossary of Indian Names187

FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS

There at a Turn in the Path, not Ten Yards ahead, stood a Huge BearFrontispiece

Facing Page

The White Flag showing like a Beacon Light as she jumped away9

Her Eyes all ablaze with the Wonder of the light24

Presently they began to swoop fiercely at some Animal43

"Gripping his Fish and pip-pipping his Exultation"53

A Dozen Times the Fisher jumped, filling the Air with Feathers104

Bothers and irritates the Porcupine by flipping Earth at him118

They would turn their Heads and listen intently145

Plunging like a Great Engine through Underbrush and over Windfalls152

A Mighty Spring of his Crouching Haunches finished the Work183

To this day it is hard to understand how any eyes could have found them, they were so perfectly hidden. I was following a little brook, which led me by its singing to a deep dingle in the very heart of the big woods. A great fallen tree lay across my path and made a bridge over the stream. Now, bridges are for crossing; that is plain to even the least of the wood folk; so I sat down on the mossy trunk to see who my neighbors might be, and what little feet were passing on the King’s highway.

Here, beside me, are claw marks in the moldy bark. Only a bear could leave that deep, strong imprint. And see! there is where the moss slipped and broke beneath his weight. A restless tramp is Mooween, who scatters his records over forty miles of hillside on a summer day, when his lazy mood happens to leave him for a season. Here, on the other side, are the bronze-green petals of a spruce cone, chips from a squirrel’s workshop, scattered as if Meeko had brushed them hastily from his yellow apron when he rushed out to see Mooween as he passed. There, beyond, is a mink sign, plain as daylight, where Cheokhes sat down a little while after his breakfast of frogs. And here, clinging to a stub, touching my elbow as I sit with heels dangling idly over the lazy brook, is a crinkly yellow hair, which tells me that Eleemos the Sly One, as Simmo calls him, hates to wet his feet and so uses a fallen tree or a stone in the brook for a bridge, like his brother fox of the settlements.

Just in front of me was another fallen tree, lying alongside the stream in such a way that no animal more dangerous than a roving mink would ever think of using it. Under its roots, away from the brook, was a hidden and roomy little house with hemlock tips drooping over its doorway for a curtain. A pretty place for a den, I thought; for no one could ever find you there. Then, as if to contradict me, a stray sunbeam found the spot and sent curious bright glintings of sheen and shadow dancing and playing under the fallen roots and trunk. Beautiful! I cried, as the light fell on the brown mold and flecked it with white and yellow. The sunbeam went away again, but seemed to leave its brightness behind it; for there were still the gold-brown mold under the roots and the flecks of white and yellow. I stooped down to see it better; I reached in my hand—then the brown mold changed suddenly to softest fur; the glintings of white and yellow were the dappled sides of two little fawns, lying there very still and frightened, just where their mother had hidden them when she went away.

They were but a few days old when I found them. Each had on his little Joseph’s coat; and each, I think, must have had also a magic cloak somewhere about him; for he had only to lie down anywhere to become invisible. The curious markings, like the play of light and shadow through the leaves, hid the little owners perfectly so long as they held themselves still and let the sunbeams dance over them. Their beautiful heads were a study for an artist,—delicate, graceful, exquisitely colored. And their great soft eyes had a questioning innocence, as they met yours, which went straight to your heart and made you claim the beautiful creatures for your own instantly. Indeed, there is nothing in all the woods that so takes your heart by storm as the face of a little fawn.

They were timid at first, lying close without motion of any kind. The instinct of obedience—the first and strongest instinct of every creature born into this world—kept them loyal to the mother’s command to stay where they were and be still till she came back. So even after the hemlock curtain was brushed aside, and my eyes saw and my hand touched them, they kept their heads flat to the ground and pretended that they were only parts of the brown forest floor, and that the spots on their bright coats were but flecks of summer sunshine.

I felt then that I was an intruder; that I ought to go straight away and leave them; but the little things were too beautiful, lying there in their wonderful old den, with fear and wonder and questionings dancing in their soft eyes as they turned them back at me like a mischievous child playing peekaboo. It is a tribute to our higher nature that one cannot see a beautiful thing anywhere without wanting to draw near, to see, to touch, to possess it. And here was beauty such as one rarely finds, and, though I was an intruder, I could not go away.

The hand that touched the little wild things brought no sense of danger with it. It searched out the spots behind their velvet ears where they love to be rubbed; it wandered down over their backs with a little wavy caress in its motion; it curled its palm up softly under their moist muzzles and brought their tongues out instantly for the faint suggestion of salt that was in it. Suddenly their heads came up. All deception was over now. They had forgotten their hiding, their first lesson; they turned and looked at me full with their great, innocent, questioning eyes. It was wonderful; I was undone. One must give his life, if need be, to defend the little things after they had looked at him just once like that.

When I rose at last, after petting them to my heart’s content, they staggered up to their feet and came out of their house. Their mother had told them to stay; but here was another big, kind animal, evidently, whom they might safely trust. Take the gifts the gods provide thee was the thought in their little heads; and the salty taste in their tongues’ ends, when they licked my hand, was the nicest thing they had ever known. As I turned away they ran after me, with a plaintive little cry to bring me back. When I stopped they came close, nestling against me, one on either side, and lifted their heads to be petted and rubbed again.

Standing so, all eagerness and wonder, they were a perfect study in first impressions of the world. Their ears had already caught the deer trick of twitching nervously and making trumpets at every sound. A leaf rustled, a twig broke, the brook’s song swelled as a floating stick jammed in the current, and instantly the fawns were all alert. Eyes, ears, noses questioned the phenomenon. Then they would raise their eyes slowly to mine. This is a wonderful world. This big wood is full of music. We know so little; please tell us all about it,—that is what the beautiful eyes were saying as they lifted up to mine, full of innocence and delight at the joy of living. Then the hands that rested fondly, one on either soft neck, moved down from their ears with a caressing sweep and brought up under their moist muzzles. Instantly the wood and its music vanished; the questions ran away out of their eyes. Their eager tongues were out, and all the unknown sounds were forgotten in the new sensation of lapping a man’s palm, which had a wonderful taste hidden somewhere under its friendly roughnesses. They were still licking my hands, nestling close against me, when a twig snapped faintly far behind us.

Now, twig snapping is the great index to all that passes in the wilderness. Curiously enough, no two animals can break even a twig under their feet and give the same warning. The crack under a bear’s foot, except when he is stalking his game, is heavy and heedless. The hoof of a moose crushes a twig, and chokes the sound of it before it can tell its message fairly. When a twig speaks under a deer in his passage through the woods, the sound is sharp, dainty, alert. It suggests the plop of a raindrop into the lake. And the sound behind us now could not be mistaken. The mother of my little innocents was coming.

I hated to frighten her, and through her to destroy their new confidence; so I hurried back to the den, the little ones running close by my side. Ere I was halfway, a twig snapped sharply again; there was a swift rustle in the underbrush, and a doe sprang out with a low bleat as she saw the home log.

At sight of me she stopped short, trembling violently, her ears pointing forward like two accusing fingers, an awful fear in her soft eyes as she saw her little ones with her archenemy between them, his hands resting on their innocent necks. Her body swayed away, every muscle tense for the jump; but her feet seemed rooted to the spot. Slowly she swayed back to her balance, her eyes holding mine; then away again as the danger scent poured into her nose. But still the feet stayed. She could not move; could not believe. Then, as I waited quietly and tried to make my